I appreciate everybody joining. Today we're, you know, this is our fifth, I believe, kind of round table conversation, really the focus today as we wanted to talk a little bit more about kind of our organic content and thought leadership and some of our point of view just as an organization, but also individually. And it's a topic that we see floating around LinkedIn quite a bit and one that I think the audience here listeners can definitely bring some value and help us learn as well. So as always, we want to keep these super conversational jump in, correct me if I'm wrong politely, but I would love to, you know, just learn point of views that are maybe different or some learnings that you guys have had and kind of act in the real world.
So with that, we have Megan. Everyone knows Megan. Everyone knows Ashley. I'm sure from LinkedIn as well.
I'm joining us and then Steph, I might pull her in for a question here or there. She's really the content queen behind the scenes for refine labs, like really building our podcast strategy, organic strategies. So lots of good nuggets that I'm sure she'll chime in with, but with that, anything else Megan or Ashley before we kick it off? Now let's go.
Where do you want to start? Cool. So we kind of in order to just, before I bounce around too much, we've kind of broken down to three primary focus areas. So I think we should kick it off with just this idea of building a content strategy around a point of view.
And then I want to talk a little bit about thought leadership and how to leverage that to build trust and then we'll close around strategic narrative. I know you have a pretty strong opinion on strategic narratives, Megan, you've been helping a lot of companies talk through that. So those are kind of the three points I want to anchor on. So I think we should just kick it off with really talking about a unique point of view when it comes to content creation.
I think we've all seen just the BS that can float around on LinkedIn or people's, you know, points of view that don't necessarily, I guess they're half big thought. So there's no credibility to them. It doesn't feel unique. It just feels kind of regurgitated chat to be T-promps.
So I love actually what have you kind of seen in your world working with clients too when it comes to this need for a unique point of view for content? Yeah, I think this is a huge importance to have before you build out content because you can talk about anything but the difference in marketing is being different. I feel like differentiation is key to standing out in the sea of noise that's just getting louder by the second. So making sure that you have a very strong opinion and that it's well known across the company through every single department team, individual, from a company, C&C, or corporate.
And then you can have a likes from there. You can call them like, you have our content pillars. We're going back multiple years here. You can have content pillars that support this, you know, opinion.
It could be an opinion on the market or how to do something or a lot of times it's where, you know, while you built the company in the first place, you wanted to challenge a satisfying opinion about that. So I think first having that as your anchor is step number one and then, you know, going down the different content pillars to support it and the different ways that you talk about it is step two and then distribution will go from there as well. But yeah, I think it's critical. Like if you're looking at your organic content and bot leadership program and you don't have that strong, you know, opinion or point of view, start there first.
Yeah, and I think Ashley's spot on and just to build on that, you know, a lot of people, when I have this conversation, the question becomes, well, if there isn't a differentiated or clear POV that the company has and I'm the marketer, what is my role in helping guide the organization to really figure that out? And I think one of the things that I always tell people to anchor on is who is your customer and who are you talking to as a marketer, you're going to have a lot of instincts around what things that are interesting to you and some marketers, you know, market to marketers, which is fun, but a lot of times we're selling into maybe finance or a technical role. And so different types of people are going to be interested not only in different types of content, but have interest in understanding or absorbing that content from different lenses and points of view. So it really also goes back to who are you trying to communicate with and what do they care about?
And, you know, what is their, you know, what is sort of the status quo within their world and what would be a new and interesting and thought provoking idea or point of view to introduce to them? And so I think the that piece is so important in trying to cultivate that and maybe we can come back this a little bit later with kind of the strategic narrative framework and breaking that down further, but also we're getting really clear on like your audience and who you're building content for is so important. Yeah, I think what kind of a hack that I've used with working just clients and some of my other roles is challenging instead of saying like, what do I want to say or what do we want to say as an organization? It's like, what the hell does our audience care about?
What are they struggling with and what are those points? Because if you just start sit around a room of executives who believe this is what our product or solution does and this is a POV that's going to resonate, you're going to miss the mark. But if you challenge and say like, these are the common objections that I hear from clients or during the sales cycle, like it's a feedback loop, then that's where you can kind of shift that narrative. But I think it's okay to also, you know, you can have multiple point of use within an organization as long as they thread to the same point, like the same thought process.
