Emily Brady – Implementing Employee Advocacy in Businesses
In the first episode of Season 1, Lee interviews Emily Brady, Content Lead from Sweetfish Media who discusses all things podcasting and creative. They discuss the power of personal branding and how branding is evolving. Emily brings a wealth of knowledge over her time working in content marketing, plus her insight into Sweetfish’s employee advocacy program.
Have a guest recommendation, a question or just want to connect? Go here: https://www.harvardmurray.com/explori...
00:00:00:01 - 00:00:21:17
Lee Murray
Welcome back to the Exploring Growth Podcast. I'm so glad you're here today. I'm talking with Emily Brady from Sweet Fish Media. And if you are wondering how to get more of your team posting your content online for your brand, this is the episode for you. Hey, welcome back to Exploring Growth Podcast. I'm super excited to have Emily Brady here today.
00:00:21:17 - 00:00:49:06
Lee Murray
Content lead from Sweet Fish Media and Emily and I, we ran into each other on LinkedIn where she's very active. And by the way, I love all the B2B means that you've been doing. If you aren't following her yet, definitely go follow her on LinkedIn. She's a good example of how to be using that platform, and she posted recently about results from an evangelist program that she's running internally at fish.
00:00:49:06 - 00:01:03:06
Lee Murray
And we started talking about it and I thought, hey, this would be a good idea for us to have her on and dove deeper into that topic. So if you want to see the post I'm referring to all link that down the description as a reference point. But but yeah. So welcome, Emily.
00:01:04:00 - 00:01:06:02
Emily Brady
Thanks so much Lee. I am excited to be here.
00:01:07:12 - 00:01:28:11
Lee Murray
I'm excited to have you. And again, I love all the content following you on LinkedIn. It's it's a special time I think right now on LinkedIn where people are finding it for the first time. You know, some people are finding for the first time and some people are engaging for the first time. So it's becoming something different, which is very interesting then than it has ever been.
00:01:28:11 - 00:01:43:06
Lee Murray
So it's cool to follow your fun content to get us kicked off. Let's I want to talk about the Evangelist program, but first, just kind of give us a quick intro into yourself and what your role is or what you're doing over at Swedish.
00:01:43:22 - 00:02:14:23
Emily Brady
Yeah. So I am the creative content lead at Swedish and Swedish is we're a B2B podcasting agency, so we produce podcasts for B2B brands, primarily SaaS companies. And my role is I'm essentially a social media manager, creative campaign specialist, sort of person. So I work on our LinkedIn as our biggest social platform right now, and we're venturing into tech talk this year.
00:02:14:23 - 00:02:30:07
Emily Brady
And so I'm working on creating video for those platforms as well as sharing thought leadership content on LinkedIn. But a big part of my role is, like you said, is our employee advocacy program, which we call our evangelist program. Mm hmm.
00:02:31:04 - 00:02:57:21
Lee Murray
That's great. So let's let's talk about that because I think it's you know, I've I had a couple other marketing consultants on the podcast so far, and we've talked kind of around this topic of engaging other people in your organization to do some of the lifting when it comes to content. And, you know, thinking about it from an inbound standpoint, you know, the more hands to lift it makes the lifting easier.
00:02:59:02 - 00:03:23:08
Lee Murray
But also also, you know, talking to some salespeople to it's like marketing shifting and changing. And marketing I think is going away from the brand being the face of the company and it being individuals and individuals having their sort of take on the brand, you know, mix with their personal brand. And I think companies are going that direction.
00:03:23:08 - 00:03:46:03
Lee Murray
Definitely. It's a lot of the tech companies, you know, much faster, but some more traditional companies are slower to adopt it. But they are going that way. Right. And they're allowing their employees to have a voice on LinkedIn on behalf of the company. And I think it's very interesting. And so, you know, those companies that have really adopted this philosophy are creating programs.
00:03:46:03 - 00:04:02:03
Lee Murray
And so that kind of brings us to, you know, your program. And so to kind of kick it off, like, how would you define what we're talking about? And I think it'd be interesting to think about it from like your team's perspective, too. Like how would they describe what it is that they're participating in.
00:04:02:22 - 00:04:32:20
Emily Brady
Right? Yeah. So again, it's our version of employee advocacy. We defined it as the evangelist program because we want our people to feel like the mission of our company, something that they believe in, and also that they believe in their own the power of their own personal brands. So it's sort of collective thought leadership. Like we are really passionate about building our employees brands so that they can feel confident in the expertize that they have and so they can showcase that.
