August 13, 2024 • 21 mins
How can you turn your team’s LinkedIn profiles into powerful distribution channels that drive real results?
In this episode, we’re exploring the best ways to leverage personal LinkedIn profiles to immediately boost your marketing strategy.
Join as we discuss:
Connect with us:
Benji: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benji-block/
James: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamescarbary/
In this episode, we’re exploring the best ways to leverage personal LinkedIn profiles to immediately boost your marketing strategy.
Join as we discuss:
- The evolution of Sweet Fish’s LinkedIn team strategy and how you can apply it
- Practical tips for getting founders, sales, and marketing teams posting
- Overcoming common barriers like time constraints and fear of criticism
Connect with us:
Benji: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benji-block/
James: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamescarbary/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
If there's anything around this whole idea of like empowering
your team to become strategic distribution channels, it's this one
thing you got to nail what the actual content substance is.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Today we're breaking down a LinkedIn strategy that you can
implement immediately that's going to gain massive momentum within your marketing,
going to get more eyeballs on your team's content, help
you build affinity for your brand, and ultimately close more deals.
We're going to share how to use individual LinkedIn profiles
as distribution channels. So really excited to dig into this today.
(00:40):
One of my favorite things about this show is the
conversation that it can start. We like when an episode
releases and people dm us on LinkedIn or share some
additional thoughts or maybe even disagree with us to keep
the conversation going. And James today, I wanted to bring
a conversation that started over on LinkedIn with John I
(01:00):
believe how you say. His last name is Win Delbo,
but he reached out to me and he asked a question.
He was actually going through our archive and was like, Hey,
is there any episodes that you've done in the past
for B to B growth? That speak at this, so
I'll just read his message that sets up today's topic.
So he says, Hi, Benji, thanks for the podcast series.
(01:20):
I was wondering if there was an episode on the topic,
how do you leverage the individual LinkedIn accounts of sales,
support and marketing staff. I work for CFD software development company.
This topic is the topic would be something like your
staff as a distribution channel. Really like this way of
(01:41):
thinking from John, So that's sort of the setup. He's like,
if there isn't a topic on this yet, would love
for you to just break it down and talk about
how this could work for different members of your team.
You know, some of them may be nervous about posting
on LinkedIn or unsure what to post about, and so James,
I want to bring that today, thinking through the LinkedIn
(02:04):
strategy for different team members. And we've gone through an
evolution at Sweetfish on how we think about this, what
we've done in the past versus now. So I thought
you'd be the best person to just speak to that
a little bit, how your thinking has evolved and how
we've tried different things over the years.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, So it's ebbed and flowed over the years. Sometimes
it's something that we're very focused on as a team,
and we're talking about on Slack all the time, and
we're celebrating all the time, and we're and then there
are other seasons in the business where it hasn't been
as much of our priority, it's taken more of a
back seat. But one thing has been consistent the entire time,
(02:44):
and we have always it's that we have always prioritized
content being distributed through the personal profiles of our people.
So we have never really put a heavy emphasis at
all on content distribution through a company page, be it
B to B growth, our media brand, or our corporate
(03:06):
brand in Sweetfish. So we've done this a few different ways.
We've done it where someone on our team, Emily, who
was on our team before she before she became a
mom and decided to stay at home, she would actually
help brainstorm and even ghost write content for different people
(03:27):
on our team. Now we're doing it where we're facilitating
more of like an internal community for group support, encouragement,
a place to share wins from your content, and we're
really focusing on the folks that really want to do
it as opposed to trying to loop people into it
that don't already have a leaning toward creating content where
(03:51):
we're leaning more into the folks that already want to
do it and just trying to create a group, a
support in a community internal to our team that inspires
and motivates the folks that already want to do it
to do it even more.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
The first to hear us here, we were really heavy
into like this idea of the Evangelist program. But even
now as we think of creators within the team what
they're posting about, and we'll speak to this a little
bit later too, but has always been more about hey
can what do you feel like you can facilitate? What
can you talk about and what do you do day
to day that would work on a platform like LinkedIn.