So I hate the idea that everybody sounds the same in an organization, it's an echo chamber. Like you need that unique kind of approach to how they are addressing that problem or pain point, but it still needs to default back to actually saying, okay, this is what the problem is for the audience or this is a solution we're providing for them. I get it and maybe I'm interpreting this a little bit differently because it's a unique approach to how somebody's articulating that. So be unique, I think is the biggest thing that I'd walk away from that sometimes where there's no self-identity, it's hard to distinguish you saying one.
Yeah, it's so true. And I think I want to continue to talk about like crafting the POV and the strategic narrative. And I think we'll get to that a little bit later in the conversation. But Stephanie, I think an area of expertise I'd love for you to expand upon is once you get clear on your POV, your narrative, what you want to create, how do you think about, for example, even just running the Refine Labs content strategy, right?
There's a lot of components to that. So I think let's come back to kind of thinking through narrative and POV development. And I'd love to have you dive in and kind of kick us off on a more tactical conversation on how to think about content production and distribution overall. Yeah, I think with it's so different from a company page to a personal page, but there are some really, really common structural things that you can take from one to the other.
And the biggest thing that I can recommend is predictability in organization, having a set type of post that you're posting each day. And that's mostly for a company page because I think that that predictability on Monday, we're going to post a clip from a recent episode. On Tuesday, we're going to post a guest card on Wednesday. We're going to post this.
That really helps plan out the content for months in advance or weeks in advance when you have the bandwidth to do that. I think that when we're looking at our personal thought leadership strategy, it's harder to do that because we're worried that our audiences will get tired of the same types of posts. But I think you can still take that forward in your personal strategy as well because if you're giving yourself a really structured groundwork, on Monday, I'm going to post about this AI hack that I just learned or on Tuesday, I'm going to post on something that helps me organize myself. It gives you a place to start rather than sitting at that blank start a post screen forever and ever and ever.
You get a little bit of direction and organization for yourself. That's awesome. I think pulling back a little bit more into how we even think about it here at Refine Labs or how we talk about how our customers can architect this strategy, actually use the term pillars which we use a lot here. Beyond the actual content theme and topic pillars, it's also important to understand the mediums with which you're going to create content.
You can have video content. You can have wonderfully visually designed assets that communicate your point of view. Obviously, you can have blogs and text-based content as well. What we find is having a mix is really important.
It can feel really overwhelming to think about how am I going to create all these different types of content pieces and all of these different mediums and how do I stay organized. The playbook that we've been using here that works really well is having weekly and monthly scheduled opportunities to get really great content on video. It can really be lots of different folks within your organization or even subject matter experts outside of your organization that are consistent and communicating a variety of things that can be mapped back to your unique point of view and strategic narrative. Getting a lot of long-form video allows you to post that in long-form video places, podcast YouTube.
You can get short-form video from that. Thinking then how you can take some of the most salient points and key messages and create really great visual assets that you can distribute through similar channels. Obviously, we touched on thought leadership and we can talk a little bit more about that, especially Evan and Ashley, two of our best Refine Labs thought leaders and examples of that. That's where you can leverage text and other formats to communicate.
There are two components to this. It's like, what are we trying to say and how are we going to say it and what are all the different mediums we can create? Yeah, I think you're describing a flywheel and what we did this quarter was for Refine Labs was reset on our execution because we were trying to do too many little things that had no consistency. That was our own fault.
We were just in this idea of try, try, try, and you want to do that, but we didn't have the muscle or the foundation to have consistency on our channels that we knew were the strongest. To make a point, we record a video that plugs into our newsletter, our shorts on YouTube, our YouTube clip. It also becomes our podcast episode release. Right there, one recording for one hour becomes almost two to three weeks of content for Refine Labs.
If you just think about those milestones that you want to implement, those are important keys. Let's record a video and let's get that muscle built a couple weeks in a row and then let's think about video. How do we clip that? Totally fair point making on the execution and tactical standpoint.
One other thing I would add is we talk about unique point of view with the content strategy. Another area that I would highly recommend emphasizing with this is also making sure that you have a well-documented brand voice as well to make it consistent. It should have been flow a little bit depending on the medium that you're going after. You should adapt to the medium, but it should have a consistent flow.
You can have a unique point of view on that brand voice as well. Maybe your product isn't vastly different than others in the space, but how you talk about it, how you show up, how you communicate can be the difference as well. Are you very conversational and casual or you more buttoned up, things like that? I think this is something super critical that I see you break down when you're looking at scale of content delivery as well.
Just like another aspect I've put on there is unique point of view of course on the content, but also unique point of view also on the brand voice too. That's such a good point. I think another critical part of a content strategy is how do you help your audience? How do you help your prospects and your customers?