00:04:33:08 - 00:05:00:10
Emily Brady
But also that reflects well on the company, right? So our employees are their brands are huge assets to your company because they're closest to the problems that you're working with every day, like your sales team, they know what conversations you're having with customers. They're the ones having those conversations for us as we produce podcasts, like our producers have this knowledge about how to do that that they can share on LinkedIn, which is really neat.
00:05:00:10 - 00:05:12:10
Emily Brady
So it's really equipping and empowering your team to be active on social so that you can raise brand awareness for yourself, but also so that they can build their personal brands.
00:05:13:04 - 00:05:32:17
Lee Murray
Yeah, that's right. And you know, it's funny because like the way it hits me just from like a like a practical standpoint, if I'm on LinkedIn and I think I even had this sort of same response when I saw your profile was I had heard of Sweet Swedish. And I think I may maybe be following their page, but I see their content.
00:05:33:04 - 00:06:02:23
Lee Murray
Their content, right? That's sort of now it's all of your content. And then I hit your profile and I'm like, okay, I know Swedish, but that's cool. She's part of Sweet First, right? So it's like that. That response that I had was again, it's good content. So it's interesting to me and it was a positive thing. I think it could also not be that way, but I think if if everyone's putting their best foot forward, that's where or looking for is like, Oh, I like this person.
00:06:03:10 - 00:06:06:15
Lee Murray
Oh, that's cool. They're connected to a brand that I already know. And I like that brand, too.
00:06:07:11 - 00:06:29:10
Emily Brady
Yes. Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, people connect with people, right? And nobody knows. They go to our company page. They don't know who they're talking to if they engage with some of our content there. Right. Whereas if they're if they see our people pop up on their feed, which is the goal, you know, we we ask our employees to have a banner as we fish banner, but we don't ask them to promote the company.
00:06:29:10 - 00:06:50:00
Emily Brady
We ask them to write about things they're passionate about, knowledgeable about, not company. Reshare is like nobody engages this company. Reshare is because they're not personable. So that's a really big part of the success of a program like that. Like you said, like you, you found me. You already knew the brands, but you were able to associate me with the brands.
00:06:50:21 - 00:06:53:02
Emily Brady
And I think that's really neat. That's really cool to see.
00:06:53:02 - 00:07:17:23
Lee Murray
So very cool. And you know, what makes me think of is something I always tell my clients and that is, you know, your brand is the external version of what's built internally as your culture. So what you're talking about here and how it's sort of more formally coming together is the action, you know, is you're living out that philosophy of, hey, we're going to build a great internal culture because that's really how companies win.
00:07:17:23 - 00:07:27:10
Lee Murray
And then we're going to wear that on the outside so everyone can see what we're all about. And so this program is a formalized version of that. I think it's so cool.
00:07:27:10 - 00:07:28:01
Emily Brady
Thank you.
00:07:28:19 - 00:07:37:16
Lee Murray
So question for you. What was the genesis of installing this program like? How did this come about and or was it there before you got there?
00:07:37:16 - 00:08:01:00
Emily Brady
No, I was hired on full time to head this program up. We started seeing last year and like May, I was hired in May, so we started seeing companies like Drift and Gong were doing this. They kind of paved the way. And then our director of audience growth, Dan Sanchez, he started consistently posting on LinkedIn and he started seeing results from that.
00:08:01:00 - 00:08:21:08
Emily Brady
His his follower count grew substantially just in the couple of months he was posting. So then got all of our leadership on board our CEO, VP of marketing. Like I think we had, I think we had three of our C-suite who were really, really active and they started seeing great results. And so they were like, Yeah, we do.
00:08:21:08 - 00:08:41:03
Emily Brady
We want to open this up to the whole team, invite anyone to come participate who wants to participate. And so that's when they hired me on to create the structure for increased systems for it. But really it was just seeing how well other companies were doing with it and then seeing the few people who had tried it in our own company.
00:08:41:11 - 00:08:44:21
Emily Brady
How well they were doing. Yeah. And then inviting us into it.
00:08:45:02 - 00:09:00:11
Lee Murray
Yeah. That's awesome. Well, let's talk about the system in structure a little bit. I think that's the meat of it. The people, if the people are listening to right now and they want to do this, that's what they're already thinking. Well, so how do you how do you do this? Because I'm doing all these other million things. How do I add this to my calendar?
