Episode 60 5 Types of Content Bankers Should Be Sharing

Intro: I've had the privilege of being in and around banking for more than 50 years. Lots of changes during that time. We've gone from Ledger's to laptops, typewriters to technology. One thing, however, remains the same. Banking is a people business. And I'll be talking with those people that make banking great here on Jack Rants With Modern Bankers.

Jack Hubbard: Hi, Brynne.

Brynne Tillman: Hi, Jack. One of my favorite hours or half hours of the week, or moments….

Jack Hubbard: Yeah, me, too. Me, too. It's Jack Rants with Brynn, brought to you by RelPro and Vertical IQ. We value and appreciate their partnership. Before we start, and we've got a great topic today, five types of content bankers should be sharing and a bonus. I wanted to mention, I had a call from someone who said, gee, I missed your second part of your Kevin Turner program yesterday. How do I get it? And I said, join the public library. those programs. Jack Rants with Modern Bankers every Wednesday, and Jack Rants with Brynne every Thursday. Those replays are in our public library. So if you want to get those, plus all kinds of other wonderful content, go right up to the QR code, and click on that. 

I also have to tell you, before we start, I'm really excited about next week's program. On Wednesday at noon, central time, John Oxford is going to join us. John was a student of mine a while ago at bank marketing school, the ABA's bank marketing school. And John is now the chief marketing officer of Renaissance Bank, a $17 billion bank in Alabama. John's got some great insights. He wrote a book, and I think you'll enjoy next Wednesday. 

But today, Brynne, we want to talk about how to continue to elevate your LinkedIn presence through various types of content that we can provide. So let's just jump right in. One that I think you and I both really spend a lot of time on is industry insights.

Brynne Tillman: So, industry insights, not just on your industry, but on the industry of the clients you serve and the industries of the clients they serve are very powerful in not just sharing your knowledge and your thought leadership, but expressing your curiosity truly in what it is that they do. And you are showing up, in a way, when you share these industry insights, that show them that you're willing to take the time to learn about them. 

So, should you share banking insights? Absolutely. I'm not saying only share the insights of other industries, but one of the things you can do is identify some of these industry insights and add your own thought leadership around how banking might be affected or can help some of these trending topics, things that are out there. Now, you can go Google this, you can go into Google alerts and put in industry insights, or you can make it really easy for yourself. And our sponsor, Vertical IQ, will do all that curating of those industry insights for you.

Jack Hubbard: Now, let's also think about this. So, I'm a community banker, and this is very true of most of our audience. Community banker. I'm a generalist. This morning I might call on an architect, and this afternoon I might call on a pediatrician. And in between, I might have lunch with a lawyer. So, how do I provide industry insights? Well, one of the things I've always told bankers is look at what some of the issues are in all industries, and then as you post, make it very specific to that industry that you are posting about. 

So, for example, every industry is concerned about sales strategies. Every industry is concerned about marketing, strategic planning, you get the picture. Her retention, you get the picture. If you find a great article, whether that is on Google alerts, which I love, or through Vertical Insights or through another type of content provider, that you can then customize to any industry that you want to. So industry insights is number one. The second thing I love is client success stories. Talk about that one.

Brynne Tillman: Yeah. And there are ways to present a client success story that's educational to your reader. So this is a little different than a client, testimonial or a case study. We actually call them case stories. So it has a little bit of a different spin where you get to talk about the challenge that a client was going through and how they needed whatever it was that you provided. If it was capital, if it was treasury services or whatever that might have been. Now, don't include your name or the name of your bank yet. 

So the story starts here as this small business leader in quickly expanding growth mode. had a lot of accounts receivables, but needed capital to do X, Y and Z. and this is why they needed to do that and what they needed to get from that. and then here is what the capital did for them. And then we were absolutely thrilled to be their banker of choice, to be able to help them with the solution. 

And when you put out a case story like that, you're going to resonate with others, entrepreneurs, business leaders that are feeling the same thing, that they see what is possible and then they see that you can help them to achieve that.