(04:30):
I think one thing that I've noticed is it clearly
consistency is key, but you also don't have to post
all of the time to see some measure of success
on LinkedIn. There is such a big gap between people
that look at LinkedIn as like a platform where they
go when they need a job, and a community that
(04:50):
is actually people who are desiring to get better at
work day after day, and you see these consistent posters.
So just even getting that muscle built can start by
just posting a couple times and seeing what resonates and
allowing that to happen. But it's always about showcasing personality
and expertise, and that's really hard to do on a
(05:13):
company page as compared to a personal page. When you
have personality and you have a post that resonates as
a person, you could turn that around and then actually
use that as potential content for a company page.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
And a great way to kind of overcome that initial
fear or inertia around posting, and something you can encourage
your people to do as you're starting to focus on
the personal profiles as distribution for your company is just
getting them to comment, like giving them a list of like, hey,
here are ten people in our space that tend to
(05:46):
post thoughtful content on a regular basis. Go follow these
people and leave content or leave comments where you think
you have something to say.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
I saw a pretty impressive stat from Refined Labs. They said,
and this just drives home your point. But it's personal
LinkedIn profiles drive almost three times more impressions and five
times more engagement than company pages, is what they found
in their research.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
So I would I that's actually shockingly low to me.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, I think it's higher, but it probably depends on
the niche. And I actually like underestimating versus overestimating because
there are some wild different stats. But in refined Labs
testing it was almost three times the impressions and five
times the engagement. I also would say just a quick
example would be if you look at the following that
Dave Gerhart has over Exit five as a community is
(06:39):
one thing, but like Exit five's company, they're not focused
as much on that page posting versus every member of
their small team posting. And you gain a level of
authenticity and trust when an individual is posting, and it
great gains affinity for the brand because their learnings are
happening within that brand, so you start to faces to
(07:00):
it and it just is a great flywheel for your content.
So any thoughts on that or other points you want
to bring up on this.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
I think one of the things that has helped us
is me coming alongside different people on our team that
are wanting to start producing content on LinkedIn and helping
them develop what is their content focus. So for me,
the line kind of the tagline that I came up
(07:28):
with for me was I help B to B content
marketers think like creators, So everything I post is through
that lens. Does this post help a B to B
content marketer think like a creator? It's very strategic for
our business obviously, but it also gives me a square
lane and I get comments all the time about how
(07:50):
how much people like that positioning and kind of bringing
creator world into B to B land and the intersection there,
So getting a lot of positive feedback from that. But
then it also just helps me as a creator. It's
so much easier to come up with ideas when you
know the lane that you're trying to swim in. With
(08:11):
our CEO, Jeremy, he's like kind of a people management savant,
Like that's his superpower is like accountability and management and
getting the most out of talent. And so because we
serve marketing leaders, those are our buyers. His tagline is
(08:31):
I help people leaders get the most out of their
creative talent. So that's what he does in our agency
full of a bunch of creatives, is he gets the
most out of our talent. And if by him positioning
his own content is helping the people leader who oversees
creative talent, which is typically a VP of marketing or
(08:52):
a CMO like somebody that buys from us. Makes a
lot of sense for the business, but it also gives
him a really narrow focus on what to create around
With Ben, he's gone away from this a little bit,
but one of the lines we came up with him
was I study the media diets of busy executives, And
so we were doing some original research with him and
he was literally asking all of these executives, what's our
(09:16):
favorite podcast, what newsletters do they consume, what YouTube channels
do they watch? What accounts are they following on social
And he's going to start curating a lot of that
data and talking about the media diets of these very
busy people. That's going to be interesting to a lot
of people. So again, it's about giving giving folks a
(09:36):
helping them come up with what is their zone going
to be. And it's way easier to be consistent, it's
way easier to come up with ideas. It's way easier
to bring true insights and value to the market when
you have a very specific focus for your content. So
I would say, if there's anything around this whole idea
(09:59):
of like empower your team to become strategic distribution channels.