When you're thinking about what you're going to talk about, what you're going to write about, where are there opportunities for you to provide really specific resources, guidance, direction, how tos, ways to think about developing strategies that make people want to consume your content because there's direct relevance to their ability to do their job well. If they can take some of your tips and strategies and implement them on their own, if you are known for bringing new ideas to the table that are inspirational and thought-provoking that allow them to be more creative and innovative in their own role, people learn through social media content. That education lens is really crucial. Not only will that attract your audience to consume your content, but it simultaneously positions you as an incredible expert in the space.
You build this reputation that you know a thing or two about B2B marketing. You're willing to give away a lot of your tactics and strategies to people that want to consume your content. I think there's a lot of criticism on LinkedIn that a lot of content can be very superficial and fluffy and high level and not really mean or say much of anything. A really great way, especially if you're in this process of still trying to figure out how to maybe cultivate a stronger differentiated point of view, leaning into being helpful and educational is a really good approach that almost any content team can do relative to their space and their product and their audience.
Also know what the hell you're talking about. I mean, yeah, that's sort of that hidden assumption that it must be very deep in a time. But you bring up a good point and I talk to marketers for example that maybe sell into cybersecurity professionals. And maybe they're like, I am a marketer.
I'm not, maybe I don't have that subject matter expertise. How do I create content that's going to resonate with that audience if I don't have credible experience? And that's where that doesn't always have to be the case. That said, if that is a gap, then it's your responsibility to find that subject matter expert.
Now, maybe that's someone that's internal with the company. Maybe it's a customer, maybe it's an external partner or stakeholder that wants to collaborate with you for evangelism or content production or communicating a POV. But in the event that you don't have that expertise internally or you don't have it within yourself, you have to partner with someone that has it because otherwise the content that you create is very unlikely to be effective or achieve the goals that you want. And it's still totally possible to do it well.
If you're not the actual subject matter expert for whatever it is, you just have to be good about finding them and collaborating with them and pulling that information out of them and then packaging up and producing content in that way. Yeah, I think that's a good one. I was going to say, I think that's a really important point on the opposite as well, is that not every subject matter expert is going to be comfortable on a video format or in a podcast format. So finding someone, this is where I think Evan and I have been co-hosting the second growth show this year is where we're really strong, is that Evan is an expert in pretty much every subject.
Every subject there is. And I feel like my expertise is in hosting, getting information out of other people, even if I don't have that information myself. And so teaming up with someone who is more comfortable on camera to get you out of your shell a little bit. And then I can be there to yell a little and smile at the camera.
There's an energy that you want to give your audiences to make them feel comfortable watching and also to get that information out. So use all of the resources that you have on your team to find a balance of what works for you. It doesn't have to just be you if you're uncomfortable in one place or the other. Yeah.
And the cool points to Megan and Stephanie both, when you're not marketing to marketers and you do have these other technical audience, the way I like to think about is almost like you put on a journalist hat, like you're the journalist and you are sourcing the stories, you're interviewing the stories, if you almost put that mentality on, it also makes it a little bit easier to navigate as well. Like how would you go about sourcing the story interviewing, making sure it's the right structure and just letting the subject matter actually just like dumb, all the really smart intelligent things for you to then repackage up internally as well. So that helps us like a little mentorship. Yeah.
What do they say? Data makes incredible stories make it memorable. So if you're able to package that up and deliver that, it's a perfect. I think all of that kind of encompasses this idea of trust and authority, right?
So as we talked about the second pillar of this discussion, they're just going to play on that a little bit more is the importance of that consistency in your content production, your content distribution to build that trust, to establish yourself as a credible source for people to learn and build their knowledge base from. I think that that's one area that I see a lot of companies not fail, but just deprioritize is that consistent muscle. So they'll just post about once a quarter on a launch or a specific funding round or some sort of news thing that is interesting to the business, but isn't about the problem. And that doesn't necessarily build that trust with the audience.
So I think from like the thought leader or content creator perspective, whether that's your company page or an individual point of view, it's just like show consistently if that's every Monday, great, it doesn't need to be every day. If that's every Tuesday, okay, awesome. But just make sure that you hold yourself accountable and try. Otherwise you're going to just say it doesn't work in three months because you were showing up and people didn't know when to sign on to look for this or what to look for.
So that's my biggest like, what take away the first couple of years, supposed to know LinkedIn was so uncomfortable. I did not like any of you, I still don't necessarily love it at times, but you build that muscle and it becomes much easier. And when you start to feel confident in what you're saying because you're challenged by other people's points of view or you're challenging your own that helps so much. So I think trust is just something that a lot of us maybe don't think about when we just are posting to post.