Jack Hubbard: Yeah. Telling stories and writing them down is such a Great Skill. And we all can do it, we just don't think we can. So I'll tell you a quick story. I was training a woman at a large bank in Michigan, and we were talking about stories and how you need to interweave them into your sales process as well. And she said, well, I don't have any stories. I said, well, look, when was the last loan you made and who'd you make it to? And she told me, and I said, talk to me about why they borrowed the money. And she kind of got into it. And then I said, well, tell me what they're going to do as a result of that. How will they benefit? And she says, oh, I get the idea. 

So we just need to think a little bit differently. Now, for those people who want to follow somebody who tells amazing stories and has a training class around this, it's a guy named Neil Ford. F-O-R-D-E I follow Neil and I get a lot of his little videos and they're just outstanding. So I agree with you. I think telling stories, client success stories, as long as we make them generic, is so powerful.

Brynne Tillman: I just have one more expert to follow on selling stories is Bernadette McClelland. She also has a new book that she put out and it's about how to create that story that helps you to make the sale. So two people go and follow there.

Jack Hubbard: Yeah. And I think it's interesting, this is where I think AI can be a real help to you if you just put some notes down and went to Chat GPT and say, look, write a story for me around these twelve bullet points. There you go. Now, you want to edit that story before you put it out to LinkedIn. Of course, make it your voice. But there's where AI, I think Brinne can really be a good partner for you.

Brynne Tillman: Yeah. And one of the prompts, if you are using Chat GPT, is to say, use these facts only, do not research. And that will help you when it creates that story, it'll help you not to have to edit as. So just that's a little additive to almost every prompt I put out there.

Brynne Tillman: That's great. Thanks, Jack, that's terrific. 

Jack Hubbard:  Well, here's another one. and it really happened yesterday. The Fed decided not to change interest rates. That affected the market, in a very negative way. It's come back negative.

Brynne Tillman: Oh, I thought they weren't raised, that was what I was happy about. 

Jack Hubbard:   They weren't lowered. And I've always kind of felt that this is going to be the third quarter before anything changes. But I'm not an economist. but one of the things that this really does talk about is financial trends. And one of the things I would have loved to see, and I haven't seen it yet on LinkedIn today, is a banker that says, okay, the rates stayed the same. Here are some consequences to that. Here are some things you might want to think about. Brynn. Financial trends allow you to do so much and to benefit yourself.

Brynne Tillman:  How. How often are those financial. are the interest rates reviewed? How often?

Jack Hubbard:  Every month. Every month? Every other month.

Brynne Tillman: So I love that. So maybe if you decide you're going to do this six times over the year, have some things, like if they go up, if they go down, if they stay stagnant, you can be prepared with some things that you can share once you know what that is. Well, I'm glad they didn't go up. I'll just say that, because we couldn't take that anymore.

Jack Hubbard: No, that's very true. Financial trends can be really powerful. it could even be, And I wouldn't do this often. It could be. I've seen a lot of reviews on financials, from 2023, from banks. Now, you don't have to post your entire annual report, but one of the things you could talk about from your earnings is you could take a snippet of it and you could talk about it in terms of how this might help the customer. It's not just bragging about your earnings. It's okay, we did this. We added these five branches. Here's what that's going to mean to you. So financial trends can be a really powerful one. All right. You are so good at this, thought leadership. Let's talk about thought leadership.

Brynne Tillman: Yeah. This is really when your insights come to play. Now, you can add insights when you're curating content and you add your two cents. But the idea of thought leadership really is that you capture your genius in the wild. What does that mean? When you are out there and you are talking to clients and you are having conversations and they have “aha”. Moments, that is probably content that you can share. Because if that prospect or client is enamored by that statement or that insight, chances are a lot of other people will, too. 

So a lot of bankers will say, well, I'm not a writer. You don't have to write. And we do have so many tools available. You could record 30 seconds and share that native video right from your phone. And, I love the content from the car, right? I get out of the client, I'm sitting in the car, and some of them, we have one client, last year, two years ago was the first time they were out again from the pandemic. I guess it might have been two years ago. They were so excited to stick the sign in the grass, right? That they were working with them, that they started there and then came back to themselves in the car. And they just said, look, I'm really excited. We are really helping companies get back on their feet, and here's how we're doing it. And this is what we did. This is what's happening. 