It's this one thing like you gotta nail what the
actual content substance is. And as I was thinking about that,
it just it comes down to focus.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
And I think that leads to a question, based on
John's original reach out on LinkedIn, is just if someone's
semi reluctant, I think giving them a vision and giving
them a focus is a good start. I also think
giving them some sort of like, hey, let's try this
a roadmap. So we're going to do two or three
(10:36):
posts for X amount of time, and when we're not posting,
we're going to be commenting some sort of structure that
we can say like I'm checking the box to get
the momentum actually moving. And I will say in my
early days on LinkedIn, I was ghost following a lot
of influencers in the space, which was helpful. I wish
(10:56):
I would have commented more because in the same way
that when you start with a blank page and you're like,
what the heck do I type? If you're looking at
posts of other people's content in the space, not only
are you able to comment on that, but you're able
to get ideas for what people are posting for you
spend a lot less time staring and thinking about what
(11:17):
to post, and more time just actually interacting with the
community that is on LinkedIn. So finding the right people
to follow might be the first step for the reluctant
person on your team, going who would it be strategic
for you to follow that is posting their thoughts on LinkedIn,
not just your target list of people. Clearly people are
(11:39):
doing that on LinkedIn all the time, but you also
need to follow the people with the thoughts that are
getting traction so that there's a good mix in your
feed of what you're seeing day in and day out.
You use the example of Ben, who's sales leater on
our team. I'm just thinking about the types of content
that you would get somebody who's maybe reluctant as a
(11:59):
you know, hey, my job is in sales. I am
typically on the phones or I'm sending a bunch of emails.
I don't have the motion down yet of posting a
lot on LinkedIn, like is the sales leaders to you,
probably some of the most effective people to try to
build this motion around marketing is like the one that
is it feels like we're swimming in a pool of
(12:20):
marketing when we're on LinkedIn. Then there's sales, and then
there would be like the leadership team. Those would be
the roles that immediately come to my mind. Anything additionally there,
how do you expand that?
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, so founder, CEO for sure, sales I think makes
a lot of sense. Marketing, and then the executive on
your team who represents your buyer. So, if you're an
HR tech company, you should be doing everything in your
power as a marketing leader to get your CHRO posting content.
(12:51):
If you are a cybersecurity company selling to CISOs, you
should be doing everything you can to try to get
your CISO posting content because they are going to be
the most relatable to your to your market and and
people will trust a human way more than they will
(13:13):
trust a brand or a logo, and they'll they'll trust
them much quicker than they will a brand or a logo.
And so I think, I think you think you've got
the roles right. The one that I would add would
be whatever executive on your team or senior leader on
your team that most represents the persona that you sell into,
(13:33):
and I would be figuring out how to get them
talking about you know, ups and downs along their career journey,
you commonly held beliefs about the profession that they passionately
disagree with things that other people in that role should
start or stop doing tomorrow. Like, you know, we have
a POV discovery process. These are a lot of the
questions that we ask in that process. But yeah, what
(13:54):
are other executives on you know, what are their other
executive peers? What do they not understand about this particular
function or role, And so, yeah, that's that's where I
would be. That's where I would be focusing in terms
of trying to like assemble the team of folks who
(14:16):
are posting on LinkedIn regularly.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
I wanted to kind of wrap up with maybe three
ideas for teams that are listening to this, things that
you could just start doing regularly. One is a some
sort of creator huddle, so incentivize people to get in
the game by saying, Hey, we're going to just get
together and we're gonna huddle and ask questions about the
types of stuff we should be posting or the type
(14:40):
the types of stuff we're seeing that is resonating. Maybe
it's bringing a video or something that you watched from
content world, right, like the world that is YouTube and
just bring one of those videos over and be like, Hey,
why does this video resonate so much? Or why did
this post work so well? And starting those discussions dissecting
that stuff is going to be really great for the team,
(15:00):
especially those that are like semi reluctant because THEY'RENNA feel
they're learning something and that can get them thinking on
stuff they could be doing. The second one would be
capitalizing on unique strengths. So this would mean you don't
want me posting on LinkedIn written content all the time
because I feel much more there's an ease to video
for me, So why not have the strength of video
(15:24):
be what I focus on. While Paige, who's a great writer,
she handles all our newsletters, she should double down on
writing content. But having the knowing what your focus is
as far as medium is important and you can win
in a variety of ways. If you're just great at
making memes and posting funny content, it's not bad idea
to like bring that to LinkedIn and just focus on
(15:46):
something you're already good at. So I would also encourage
your team members to be to think about their individual
strengths and lean into those things to get them posting.