00:09:00:11 - 00:09:06:16
Lee Murray
Right. So walk me through how it's set up and maybe how you kind of run it on a week to week basis.
00:09:07:17 - 00:09:27:06
Emily Brady
Yeah, I will say when we started it, we kind of bypassed the two biggest obstacles. The first being getting executive buy in is really, really hard because it's a long play and it's it's not something that you can immediately say, like this is the revenue that we're going to have from this. Right? You have to start out and see how it goes.
00:09:27:21 - 00:09:51:22
Emily Brady
So we had our leadership was on board, which is huge. And then the second thing was that they were able to hire someone to head it up full time. And that was that's me and I and know I started out more as a writer and I started out more creating content for our evangelists and our commitment was from them was that they would create three posts a week and then I would supplement them to three posts because we wanted to get out as much content as we could.
00:09:51:22 - 00:10:11:03
Lee Murray
Okay, so let's stop there for a second. Sorry to interrupt, but before we get more into the how when they brought you on specifically to do this and so I'd be interested to know. So then I'm tracking you correctly. They, they have this sort of brainchild and they're like, we want to do this, so we're going to bring a particular person on to do this.
00:10:11:10 - 00:10:19:20
Lee Murray
That's you. Yes. What did that conversation look like and how did they translate to you what they were trying to accomplish and the expectations that were there?
00:10:21:01 - 00:10:52:11
Emily Brady
Yeah, well, I had been working for Sweet Fish freelance for a couple of months and I had written a little bit of social for them, but I was mostly working for for customer content and they were like when they decided that they wanted to do an employee advocacy program, they it made sense to hire someone who they knew already had seen my work and so, yeah, so when they brought me on we were starting from, we had Dan and James Logan had been posting but we didn't have a system for it or a framework for it.
00:10:52:19 - 00:11:32:22
Emily Brady
It was just post consistently post valuable content, which is great, but that's you have to give people more if you're going to actually equip them to do that. That's right. Yeah. So not only was I helping to create content for the program, but I was also helping people build their brands. So I would jump on onboarding calls with anyone who was interested, and we would flesh out their content pillars, the things that they were passionate about, curious about, knowledgeable about, and then go over LinkedIn best practices and kind of come up with a workflow for them because a lot of employees, they they had never posted on LinkedIn before and it's kind of this intimidating,
00:11:32:22 - 00:11:56:18
Emily Brady
daunting thing to think, okay, well, what do I have to say? Even I don't I don't know. I'm not an expert on anything. What do I even do on this platform? So a lot of getting started is having that training in place in that groundwork and then being able to keep the ball rolling with motivation, with resources, continued training and that kind of thing.
00:11:57:17 - 00:12:17:02
Emily Brady
And so we've moved going building off of that. We've moved from me creating content to creating things like editorial calendars, training workshops, things that put more power in the evangelist hands because, you know, we don't want to just enable them. We want to equip them to be sufficient in that.
00:12:17:05 - 00:12:32:03
Lee Murray
Sure. Okay. So getting back to the how then, are you now in a place where you're essentially creating a lot of pillar content and then you're giving them instruction on how to share it and apply it to their own brand? Or what's that look like?
00:12:33:10 - 00:12:52:14
Emily Brady
Yeah. So that's something I used to do. Now I'll curate content like articles and posts that I've seen. That's interesting. Share that with them instead of writing out a fully fledged post for them. So that saves me a lot of time. That also gives them the freedom to to write about it in the way that they want to.
00:12:54:06 - 00:13:15:08
Emily Brady
Yeah. And then we also we have like one on one brainstorm sessions. If they're stuck, if they need help fleshing out their content more. And then I also, like I said, I have training workshops every month that I'm in charge of, in charge of checking in with everyone, really, and making sure that that there are things we already know they're doing okay.
00:13:15:22 - 00:13:16:16
Emily Brady
So yeah.
00:13:16:16 - 00:13:18:07
Lee Murray
Coaching them along. Yeah. Okay.
00:13:19:02 - 00:13:28:19
Emily Brady
Yes. And all I'm in charge of like measuring the progress of the program. So I'll send analytics reports to them and yeah.