Yeah, and probably one of the ultimate thought leaders here at Refine Labs was our founder, Chris Walker. And when you look back at his content strategy, what I tell people is Chris actually says the same five to 10 things. That's it. He says the same five to 10 things, but he is so good at saying them over and over and over again in different and interesting and thought-provoking ways.
And so a lot of people will say, well, like, oh my God, how can I even post every day? I can't think of something new to post about every day. It's like, that's not actually the goal. Like you should only really have five to 10 key messages that you want to communicate.
Obviously, there's a lot of detail and nuance and fun stuff, you know, under there. But really that the hard part is, you know, what is that narrative? What are those five to 10 like unique differentiated points of view that you're communicating? And then how do you just repackage up and resay and restate those same things in different ways or bring different stories to illustrate the same point over and over and over again?
And so when you think about it that way, it can become less daunting. And it also just reemphasizes the importance of taking the necessary time to think really strategically about what you're actually trying to communicate. Even this topic today, you know, we've been talking about this topic for five years here at Refine Labs, but it never gets old because I continue to meet people every day. They're still trying to figure this out.
They haven't done this before. They haven't built it internally for themselves. Many, many companies still haven't really wrapped their heads around an effective content strategy. So season marketers that have been working with us for a long time, you're like, oh, this is the basics we heard about this, you know, from you guys, you know, a few years ago, it's like totally, but a lot of people are still getting value from it.
And so that's the other important thing to remember. If you're starting to feel like, oh my God, I've just been hearing the same thing, you know, say my, or like I'm saying the same thing over and over and over again, that means you're doing it correctly. Like that's sort of the whole point, the whole point of it. I like to use the rule of three to one, right?
So for every post that teach posts on the challenges that believe to or come at it from a different lens. So it's still the same content around the same idea, but challenge your thought a little bit or take somebody's perspective from some of the previous comments and turn that into a new post because that sparks creativity, but it also allows you to think on your feet quickly about the topic. And it does create a more of a robust piece, like a narrative, so to speak, around a certain idea or conversation. So it isn't consistent all the time.
Yeah. Something to piggyback off of that as well that Megan touched on earlier is that people learn in different ways. People absorb content in very different ways. So you might post something in just long form text.
You might say exactly the same thing in a video the next day. You might put it on an infographic the day after that and you'll have a very different audience receiving each of those in very different ways. And it might, even if it's the same foundational information, it might read completely differently to someone who's scrolling by just because people learn and absorb information the way that they've been used to or the way that you give them a template and all of a sudden it unlocks rather than just relying on the same format, use the same information and put it in different formats. Do you think that the overthink content sometimes do like thought leadership and like how perfect it is and how polished it is?
And I think that's one area that like there's almost a bit of a kind of analysis paralysis when it comes to the formality of what you're posting. And I think that for me a lot of the stuff that I trust and the credibility that I built with just different audiences is because they come raw real and they aren't trying to please everyone. So I really, really like it kind of ties back to that point of view, but it's okay to challenge the norm a little bit. And it doesn't have to be a perfectly edited video.
The bloopers are often the better ones, right? Raw takes from your phone or so much better. It just feels like it's like an authentic conversation taking place. And that's kind of why we built this around just like a natural narrative that we could bring audience members in and just check it out because that feels real and you have to feel real to be trusted.
And same with the brand, same with the brand narrative. All of that has to feel authentic and human. Otherwise, there's just no run or run way to that. I mean, I could not agree anymore.
Like we definitely overthink it actually sounds really cool to talk on a what they call the millennial brands and it was like the death of millennial brands. So if you think of like 2014, you're probably about 2020. Think about like the Instagram feed and like brands that would have the perfect, the perfect what is it, the legs or whatever, like the brand. It was like beautifully done and you would go to the feed and it was perfectly curated.
And it was this analysis on how basically that's over now. Like we see kind of through it, it feels like inauthentic because who has time to do that personally? Nobody. So like especially now like with Gen Z too, we're creating more of like the lo-fi authentic content that feels like almost you can see the human hand and if that makes sense.
And so I think that definitely translates. We're seeing it more on the B2C side, but like most things B2C starts the trailblades and the B2B follows afterwards, but we're seeing that in B2C. And I think it's definitely carrying over to B2B where you know, just starting off, like you said, like you're taking a walk and you're doing a hot take or whatever it may be and you're posting it and it feels like raw. It feels like you're on that walk with somebody.