And then the third one is just write a list
of things that you've learned doing your job over the
last month, and you could turn each one of those
items into a post. So just having a running list
(16:07):
of the things that have been happening in business and
your department with client on client calls and all of
that stuff can become posts and is very relatable. So
just think through the last thirty days, the last sixty days.
You probably come up with a few things. Each one
of those becomes a post and that gets you rolling.
So those were three ideas on this.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
So there's been a few different things that I have
found over the years that are helpful have been helpful.
So trying to get everyone to have the same profile headline.
You obviously can't require this, but it is really helpful
as you're starting to get more and more people on
the team posting, if they all see, like next that
(16:48):
real estate your profile headline is very very valuable real
estate because in the feed it shows it's like your
profile photo, the name, and then that little blurb of
tech right next to your name, and depending on what
LinkedIn is doing with their UI at any given time,
like sometimes it shows a little bit more text than others,
depending on the view that you're in, but for the
(17:09):
most part, that tagline follows around the profile everywhere. The
other one is trying to get similar formatting for everyone's
profile photos. So for us, we had a purple ring
around all of our profile photos. So just visually it helps.
It's like, oh, man, every time I open LinkedIn, I
end up seeing someone from Sweetfish because you're there's this
(17:33):
visual queue that Okay, if it's a photo with a
little purple ring around it, it's probably somebody from Sweetfish.
So there's that association. And then the other thing I
would say is you can't force this. If people don't
want to do it, it's really hard to motivate them
to do it. And that's why I love your huddle idea.
I think the huddle idea will is this subtle way
(17:54):
of motivating people to do it without overtly, like like
directly saying like, hey, you should be a part of
this program. If you just let it be for folks
that want to do it, then naturally those people are
going to be excited about it. They're going to be
talking about it with their teams, with other people on
the team, like oh this, there's like something to this.
(18:16):
It's not this top down you know, the CEO is
making us do this or the cmos making us do this.
There's some peer almost like peer pressure in a good way.
And then to your point on writing a list of
things that you've learned just doing your job over the
last month. I think that's a great a great way
(18:36):
to get started and thinking about like original content that
you want to post. Another kind of another way to
do it that's closely related to that is looking at
what are popular stories that are relevant to the people
that you're wanting to talk to. And maybe it's some
(18:57):
maybe it's you know, you talk to design and something
just happened with Adobe, or Adobe just acquires Sigma or
something like. Take a big story that would be very interesting.
Just apply commentary to your LinkedIn content. So I just
saw my buddy Dale. He did a post yesterday on Salesforce.
They just launched their annual report. He took something from
(19:21):
that annual report and he pulled out one of the
insights around AI and sales or whatever, and he gave
his two cents on like, hey, Salesforce dropped this insight.
I think most people are going to take that this way,
and it's actually going to be to their detriment, So
do it this way instead, and that kind of stuff
(19:42):
ends up working really well because you're taking a concept
that is already probably being talked about quite a bit,
like Salesforce's annual report, because Salesforce is such a behemoth,
lots of people are going to be interested in that,
and so you're riding the wave of people's interest in
something bigger and much more like well known than yourself
or even your company and using it to create content well.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Closing out this episode, couple reminders. One, if you're listening
on Spotify or Apple podcasts, thank you. Also, we have
a lot of content on our YouTube channel. See the
recent series James actually had put together sharing some stories
of like the biggest marketing fails. Also, we have some
roundtable videos. Have had some really smart marketers down at
the Creator House in Orlando, so we have a number
(20:29):
of those videos up as well. They're all in playlists
so they're easy for you to check out. We'd love
for you to subscribe to the YouTube channel if you
haven't done that yet. Also want to say thank you
to John for posting the question and if you have
something you want us to talk about on B to
B growth. We'd love to hear from you, and potentially,
if not, just DM you back on LinkedIn because I
know James and I are very active over there. Maybe
(20:50):
we'd turn it into a full episode for more of
a discussion. Because this was a really easy prompt to say, yes, John,
that's a good topic. We should bring that back to
the podcast. So James do the honors. Close us out.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
We are out.