00:13:29:12 - 00:13:47:01
Lee Murray
I like it. So from a technical standpoint, like or logistical standpoint, are you just dropping do you have like a slack or teams channel where you're just throwing all these links in there and then pointing to them? Or are you using, you know, some some other kind of mechanism?
00:13:47:01 - 00:14:08:21
Emily Brady
Yeah. So we use Slack. We have a Slack channel to celebrate. Awesome. And that's really key to to motivating people is to say like, oh, so-and-so had a really great post or so-and-so got a lot of really great comments and to celebrate each other, I'll also drop in short little videos like training videos or just ideas and insights into that.
00:14:09:22 - 00:14:31:02
Emily Brady
And then we use Asana for project management. So yeah, so when I was writing posts, it would go through a sort of and I would, I would write a post for them and I would say like chop it up as much as you want, however you want, because this is. Yeah, yeah. So it started out more as a collaborative process, but we mostly communicate through through Slack.
00:14:31:10 - 00:15:00:06
Lee Murray
Yeah, that's great. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. And so when you I love, I love the channel about like almost like a love channel. Like, you know, you're our success is right because that also kind of ties into your reporting. You know, on the qualitative side, do you guys I mean, I know you're looking at metrics which I want to get to in a minute, like the quantitative side, but from a quality upside because we're talking a lot about dark social these days.
00:15:00:06 - 00:15:08:12
Lee Murray
You know, it seems like that's the new buzzword. It you know, how do you measure how if this is working.
00:15:10:05 - 00:15:33:16
Emily Brady
Yeah so we get a lot of DMS about our program just saying like, hey, I'm seeing you guys everywhere and that's awesome and that's always really exciting. And those usually go to our CEO, gets a lot of those and share it with us in the Slack channel. Yeah, a lot of our employees have grown their followings a lot and have been like invited on to podcasts or LinkedIn events.
00:15:33:16 - 00:15:52:14
Emily Brady
And so that's that's really exciting. And I think that that's something that you could definitely attribute to them building their personal brands. So we do get a lot of that kind of stuff, that dark social type of stuff. Aside from, you know, tracking views and comments and shares on shields, I would say those are the biggest.
00:15:52:14 - 00:16:02:09
Lee Murray
Okay, so from just a high level quantitative side, you're using shields to track each individual profile. Okay.
00:16:02:09 - 00:16:02:21
Emily Brady
And collect.
00:16:02:23 - 00:16:23:20
Lee Murray
Okay. Yeah. And then do you I mean, talking about Slack channels, do you have them kind of more? Is it just sort of willy nilly or is it more methodical about like taking screenshots of certain posts or, you know, how do you because, you know, I'm working with a client right now and we're we're doing something very similar.
00:16:24:07 - 00:16:51:02
Lee Murray
We're calling it brand ambassadors, but very similar program. And one of the things that we are thinking about doing is, is having this so they use teams like having a teams channel that's set up where we can put screenshots to say, you know, here's an example. And so that just will be a feed that we can basically the week, you know, the month, whatever, look back through and see like, look, this is like not hard and fast metrics, but this is it.
00:16:51:02 - 00:16:52:22
Lee Murray
This is people interact with one another.
00:16:54:14 - 00:17:13:15
Emily Brady
Yeah, well, I would say those things too are things that your employees are going to get more excited about than you might say, like, oh, you got a thousand views and they're like, Oh, that's cool. Or you might say you got a comment from someone who is a really like an influencer in B2B marketing. That's more exciting. Yeah, that's really cool.
00:17:13:15 - 00:17:38:16
Emily Brady
Yeah. Yeah. So that's why it's important to to share those things with them and to share those things with the team. And we've had a lot of those things where people are like, Oh my gosh, so-and-so just commented on my post and that's exciting. Or They got a DM or they got an invitation or something like that. So I keep track of I like to share top posts of the week because Shield will list out the top posts that we've had.
00:17:38:16 - 00:17:58:18
Emily Brady
And that's more of a way to help like break it down and define what made it successful. But I also think it's important to keep an eye on everyone and see those other things that are wins. Like I, I love dropping in maybe a post hasn't gotten a lot of views, but if it's valuable and I think it's been written really well, that's always a good thing to celebrate, too.