I think that just makes it more relatable because at the end of the day content should be about relationship as well. Like can you feel like you're talking to someone versus being talked at? So definitely like if you feel this need to have it overly polished. I mean, I have a journalism degree so it kills me sometimes when I have grammar mistakes, but I think that makes it even more relatable too.
I mean, people will look through it. You know, if you have a spelling mistake, whatever, if it's not for perfect period. So if that helps, you know, if anyone feels intimidated by it too, you know, that, you know, the lo-fi is actually doing a lot better performance wise. Yeah, it's so true.
And Evan, I haven't told you this. I did a sales call yesterday and I always ask, how did you hear about us? You know what prompted you to reach out? He was like, Evan's not an MQL post.
Like that one post stuck in my head and that was probably one of your more like casual off the cuff posts around, you know, a content download is not an MQL. You have a list of things, you know, or, you know, kind of going through that definition. And it was interesting. One thing he asked on the call, which I love Evan and Evan, Evan, you and Ashley to speak a little about, especially if you're experiencing a refine labs was he was like, wow, I really noticed that you have lots of team members at refine labs all posting different types of content on LinkedIn.
I think I figured out how you do that. You like, you pay them to do that, right? And I was like, uh, like, no, actually we do not pay people to post on LinkedIn, pay them for their other regular jobs. And he's like, well, how come everybody does that?
And it was a really interesting question. So, you know, Evan and Ashley, you guys have, you know, spent years building a strong brand for both of yourselves individually. Obviously, there's a lot of benefit that refine labs gets as a result, which is awesome. But I think it'd be awesome for people to hear from your perspective.
Like why do you make this a priority? And what I was trying to explain to him too, I'm like, it's kind of a win, win, win. It's like good for the individual. It's good for the company.
You know, if the only benefit was for the company, I don't, you know, why should they do it? Right? But there's a lot of personal benefits as well. But I'd love to hear from your perspective.
Cause I think I ended up riffing on this a little bit. It comes up a lot. You want to take it Ashley to start? Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, it's a good question. It's a question that I would get asked from clients a lot too. Like how do you get people going?
Like what's the incentives, whatever? And I think that we're finding lots of a really phenomenal job in a couple of different areas. First is like leading with leadership doing it. So Megan is posting, Chris was posting from seeing, you know, other VPs posting.
It was kind of like leading by example. I think that's a really good, just first way to do it. You know, a lot of people want to follow with their leadership team is doing because we, you know, you want to also show up how they're showing up too. So I think leading by example was one critical piece that refine labs continues to do extremely well.
The second one is just, you know, we also mentioned it, you know, in performance reviews of like, Hey, like what's your thought leadership? Do you want to do this? It's not an knock if you don't want to do it. But if you do want to do it, it is definitely a little bit of like a bonus as well.
Like we see you doing it. We're very, you know, thankful that you're doing it. Etc. I think that was another thing for me, like going back, you know, I've been posting probably consistently for about four years now.
And that was definitely something that also stuck with me when I was in the trenches of beginning, you know, to post is those two pieces. And then also supporting one another. I've also found, you know, there's definitely like a win, win, and it obviously benefits the company really well. You get this nice halo effect.
I also would speak to a lot of clients where, hey, we're not actually marketing to marketers. So why should I post as the marketer or why should X, you know, the partner post if we're not marketing to that persona. And I think it's really important to also know that there's multiple departments that can influence the decision of your product. It might be someone like maybe you're selling to finance, but someone and HR is like, Hey, I've heard of this brand over and over because they're, you know, head of HR is constantly posting.
Have you considered this product or whatever it may be? So there's a little bit of that that could happen. Also recruiting, you know, when it comes time to recruit the best talent possible within whatever department that you're leading, I think showing up on LinkedIn is a critical way to do that. You're building that network of, you know, other hungry individuals in there.
So I think that's another win that you can have for it. And then personal development, of course, you know, it opens up your pool for your future. But I also think that there's another part of this personal development. And it's the act of having to synthesize your thoughts and your ideas and your findings in a way that actually makes you understand it better.
What do they say? Like you learn by doing and then by teaching and then I can't remember the other one. But I think the teaching part here is critical. And it's, it's definitely forced me.
I sit down and I have this probably a bad habit, but for the longest time, I would open LinkedIn at like six or seven AM when I was having my coffee and read the post right there. Nothing more. It was just I'm opening LinkedIn, whatever's on my mind. I need to like work through it and we're going to do it that way.