If there's anything around this whole idea of like empowering
your team to become strategic distribution channels, it's this one
thing you got to nail what the actual content substance is.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Today we're breaking down a LinkedIn strategy that you can
implement immediately that's going to gain massive momentum within your marketing,
going to get more eyeballs on your team's content, help
you build affinity for your brand, and ultimately close more deals.
We're going to share how to use individual LinkedIn profiles
as distribution channels. So really excited to dig into this today.
(00:40):
One of my favorite things about this show is the
conversation that it can start. We like when an episode
releases and people dm us on LinkedIn or share some
additional thoughts or maybe even disagree with us to keep
the conversation going. And James today, I wanted to bring
a conversation that started over on LinkedIn with John I
(01:00):
believe how you say. His last name is Win Delbo,
but he reached out to me and he asked a question.
He was actually going through our archive and was like, Hey,
is there any episodes that you've done in the past
for B to B growth? That speak at this, so
I'll just read his message that sets up today's topic.
So he says, Hi, Benji, thanks for the podcast series.
(01:20):
I was wondering if there was an episode on the topic,
how do you leverage the individual LinkedIn accounts of sales,
support and marketing staff. I work for CFD software development company.
This topic is the topic would be something like your
staff as a distribution channel. Really like this way of
(01:41):
thinking from John, So that's sort of the setup. He's like,
if there isn't a topic on this yet, would love
for you to just break it down and talk about
how this could work for different members of your team.
You know, some of them may be nervous about posting
on LinkedIn or unsure what to post about, and so James,
I want to bring that today, thinking through the LinkedIn
(02:04):
strategy for different team members. And we've gone through an
evolution at Sweetfish on how we think about this, what
we've done in the past versus now. So I thought
you'd be the best person to just speak to that
a little bit, how your thinking has evolved and how
we've tried different things over the years.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, So it's ebbed and flowed over the years. Sometimes
it's something that we're very focused on as a team,
and we're talking about on Slack all the time, and
we're celebrating all the time, and we're and then there
are other seasons in the business where it hasn't been
as much of our priority, it's taken more of a
back seat. But one thing has been consistent the entire time,
(02:44):
and we have always it's that we have always prioritized
content being distributed through the personal profiles of our people.
So we have never really put a heavy emphasis at
all on content distribution through a company page, be it
B to B growth, our media brand, or our corporate
(03:06):
brand in Sweetfish. So we've done this a few different ways.
We've done it where someone on our team, Emily, who
was on our team before she before she became a
mom and decided to stay at home, she would actually
help brainstorm and even ghost write content for different people
(03:27):
on our team. Now we're doing it where we're facilitating
more of like an internal community for group support, encouragement,
a place to share wins from your content, and we're
really focusing on the folks that really want to do
it as opposed to trying to loop people into it
that don't already have a leaning toward creating content where
(03:51):
we're leaning more into the folks that already want to
do it and just trying to create a group, a
support in a community internal to our team that inspires
and motivates the folks that already want to do it
to do it even more.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
The first to hear us here, we were really heavy
into like this idea of the Evangelist program. But even
now as we think of creators within the team what
they're posting about, and we'll speak to this a little
bit later too, but has always been more about hey
can what do you feel like you can facilitate? What
can you talk about and what do you do day
to day that would work on a platform like LinkedIn.
(04:30):
I think one thing that I've noticed is it clearly
consistency is key, but you also don't have to post
all of the time to see some measure of success
on LinkedIn. There is such a big gap between people
that look at LinkedIn as like a platform where they
go when they need a job, and a community that
(04:50):
is actually people who are desiring to get better at
work day after day, and you see these consistent posters.