00:17:58:18 - 00:18:34:05
Lee Murray
Yeah, definitely. And I think it's good that, you know, there's one central person that's managing this yourself. You know, you're providing oversight and clarity and coaching throughout the whole thing, but not to not for it to be missed for these small and midsize growing companies of in all industries. Right. You know, I think like you and I get it because we're in marketing and especially B2B, but if you're not in B2B marketing and you're not hearing, you're not being pounded in the head every single day on LinkedIn about this this whole idea that you're talking about what you said is super value valuable.
00:18:34:05 - 00:19:13:05
Lee Murray
So if you're in, I don't know, just pick an industry and in that industry you have associations and you have these sort of co-ops or a community of places where people congregate naturally, trade shows, that kind of thing. Well, inside of those communities, you're going to have influencers, for lack of a better term. And I always try to get my clients to think about those people as strategic partners or referral partners to bring them on their, you know, blog article that they've written or a podcast that they ideally are some kind of thing that they can collaborate with them and and garner the attention from those all their audience.
00:19:13:05 - 00:19:33:22
Lee Murray
So what you were saying is super important. So in in any industry you're in, there are people who have a louder and more impactful voice than you may with your brand. So getting them to comment, insightfully on your post, it's a big deal because people more more people in their network are going to see it just, you know, directly.
00:19:34:09 - 00:19:53:02
Lee Murray
But then taking that one step further as it goes through the process, you know, putting that in the Slack channel and then someone on the team noticing that saying, hey, you know, that person is actually someone we should have in to do X, Y or Z. That that whole thing may not have transpired that quickly if it weren't for the program that you guys are running.
00:19:54:11 - 00:20:14:06
Emily Brady
Yeah, that's a great point. I will say we're also I mean, we're a small, smaller company. We have 40 full time employees and so we have 14 evangelists right now, which is easy enough for me to keep track of. But as that grows, yeah, you'd have to think of other ways to do that or be more intentional about that.
00:20:14:06 - 00:20:46:08
Lee Murray
Well, I mean, as we're just sort of spitballing here, as you get to a bigger company, to me it makes sense to have cohorts, you know, whether it's geographically or interest based or when we're talking about account based marketing, you know, based on a certain target for from a graphic type, but, but, I mean, I think 14 people out of 40 is a pretty good ratio, right, for it for being engaged because most of the people I talked to they have zero, you know, not even their owner.
00:20:46:08 - 00:20:55:11
Lee Murray
Our CEO is on LinkedIn, let alone active on LinkedIn. So so kudos to you for getting that. You know where it should be. Good job.
00:20:56:02 - 00:21:18:01
Emily Brady
Yeah, thank you. I would like to add to that like your employees have to see their own. Why it's not a lot of companies try to just hand out promotional content say can you re share this but there's no reason for your employees to do that other than, you know, they're loyal to the company, but there's no benefit for them personally.
00:21:18:01 - 00:21:46:13
Emily Brady
And so a huge yeah, a huge part of how we've structured this program is that it's a it's a benefit to our employees to build their brands and we give them the autonomy to post about things that they're interested in as well. Yeah. So I think that's where a lot of companies get stuck. And I think it's as simple as I don't want to say as simple as, but it can seem that way as giving them autonomy and training them in how to create their own content instead of regurgitating content.
00:21:46:21 - 00:22:03:07
Lee Murray
Yes. So if I'm thinking about a company that's listening to this right now and they're like, okay, we want to do this, we can see the benefit of a timing is right. Could they you know, because blogging and SEO is been a big thing and there's a lot of companies that probably have a lot of blog posts that are sitting out there.
00:22:03:07 - 00:22:27:12
Lee Murray
Could they start by simply putting together maybe a one page guideline sheet for the top, you know, two or three people that would actually do it and are on LinkedIn and say, hey, go grab, go look at our last ten years of blog posts that are relevant and share them. You know, talk about is that would that be a good like baby step or how would you, you know, how would you advise them to get started?
00:22:28:22 - 00:22:53:02
Emily Brady
Yeah that's a good baby step. I we actually we repurpose a ton of our content and our evangelists do that too. They can go and find a blog and find a section of that that they find to be interesting and then know give a summary of it in their own words and with their own expertize behind it. So that's definitely a strategy, but I think you have to starting out.
00:22:53:02 - 00:23:24:20
Emily Brady
People have to know the content topics that they want to talk about and you have to help them find those pillars because if not, then they can just be going willy nilly talking about everything and anything, you know? And LinkedIn is not Facebook. That's right. Oh, yeah, yeah. We usually have when we onboard our evangelists, they each have three content pitch perfect could be like podcast marketing, trying to think of something that's not too different than that, let's say copywriting.