I've since changed, but it makes you think through your thoughts. It's like a really great, almost like journaling exercise in a different way. So I think that's also another huge, you know, personal win. But then of course, the company wins as a result.
You continue to hear stories of the amount of how did you hear about us contributing to either leadership or LinkedIn or podcast or whatever it is by executing this, you know, thought leadership continues to be on the rise. And I think we're going to see it continue to take off, you know, with the advancement of AI coming into the chat as well. How do you get out there and make sure you're memorable? So yeah, when, when, when, when, when in multiple different areas.
Totally. I mean, you covered most of the basis for me. It was two, two parts, right? So I stepped away from Amazon to take a little life break when I was overseeing customer acquisition at AWS and then COVID hit.
So it was like, holy shit, what's next? Right? Everything was changing. So I was forced to kind of immerse myself in this world of LinkedIn that I'd never used before and started to get curious and find these individuals that I was learning from.
And I was like, wait, that just kind of unlocked this for me. Oh, that was interesting. And that's what led me ultimately here. But through that time, I realized the value that even just a few texts and a post can have and changing my trajectory or my career path.
And so that encouraged me and motivated me to like, how can I do this a little bit? How can I get more comfortable being uncomfortable? So I mean, LinkedIn or making came in through a DM on LinkedIn. And that's how we ended up here.
If we think like really look back four years. So not only is it powerful tool for you to just educate yourself, but also it was a tool for me to learn and appreciate what I was doing. So if I couldn't write about it, I didn't know it strong enough to want to talk about it. So I challenged myself to think deep to pull to have conversations internally.
So I'd use it to ask this point as a learning lesson. Like, I want to learn this topic. I'm not familiar with it. I'm going to make a post about this.
So I need to dig in and learn. And who can I talk to? What can I aggregate? How can I translate that to the market?
And then what's the response? So also the brand aspect, right? So shit at the fan ever, there's an opportunity of having a big network. I think that that's so powerful.
I also think it's okay. I don't have to talk about your company and what your company does, right? I'm very big on mentorship and coaching as well as demand generation marketing. And I don't let that deter how I post on LinkedIn.
I post what's incredible to me and my own beliefs and value. And I think that that's just any company should value that. And if you have a company telling you that you shouldn't be posting about a specific topic, you might want to reevaluate your long term plans. Yeah.
And I think Aaron, you brought up in the comment just around leaders posting is a great way to recruit top talent. Evan was one of my cold LinkedIn DMs and trying to find great DDGs before we had built things up. And I'm not sure if I'm in hardcore looking for the best demand marketers, but I got him. I got him.
He's still here. But over time, I did a lot of that initially to recruit great talent early on. But then as Chris and I were continuing to post through our personal profiles, we got to the point where we could just tell LinkedIn, hey, we're looking for this role. And then we started to get way more inbound.
And so it really changed the game for us in terms of talent acquisition, obviously the same is true for customer acquisition as well. I'll say to you from a leadership perspective, it's a great way to just have another forum to communicate things. And your team is looking at what you're posting on LinkedIn the same way that they're going to listen to what you say in an all hands. And so it's just a great way to reinforce your company story, your positioning, your point of view.
Similar to Evan, I have a lot of personal passions in terms of personal development or leadership development. And sometimes I go outside of the B2B marketing box to post things that I care about and kind of reinforcing what Ashley brought up about authenticity. People like that stuff. And it's a good way to mix things up.
And honestly, I'm not much of a social media person personally. So for me, I have to really want to say something to post. And so I think being authentic to yourself while also finding ways to incorporate the things about your company that you're excited about in terms of the story and the impact that you have, you have to find that sweet spot. It doesn't land as well when it's forced.
And so part of it is definitely figuring out how to align yourself with content that lights you up. And that absolutely comes through in your writing and how you show up on these platforms. I want to give a reframe to posting on LinkedIn because it is terrifying. And this is something that's helped me start to get you to posting a little bit more is switching it from an external validation mode and more of an internal celebration.
Evan, you touched on this a little bit. Every time you post on LinkedIn, that is a celebration of something that you are proud of knowing and that you are proud of being able to share. And feeling that internal pride rather than counting likes or impressions or engagement, I think really helps when you're getting started to just get started. Because even if it's your dad who likes it and that's it, that's okay.