So just even getting that muscle built can start by
just posting a couple times and seeing what resonates and
allowing that to happen. But it's always about showcasing personality
and expertise, and that's really hard to do on a
(05:13):
company page as compared to a personal page. When you
have personality and you have a post that resonates as
a person, you could turn that around and then actually
use that as potential content for a company page.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
And a great way to kind of overcome that initial
fear or inertia around posting, and something you can encourage
your people to do as you're starting to focus on
the personal profiles as distribution for your company is just
getting them to comment, like giving them a list of like, hey,
here are ten people in our space that tend to
(05:46):
post thoughtful content on a regular basis. Go follow these
people and leave content or leave comments where you think
you have something to say.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
I saw a pretty impressive stat from Refined Labs. They said,
and this just drives home your point. But it's personal
LinkedIn profiles drive almost three times more impressions and five
times more engagement than company pages, is what they found
in their research.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
So I would I that's actually shockingly low to me.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, I think it's higher, but it probably depends on
the niche. And I actually like underestimating versus overestimating because
there are some wild different stats. But in refined Labs
testing it was almost three times the impressions and five
times the engagement. I also would say just a quick
example would be if you look at the following that
Dave Gerhart has over Exit five as a community is
(06:39):
one thing, but like Exit five's company, they're not focused
as much on that page posting versus every member of
their small team posting. And you gain a level of
authenticity and trust when an individual is posting, and it
great gains affinity for the brand because their learnings are
happening within that brand, so you start to faces to
(07:00):
it and it just is a great flywheel for your content.
So any thoughts on that or other points you want
to bring up on this.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
I think one of the things that has helped us
is me coming alongside different people on our team that
are wanting to start producing content on LinkedIn and helping
them develop what is their content focus. So for me,
the line kind of the tagline that I came up
(07:28):
with for me was I help B to B content
marketers think like creators, So everything I post is through
that lens. Does this post help a B to B
content marketer think like a creator? It's very strategic for
our business obviously, but it also gives me a square
lane and I get comments all the time about how
(07:50):
how much people like that positioning and kind of bringing
creator world into B to B land and the intersection there,
So getting a lot of positive feedback from that. But
then it also just helps me as a creator. It's
so much easier to come up with ideas when you
know the lane that you're trying to swim in. With
(08:11):
our CEO, Jeremy, he's like kind of a people management savant,
Like that's his superpower is like accountability and management and
getting the most out of talent. And so because we
serve marketing leaders, those are our buyers. His tagline is
(08:31):
I help people leaders get the most out of their
creative talent. So that's what he does in our agency
full of a bunch of creatives, is he gets the
most out of our talent. And if by him positioning
his own content is helping the people leader who oversees
creative talent, which is typically a VP of marketing or
(08:52):
a CMO like somebody that buys from us. Makes a
lot of sense for the business, but it also gives
him a really narrow focus on what to create around
With Ben, he's gone away from this a little bit,
but one of the lines we came up with him
was I study the media diets of busy executives, And
so we were doing some original research with him and
he was literally asking all of these executives, what's our
(09:16):
favorite podcast, what newsletters do they consume, what YouTube channels
do they watch? What accounts are they following on social
And he's going to start curating a lot of that
data and talking about the media diets of these very
busy people. That's going to be interesting to a lot
of people. So again, it's about giving giving folks a
(09:36):
helping them come up with what is their zone going
to be. And it's way easier to be consistent, it's
way easier to come up with ideas. It's way easier
to bring true insights and value to the market when
you have a very specific focus for your content. So
I would say, if there's anything around this whole idea
(09:59):
of like empower your team to become strategic distribution channels.