00:23:26:00 - 00:23:44:10
Emily Brady
And then they would have seven issues within that to get more specific. And that's something that's a discipline. As they practice, they've learned more and more how to write better and how to come up with those ideas. But a lot of times I'll ask people to get that ball rolling. I'll say, What's something that you are really, really interested in right now and really curious about?
00:23:44:18 - 00:24:00:17
Emily Brady
And a lot of times people will pull content from podcasts or listening to you or books they've been reading or shows they've been watching, and that's really helpful. Or then I'll ask, What's something that you're knowledgeable about? And this one's a tricky one because people are like, Oh, I don't know, I'm not really knowledgeable about anything, but you are.
00:24:00:23 - 00:24:16:04
Emily Brady
You're close to the role that you're doing. You're close to these challenges and these solutions. You do it every day and those things we take for granted because we do it every day and we're so close. And then I'll ask them what they're passionate about, because if they're not writing about something they're passionate about, they're not going to do it.
00:24:16:15 - 00:24:19:14
Emily Brady
So those three things are really, really important to getting us scrolling.
00:24:19:14 - 00:24:47:02
Lee Murray
I love that and I love that you're putting guidelines in place and, you know, systems to make it much more efficient because that's the only way it's really ever going to be sustainable for organization to be able to, you know, attribute success to it. You know, what we're talking about reminds me of public speaking, oddly enough, because I think there's people that are experts in in certain domains and they'll speak on a topic and they can speak on that one particular topic.
00:24:48:03 - 00:25:08:15
Lee Murray
Let's just say, you know, focus, right? That's their thing. They wrote books about it or whatever, and they can literally talk about it a million different ways. It's all about how you approach that one subject. So, you know, I think for people who are listening, they don't need to think that they have to write on tons of stuff.
00:25:08:15 - 00:25:31:02
Lee Murray
They could really literally just pick one thing, the one topic, and just come at it different ways, you know, like that's that's all that, you know what I think we do as podcasters is we try to extract as much value in the time that we have for the episode and then come at that episode as many ways that we think that our audience can stand us coming at it.
00:25:31:02 - 00:25:35:06
Lee Murray
Right, because we could sit there on that one episode and talk about it for years.
00:25:37:02 - 00:25:38:18
Emily Brady
Yeah, that's a good point.
00:25:38:18 - 00:25:59:18
Lee Murray
Yeah. So if someone's thinking about doing this in their company, what should they keep in mind? So like from the you know, making mistakes or barrier side because I think a lot of people fearful of allowing their employees to go out there and just speak on the floor, speak on behalf of the company, you know, what would ensure success for them or something they should keep in mind?
00:26:01:01 - 00:26:24:03
Emily Brady
Yeah, I think first it's important to get leadership buy in. Second, it's important to get employee buy into right? If you don't, you're not going to have a program. So you have to be able to convey the benefits to your employees. You have to find their own personal way, and then you have to create a structure or a strategy around it that's going to actually make it sustainable.
00:26:25:01 - 00:26:50:09
Emily Brady
So it might look like creating an editorial calendar that's got prompts in it for people to post about. It might look like having training sessions every couple of weeks to increase the confidence of your employees with posting or just an understanding of the platform. And then I also you have to think of your goals. You know, if are you on it for for brand awareness, is this for your employees only?
00:26:50:09 - 00:27:22:08
Emily Brady
Is this for their brands only? I mean, is this because you want to, you know, drive deals down the pipeline? Like, obviously, I mean, I think that would be the goal for everyone. But there are several different results that you can have from a program like this. So and I think another really important thing is when you are posting content to post content for to provide value and not just be self-promotional because that's a huge factor for success because that's the only way that people really will engage with you.
00:27:22:08 - 00:27:30:21
Emily Brady
That is if they're getting value from your content, from your employees content. So it's giving away that value for free. But I would say those are really important that those are great.
00:27:30:21 - 00:27:51:15
Lee Murray
Yeah. And I agree on the last point, especially if you're going to have your employees try to be their authentic self on LinkedIn or Instagram or wherever you're posting content. You know, it has to be it has to be authentic, right? Like it has to be there. You have to meet them with that authenticity from a company standpoint.
00:27:51:15 - 00:27:56:06
Lee Murray
So definitely very important.