If you answer a question, maybe a company says, look, we don't have the ability to have everyone sign personal guarantees, and you have an alternative that might have been able to help them talk about that, right? There are so many things that. That you're out, ah, you're like, oh, if they're like, oh, my gosh, no other bank has offered that. These are the real opportunities for thought leadership. So now we've identified the thought leadership, how do we turn that into content again? Quick videos. You can go in, and I'm a big fan of talk, to text in my phone. I open up the notes and I talk about what I want to say, because it's faster for me than typing. So I'll go in and I'll talk. And then it actually syncs to my computer. But you can email it to yourself and then clean it up. You could say questions from the wild, questions out in the field, questions from the field. And then with your thought leadership around it, you can grab pictures. 

Now, if you stick a sign in the grass, you know, you have the permission from the company to say you're working with them, take a picture and use that as your image. there are so many things that you can do, and you can jump into canva for free, canva.com, and pull down images that you can use to go with that thought leadership. But thought leadership doesn't have to be full on blogging. They're just insights and ideas that will attract future customers and get them interested in learning more.

Jack Hubbard: So, Brynne, my friend Robert Leach. Now, when you talk about thought leaders, here is one of them. Banker in Chicago, known Robert for 25 or 30 years. And Robert talks about, rates stayed the same. Most would think nothing here to add. And Robert knows it's not true, because if the rates stayed the same, how might that impact my buying a piece of equipment if the rates had gone up? Maybe I don't. If the rates stay the same, and I have enough confidence that they're not going up. I might pull the trigger on that particular piece of equipment. And that's where thought leadership can help spur an idea where you don't have to push a product, but you can put it out on LinkedIn, and you can get people to think differently. I love this. Take IQ or EQ. It really does take EQ. And I also think this whole idea around thought leadership is about what you earn, not about what you say you are. Can you put Billy Connelly out back again?

Brynne Tillman: Hi, Billy.

Jack Hubbard: I met Billy in 1999 when she was a branch manager at central bank, down, in Missouri. Here's an example of a woman who has just taken her profession so seriously, and she is a thought leader. Robert is a thought leader. That LinkedIn person that suggested that it takes EQ, that's a thought leader. You earn thought leadership, Brynne. You are one. And you earn trusted advisor status. You don't say you are. You earn it from clients.

Brynne Tillman: Yeah, I love that. And, Jack, there is no better thought leader in this industry than you. And I'm saying it so I can.

Jack Hubbard: I value that and appreciate that. And that leads us to another .1 of the things that I really like is the idea of net sharing because if you go to an event in a community, if you're willing to share, people are going to be all around you. I've always kind of felt it's better to be interested than interesting. And so when you go to a networking event, net sharing event, if you ask questions, people are going to be around you versus trying to work the room, as people used to say. Well, LinkedIn isn't a physical presence, but you can have a lot of networking opportunities on LinkedIn, and you talk extensively about.

Brynne Tillma: So, networking content can be many things. Networking content, believe it or not, could be if you recommend somebody on LinkedIn, and then you put out a kudos. What is that? And you might go, what's a Kudos? Well, kudos is this public, postcard, digital postcard that says, kudos for doing something. So, let's say you have a great networking meeting with someone. It may not have turned into much yet, right? Like, this might be longer, but you want to acknowledge what a great meeting that was. You can share that now. Kudos to Jack Hubbard for being an incredible networking partner. I enjoy every time we have coffee. That is content that does a few things, right? It's content that is telling the world how much I like Jack, which makes Jack feel good. It's telling the world that I'm a networker, which is a great reflection of who I am. I believe if I do something like that, it just solidifies relationships. 