It's this one thing like you gotta nail what the
actual content substance is. And as I was thinking about that,
it just it comes down to focus.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
And I think that leads to a question, based on
John's original reach out on LinkedIn, is just if someone's
semi reluctant, I think giving them a vision and giving
them a focus is a good start. I also think
giving them some sort of like, hey, let's try this
a roadmap. So we're going to do two or three
(10:36):
posts for X amount of time, and when we're not posting,
we're going to be commenting some sort of structure that
we can say like I'm checking the box to get
the momentum actually moving. And I will say in my
early days on LinkedIn, I was ghost following a lot
of influencers in the space, which was helpful. I wish
(10:56):
I would have commented more because in the same way
that when you start with a blank page and you're like,
what the heck do I type? If you're looking at
posts of other people's content in the space, not only
are you able to comment on that, but you're able
to get ideas for what people are posting for you
spend a lot less time staring and thinking about what
(11:17):
to post, and more time just actually interacting with the
community that is on LinkedIn. So finding the right people
to follow might be the first step for the reluctant
person on your team, going who would it be strategic
for you to follow that is posting their thoughts on LinkedIn,
not just your target list of people. Clearly people are
(11:39):
doing that on LinkedIn all the time, but you also
need to follow the people with the thoughts that are
getting traction so that there's a good mix in your
feed of what you're seeing day in and day out.
You use the example of Ben, who's sales leater on
our team. I'm just thinking about the types of content
that you would get somebody who's maybe reluctant as a
(11:59):
you know, hey, my job is in sales. I am
typically on the phones or I'm sending a bunch of emails.
I don't have the motion down yet of posting a
lot on LinkedIn, like is the sales leaders to you,
probably some of the most effective people to try to
build this motion around marketing is like the one that
is it feels like we're swimming in a pool of
(12:20):
marketing when we're on LinkedIn. Then there's sales, and then
there would be like the leadership team. Those would be
the roles that immediately come to my mind. Anything additionally there,
how do you expand that?
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, so founder, CEO for sure, sales I think makes
a lot of sense. Marketing, and then the executive on
your team who represents your buyer. So, if you're an
HR tech company, you should be doing everything in your
power as a marketing leader to get your CHRO posting content.
(12:51):
If you are a cybersecurity company selling to CISOs, you
should be doing everything you can to try to get
your CISO posting content because they are going to be
the most relatable to your to your market and and
people will trust a human way more than they will
(13:13):
trust a brand or a logo, and they'll they'll trust
them much quicker than they will a brand or a logo.
And so I think, I think you think you've got
the roles right. The one that I would add would
be whatever executive on your team or senior leader on
your team that most represents the persona that you sell into,
(13:33):
and I would be figuring out how to get them
talking about you know, ups and downs along their career journey,
you commonly held beliefs about the profession that they passionately
disagree with things that other people in that role should
start or stop doing tomorrow. Like, you know, we have
a POV discovery process. These are a lot of the
questions that we ask in that process. But yeah, what
(13:54):
are other executives on you know, what are their other
executive peers? What do they not understand about this particular
function or role, And so, yeah, that's that's where I
would be. That's where I would be focusing in terms
of trying to like assemble the team of folks who
(14:16):
are posting on LinkedIn regularly.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
I wanted to kind of wrap up with maybe three
ideas for teams that are listening to this, things that
you could just start doing regularly. One is a some
sort of creator huddle, so incentivize people to get in
the game by saying, Hey, we're going to just get
together and we're gonna huddle and ask questions about the
types of stuff we should be posting or the type
(14:40):
the types of stuff we're seeing that is resonating. Maybe
it's bringing a video or something that you watched from
content world, right, like the world that is YouTube and
just bring one of those videos over and be like, Hey,
why does this video resonate so much? Or why did
this post work so well? And starting those discussions dissecting
that stuff is going to be really great for the team,
(15:00):
especially those that are like semi reluctant because THEY'RENNA feel
they're learning something and that can get them thinking on
stuff they could be doing. The second one would be
capitalizing on unique strengths. So this would mean you don't
want me posting on LinkedIn written content all the time
because I feel much more there's an ease to video
for me, So why not have the strength of video
(15:24):
be what I focus on. While Paige, who's a great writer,
she handles all our newsletters, she should double down on
writing content. But having the knowing what your focus is
as far as medium is important and you can win
in a variety of ways. If you're just great at
making memes and posting funny content, it's not bad idea
to like bring that to LinkedIn and just focus on
(15:46):
something you're already good at. So I would also encourage
your team members to be to think about their individual
strengths and lean into those things to get them posting.