00:27:56:06 - 00:28:11:22
Emily Brady
Yes. Yeah. And with that, you have to measure the right things. Like a lot of companies will say, well, we have 20,000 followers for our company page okay. Well, is anyone actually commenting on your content? Well, no, not really. Well, then how valuable is that really.
00:28:12:10 - 00:28:17:12
Lee Murray
That all those 20,000 followers came from that free T-shirt giveaway?
00:28:17:12 - 00:28:17:19
Emily Brady
Right.
00:28:18:04 - 00:28:41:01
Lee Murray
They got their T-shirt there. Done. Okay. So as we kind of wrap this up, I have a couple of questions I always ask all my guests, and that is resources. Like if if you're looking for growth, you know, in the in your company or in your business, what resource resources do you naturally go to? Books, podcast, people, whatever?
00:28:41:01 - 00:28:44:01
Emily Brady
As far as learning more about the employee, I mean, it could.
00:28:44:01 - 00:28:53:20
Lee Murray
Be that specifically or just in general, like any books that, you know, you've read or that you're reading or podcasts that you're listening to, that you've gotten a lot of value from.
00:28:55:08 - 00:29:23:01
Emily Brady
Yeah, I would say I can give you some of my favorite people to follow on LinkedIn. Yeah. So follow Jason Welch for all things LinkedIn, all tips on how to grow your your brand on the platform and your followers on the platform. Nick Bennett is doing some really great stuff with Alice for employee advocacy and then Devin Reed is doing that really well with going Drift and Julie are also doing well, refined labs.
00:29:23:03 - 00:29:33:14
Emily Brady
Everyone knows that Refined Labs does well. So Chris Walker with the Finance. Yeah, but if this is something you're interested in doing, study other people who are doing it.
00:29:34:11 - 00:29:57:12
Lee Murray
Yeah, that's good too. Because you know, I forget like I'm, I'm inundated with all the ones you mentioned every day because when you're on there in this space, you see them all. But for other owners and CEOs or even marketing directors, those are definitely good companies and people inside those companies. And ah, recently LinkedIn has the little bell icon.
00:29:57:12 - 00:30:08:07
Lee Murray
So I'm now I tell people, if you want to learn anything about anything, go find people on LinkedIn that know about it, are posting hit the bell and you're going to start educating yourself. It's like continuing an education.
00:30:09:20 - 00:30:11:00
Emily Brady
Yes, absolutely.
00:30:11:07 - 00:30:20:05
Lee Murray
Okay. Last question. If you could change the mind of a small business owner, what would you tell them to do differently? And it could be on any anything.
00:30:21:19 - 00:30:27:03
Emily Brady
Oh, my goodness. I wasn't prepared for this.
00:30:27:05 - 00:30:55:05
Lee Murray
I'll set you up. I mean, if I had to answer the question, I naturally go to the frustrations that I've had with small business owners and trying to get things through to them. Right. Whether it's on a tactical level or a strategic level mindset, you know, whatever it is, I kind of naturally go to those and say, If I could just wave a wand and change their mind, this is what I would do.
00:30:55:05 - 00:31:30:04
Emily Brady
Yeah, yeah. And I guess, I mean, this is not to beat a dead horse, but to give your employees freedom to post on social and with, you know, with boundaries, with guidelines. But I think I think a lot of businesses don't do that well because they're afraid of of doing that. But, I mean, we just we just talk for a whole a whole hour about how beneficial that is to your company and letting these people have a social a voice on social.
00:31:30:22 - 00:31:47:02
Emily Brady
And it's actually going to be good for your brand and also for I think a lot of times it's hard for business owners to do that as well, to just be genuine on social, to share behind the scenes instead of just polished. It's true. Yeah, polished self.
00:31:47:12 - 00:32:08:12
Lee Murray
Yeah, that's true. Like kind of back to the public speaking thing, it's hard for people to put themselves out there, I think just in a human way. Like it's just people have a lot of own personal fears and that kind of thing. But then when you have a business, you kind of gets almost like amplified that fear because you are fearful of what putting yourself out there.
00:32:08:12 - 00:32:14:07
Lee Murray
And so you're kind of fearful for your employees, but they may not be thinking that same thing. So nothing happens.