And you'll start to build your network. But if you're pulling it more as an internal celebration of your knowledge and your expertise, rather than hoping for likes, then it's going to be a more sustainable strategy for you. Yeah. And I tell people, it actually the volume of followers and the volume of likes or engagement is not as important as the quality.
And so you can write a lot of content that a lot of people will respond to, but it's not going to help move your business objectives forward. And so what actually matters is the right people are connected to you so they'll see your content or the right people are engaging with it. And then you have to know with all social media platforms, 90% of the people that are looking at your content are never going to like it or engage with it. But that doesn't mean it's not being seen.
And so, you know, it's not about optimizing for engagement and follower count and virality. It's really about how do I make sure that I'm cultivating an organic following of people that are the people that I want to be interacting with and how am I making sure that the content is really valuable. There's a lot of people that post on LinkedIn that, you know, objectively don't have good stats in those regards, but are making money. And so you have to divorce them.
They're two totally different things on that platform. We just kind of ran away with that one. Oh, actually. You might have dropped something super quick on a tactical standpoint.
Oh, yes. Let's do it. So I think a lot of people know the importance of posting on LinkedIn, but the act of actually getting into the rhythm in the post, I feel like it's the most daunting part. I've been posting, you know, for four years at this point, I took about four months off when I took up a rental leave and I came back and I had the daunting, like, canvas of like, oh my gosh, how do I do this?
And my empathy rose through the roof of others who may be facing this. And so I've had to rethink this. And I'm just going to drop something a little tactical if you're also in the same boat of like, what do I post about? How do I post about it?
Like, how many different ways can I do this? And I'm going to bring AI into the chat. But I think AI could be a really good sparring partner to get you to think differently. So I've done different prompts of like, give it a role.
So I'll say like, role, you are X, whatever audience that you're trying to do. You're following post on LinkedIn, you're trying to solve these problems, whatever it may be, task, right on LinkedIn posts that's very engaging, helpful, it's both action. I have like, it's no bullshit. It's something you would, you know, the conversation is something you'd have over coffee.
It's, you know, relatable, whatever it may be. And then have a task dumped. And so it might be, these are the things that I want to talk about, whatever it is. And then I feel like the key one is like, also telling it, I want you to be my brainstorming partner of ways that I could go about doing this or how I can think about do this.
And by our question, by question, just give me one question at a time, interview me to see where my topics or where my expertise lies and where that I could have my content pillars at. And then it'll spit out a brainstorm with you. So if you feel like you're really stuck or you don't know where to go, I would not advise having AI write the post, but I think it's a really good brainstorming partner to help generate or get this spark going again. It was really helpful for me when I was staring at that blank canvas.
So if you're staring at something similar and you're feeling that as well, it was something that was helpful for me and maybe try it out for yourself as well. I love that. I love that, Ashley. I want to try that now.
It's super fun. It's great to have great AI use. I'm always on the lookout for the non-obvious AI use. Instead of AI do this for me.
It's like, how do we actually have it enhance what we're doing versus spit something out that is not even as good as what we would do ourselves? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
I think it's, I want to be mindful of time. We could talk for hours. I do think it will probably come back to this in a future conversation around Table, around the street, teach narrative. But I do think it's super important for us to touch on.
So I don't know if, Megan, you kind of want to kick it off because this is a conversation you've had with a lot of businesses and organizations and just some of your findings. But let's just kind of tee it off there and then maybe probably wrap in about 10 minutes or so. Yeah, sounds good. So I'll kind of break down the strategic narrative framework.
I think before I get into it though, like why is this important? So, you know, especially in terms of the work that we're doing with our clients, we're helping them deploy their digital dollars and developing campaigns, ultimately to drive awareness with their target market. And so one of the big things that we need to work on and every company needs to work on is what are the things that we are going to communicate, right? So whether that's in a, you know, organic thought leadership post on LinkedIn by your CEO, whether that's through ad campaigns that you're going to run on LinkedIn or a meta or Reddit, you need to get clear on what it is.
What we find when we start working with a lot of customers, if they're not seeing the performance that they're hoping for with their paid social or demand creation campaigns, is that we're not really communicating anything that's landing with their audience. And so the quality of that message and that strategic narrative is really important. So I love this framework. We didn't come up with it.
This is Andy Raskins, strategic narrative framework. You can look it up. He's famous for helping develop the pitch deck for Zora. And he helps lots of companies basically use this framework to rewrite their company.
Narrative, their strategic narrative, their company story. So there's five elements to his framework. It's interesting too, because the first three elements of the framework have nothing to do with the company. And that's intentional because it's intended to relate to your audience totally independent from whatever you're trying to sell them.