And then the third one is just write a list
of things that you've learned doing your job over the
last month, and you could turn each one of those
items into a post. So just having a running list
(16:07):
of the things that have been happening in business and
your department with client on client calls and all of
that stuff can become posts and is very relatable. So
just think through the last thirty days, the last sixty days.
You probably come up with a few things. Each one
of those becomes a post and that gets you rolling.
So those were three ideas on this.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
So there's been a few different things that I have
found over the years that are helpful have been helpful.
So trying to get everyone to have the same profile headline.
You obviously can't require this, but it is really helpful
as you're starting to get more and more people on
the team posting, if they all see, like next that
(16:48):
real estate your profile headline is very very valuable real
estate because in the feed it shows it's like your
profile photo, the name, and then that little blurb of
tech right next to your name, and depending on what
LinkedIn is doing with their UI at any given time,
like sometimes it shows a little bit more text than others,
depending on the view that you're in, but for the
(17:09):
most part, that tagline follows around the profile everywhere. The
other one is trying to get similar formatting for everyone's
profile photos. So for us, we had a purple ring
around all of our profile photos. So just visually it helps.
It's like, oh, man, every time I open LinkedIn, I
end up seeing someone from Sweetfish because you're there's this
(17:33):
visual queue that Okay, if it's a photo with a
little purple ring around it, it's probably somebody from Sweetfish.
So there's that association. And then the other thing I
would say is you can't force this. If people don't
want to do it, it's really hard to motivate them
to do it. And that's why I love your huddle idea.
I think the huddle idea will is this subtle way
(17:54):
of motivating people to do it without overtly, like like
directly saying like, hey, you should be a part of
this program. If you just let it be for folks
that want to do it, then naturally those people are
going to be excited about it. They're going to be
talking about it with their teams, with other people on
the team, like oh this, there's like something to this.
(18:16):
It's not this top down you know, the CEO is
making us do this or the cmos making us do this.
There's some peer almost like peer pressure in a good way.
And then to your point on writing a list of
things that you've learned just doing your job over the
last month. I think that's a great a great way
(18:36):
to get started and thinking about like original content that
you want to post. Another kind of another way to
do it that's closely related to that is looking at
what are popular stories that are relevant to the people
that you're wanting to talk to. And maybe it's some
(18:57):
maybe it's you know, you talk to design and something
just happened with Adobe, or Adobe just acquires Sigma or
something like. Take a big story that would be very interesting.
Just apply commentary to your LinkedIn content. So I just
saw my buddy Dale. He did a post yesterday on Salesforce.
They just launched their annual report. He took something from
(19:21):
that annual report and he pulled out one of the
insights around AI and sales or whatever, and he gave
his two cents on like, hey, Salesforce dropped this insight.
I think most people are going to take that this way,
and it's actually going to be to their detriment, So
do it this way instead, and that kind of stuff
(19:42):
ends up working really well because you're taking a concept
that is already probably being talked about quite a bit,
like Salesforce's annual report, because Salesforce is such a behemoth,
lots of people are going to be interested in that,
and so you're riding the wave of people's interest in
something bigger and much more like well known than yourself
or even your company and using it to create content well.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Closing out this episode, couple reminders. One, if you're listening
on Spotify or Apple podcasts, thank you. Also, we have
a lot of content on our YouTube channel. See the
recent series James actually had put together sharing some stories
of like the biggest marketing fails. Also, we have some
roundtable videos. Have had some really smart marketers down at
the Creator House in Orlando, so we have a number
(20:29):
of those videos up as well. They're all in playlists
so they're easy for you to check out. We'd love
for you to subscribe to the YouTube channel if you
haven't done that yet. Also want to say thank you
to John for posting the question and if you have
something you want us to talk about on B to
B growth. We'd love to hear from you, and potentially,
if not, just DM you back on LinkedIn because I
know James and I are very active over there. Maybe
(20:50):
we'd turn it into a full episode for more of
a discussion. Because this was a really easy prompt to say, yes, John,
that's a good topic. We should bring that back to
the podcast. So James do the honors. Close us out.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
We are out.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.