00:32:14:19 - 00:32:37:07
Emily Brady
Right? Right. There's this misconception that LinkedIn is, you know, just a space to hold your resumé or something like that or to show your work. But it's actually it's a social platform. It is. And so if you're posting on LinkedIn, people want to see what you're actually doing at work every day. People want to see the good and the bad, the challenges and the solutions.
00:32:38:12 - 00:32:53:15
Emily Brady
And people want to buy from people who are personable, who they feel are like, that's true. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so if you're putting up a polished face on social, then that makes it a little more difficult to do that.
00:32:53:15 - 00:33:18:00
Lee Murray
I agree. You know, and I think like how I've framed it out in the past, like for myself, the way I think about it is if I'm out of physical event, it's a social event and there are rooms at the event, they have different vibes to them. You know, LinkedIn is one of those rooms and if you go in that room and you're being social with people, you're you're actually, you know, putting your ear into two or three people that are talking about something.
00:33:18:00 - 00:33:43:23
Lee Murray
And you enter the conversation and you continue. You go deep. You know, you get to know people. You leave with phone numbers, you know, and then eventually those turn into friends and colleagues. And and that would have never happened if you wouldn't have gone in the room. Right. And I think I think our online presence is starting to usurp our offline presence to some degree, and especially in light of Web three coming and all the things that are, you know, AR and VR.
00:33:44:22 - 00:34:05:16
Lee Murray
And so if if we thought, you know, I guess I'm saying all this to try to give that business owner or marketing director the the what they need to move forward. Right. To really put the company out there online have a greater presence. But then the people it's that those just those one or two connections, they've already seen it in real life.
00:34:06:01 - 00:34:11:01
Lee Murray
So why could it not happen online? If not at scale? Right.
00:34:11:22 - 00:34:13:16
Emily Brady
Exactly. Exactly.
00:34:13:16 - 00:34:39:06
Lee Murray
Yeah, yeah. Well, hey, this has been a lot of fun and I really appreciate you coming on. And I think this is very important for people to to know about what they should be doing for marketing in their business. And I think historically, too, I think we're going to look back at these kind of conversations, you know, 2022 and when we're in, I don't know, 2028 and say, why didn't we start back in 2022 doing this?
00:34:39:06 - 00:35:00:03
Lee Murray
You know, because the future of marketing is really based around communities. It's going to be very community driven. So you kind of want your people in these rooms virtually to to be making a splash for your brand. So I think this conversation seems like it's on the edge of something that is, you know, people are doing or not doing, but it's really new.
00:35:00:15 - 00:35:20:13
Emily Brady
Right? Yep. Yeah. No, I agree. I think I mean, we've talked a lot about brand awareness and thought leadership and that kind of thing, but we've also closed a ton of deals just from LinkedIn. So I take that is a compelling reason to be on and to be doing marketing there to be social there because it will help with sales as well.
00:35:20:13 - 00:35:41:14
Lee Murray
So yeah, and I'm and again, I'm going to link the post that you and I connected over in the description and go to that post and you'll see a screenshot I think is on there of some of the results from a certain that last quarter or month or something. I mean that's not those are not dollars to be you know, to be those aren't shabby shabby numbers, right.
00:35:41:14 - 00:35:52:13
Lee Murray
For work that's being done, that's hard to measure. So yeah. So thanks again. If people want to connect with you directly, how can they find you? Yeah.
00:35:53:07 - 00:36:06:19
Emily Brady
Yeah. They can find me on LinkedIn. My name is Emily Brito Brady on LinkedIn. That's Emily DeBartolo. Brady. Yeah, I'd love for for anyone to connect with me there. That'd be.
00:36:06:19 - 00:36:15:13
Lee Murray
Great. All right. Thanks a lot. And let's keep this conversation going on LinkedIn.
00:36:15:13 - 00:36:16:17
Emily Brady
It sounds good, thankfully.
00:36:18:08 - 00:36:39:16
Lee Murray
Hey, I really appreciate you tuning into this episode of Exploring Growth. I'm trying to get this in the hands of as many growing businesses as possible so they can take this practical wisdom in deployed in their companies or with their teams. If you're getting some value out of this show and know someone who should listen as well, would you consider sharing with them or leave a positive review on the platform in which you're listening or watching YouTube?
00:36:39:16 - 00:36:48:01
Lee Murray
Audience Leave a comment below something you liked or your perspective on what we discussed. I'm grateful for everyone that tunes in every week. Let's keep exploring.