And then the last two elements of the narrative are positioning your particular product or solution within their context to show that it can help them with something that's important. And I think that approach is critical because you're basically starting with your customer and their context first and then applying how your product or solution can help augment, solve, support, whatever it is. So the first component of the strategic narrative is naming a big relevant change in the world. So the goal here is to zoom out a little bit and understand, you know, again, based on your audience, your target customer and what they care about what has been happening in their world, what is changing, what is evolving and how are they being impacted by that.
So being able to identify that and describe that, the goal here is to get your audience to demonstrate to your audience that you understand their context and where they're coming from. The second element of the strategic narrative is there will be winners and losers. So as you continue to explain this big relevant change in the world, you basically want to codify for the winners, they're going to need to do A, B and C. However, if you don't do A, B and C, then you're going to end up at X, Y and Z.
And that's going to be, you know, in a losing place, a painful place, a difficult place, a place you don't want to be. So basically contrasting what is required to win and what will happen if they lose. The third element of the strategic narrative is tease the promised land. So this is intended to paint like kind of the future utopia.
This big relevant change has happened. The winners do this. The losers do this. If you want to get to the promised land and have all the benefits and success, then this is what that looks like, right?
So your audience is saying, I want the promised land, right? How do I get to the promised land? That's what I want. This big change is happening.
I understand now how to win, how to lose, and I see what that ideal end state is. And it's like, oh man, I want to get there. Now, so again, those are the first three sections you're kind of painting the context. This is where we begin to introduce your actual company product and solutions.
So section four is all that introducing what he calls your magic gifts. And really what this is, is what is your product? What does it do? What does it offer?
What problems does it solve? What are your value propositions? This is where you can get really specific and communicating your differentiated value that your product or solution provides to your customer. And then the last one is around offering evidence.
So this is effectively how do you show up as a credible expert? You've gained your audience's trust and commiseration by demonstrating you understand where they're coming from and where they want to go. You've explained how your product or solution can help them get there. Now you need to back up those claims with evidence.
And so typically those will come in the form of case studies, customer testimonials, actual use cases that your customer will believe and that will give credibility to your entire story. So those five elements make up what's called a strategic narrative. And working with your CEO, your CMO, your CRO, kind of getting all of the leadership team in the room to really help flesh out your narrative using this framework can be really, really productive. And then effectively it just becomes the basis for your company positioning and messaging.
And it becomes a company artifact that should be used to define your website messaging, what your sales team says, your digital marketing assets, your organic thought leadership, all your content development. And that's how you not only develop that differentiated point of view, but then use that process to get the alignment that you need to the whole company is saying the same thing. So I could go on and on, but I'll stop talking now. I mean, keep going.
No, no, no, no, it's interesting to, I think there's so many pieces of this though, right? That are so hard to like absorb and like think about how to apply that more broadly. And that's where to your point of like the framework allows you to just kind of start bolating out these ideas and working with sneeze internally to help make sure that you have like a broad point of view across the organization that kind of pulls it together. I think that that's one thing I see one individual or company that'll create the strategic narrative, but it doesn't take into account other people's point of view or other people's perspectives of how to interpret it.
So that's one piece that I would just say is like it's so crucial for you to make sure that there's an alternative point of view as you build this, even if your company is small. Absolutely. I know we're wrapping up soon. I know there's been a lot of talk in the chat, which I love.
I don't know if you have any questions or a question from the audience before we wrap up for today. We'll definitely, we'll do some more on, I think, the strategic narrative that could maybe be its own, its own session. And it is something that is coming up with a lot of clients today. Because I'm sure you guys all know there's a big, relevant change happening in the world right now with the advent of AI and how it's impacting everyone.
So it's actually a really interesting time that I think, even if companies have this figured out, it is something that needs to be revisited. And I think as we know, AI is going to change and disrupt a lot of things over the next five to 10 years sooner. And so it's a good topic for us to continue to discuss. Yeah, let's do it.
Doesn't look like there's any questions flowing in, one more minute or so, but actually making stuff or we appreciate the conversations here. Everybody that joined, thank you for spending an hour out of your day, midweek. I know that's always challenging, but we love having these conversations. Our next one, I believe, is March 19th.
But we're going to dive into the world of ABM and unique points of view there. So we'll send that out in the recap of this, the dates and the sign up and registration link there. But as always, feedback, we just appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining.
All right. Thanks, Ashley, Stephanie and Evan. Great session. Thanks, everyone.