Recommendations. Now, when you recommend someone that does not go into your newsfeed necessarily, but you can grab that recommendation that you added and know, I just recommended Jack Hubbard for X, Y, and zZ. Just want to give him a public shout out, by the way. So you might say, okay, well, I can recommend someone that worked for me, or I could recommend someone, I bought from but you can recommend a networking partner just as easily, right? 

So a recommendation does not have to be that you directly worked with them, but you are engaging with them. Another thing you can do is you can do a joint, content, like a joint. We're doing a live show right now. You could get on with a networking partner and go live and talk about things. You can do audio rooms with them. you can even create a joint, blog post article. It would be published under one of you, but you can have two authors on that. So there's a lot that you can do that also helps to cross brand each other in your networks.

Jack Hubbard: All right, so I get a call from a banker, and she says, okay, I've been following you for a long time. You trained me at a bank five years ago. I'm going to challenge you. She says, I'm going to a networking event. Give me something creative I can do. I love when this happens, by the way. So I said, okay, here's the deal. Is there a speaker? Yeah. I said, okay, before the speaker starts, you go up to the speaker and you say, I do a lot of work on LinkedIn, and I do a lot with video. I'm curious if after you speak, I could come up to the stage and you and I could maybe have a little bit of dialogue and have you summarize two or three key points. I would put it on video. I would obviously mention you. and then I could put that out on video. Would that be a good thing to do? She said, wow, I've never heard that before. That's brilliant. And she did it, and it worked out really well. 

So there's so much, if you just the EQ point, if you just think EQ, if you think broadly, and not just, I'm going to go to this networking event and I'm going to go home, think broadly, here's one other point, and then we'll get to our bonus. you go to a networking event. You meet a few people at the networking event, and before that evening is over, you connect with them and you share some content. Now, if you connect with them that evening, let's say, the next day, they connect with you, then you share some content with them. It's so easy to do. So there's a lot of really good things you can do on LinkedIn that actually connect face to face that are really powerful.

Brynne Tillman: I'm going to, yes. And that really quickly because you just got my wheels going. And I love that you're doing that with the speaker. And if it's something that the speaker would want to promote, you can even invite them maybe to do a zoom and how excited you are about the upcoming event so you can help them fill the event. And when you are at that networking meeting, you can do selfie videos with other people. So. Oh my gosh, Jack, now my wheels are turning. We have to do a whole program just on how to do content around networking. I mean, that's brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

Jack Hubbard: We should. All right, so the next one is a bonus. because we talked about five, but we always want to exceed expectations every week here. This is one of my favorites, and it's becoming a favorite because it's so successful. Talk about polls.

Brynne Tillman: I love my polls. Love my polls. So, the reason I think polls are so amazing is because they're easy to do. They give you insights around what your prospects and clients are thinking, and they create triggers to start conversations. So be careful that you're not so obviously looking for discovery. Like, are you looking for capital in 2024? Yes. No, we don't want to pull like that, but we might say something like, if you are a business looking to grow, what are your number one initiatives? Number one, hiring more people. 

Number two, expanding our physical location. number three, investing in infrastructure. Number four, other sharing comments. Right. And so we call that leading to your solution, not leading with your solution. If the poll is, do you need money? Yes or no? That's leading with your solution. But if you talk about their goals and you can ascertain the people that might need to have a conversation about money, but it's not so obvious you're going to get a lot more people to vote now. Just kind of, an FYI, just because you post it doesn't mean they'll vote. It doesn't even mean they'll see it, FYI. So what does that actually mean for us? That means that we need to be proactive in getting that poll into the inbox of the people. We would like to vote on that. 

So this is a perfect opportunity if we want to re-engage people in our network. I click the little paper airplane and I click Jack Hubbard. And by the way, you can have up to ten at one time, blind copied. but I could send it individually and say, hey, jack just published a poll. I would love your one click vote. Once the poll closes, I'm happy to share the insights I gleaned from you and your peers. 

And so now he votes and so 80 other people vote. And I've got some real statistics and I can come back to Jack and say, as promised, I'd love to share with you a little bit about what I gleaned from this poll and what I see happening in the industry. If you are open to a call, let me know your preferred way of scheduling. If scheduling by calendar is easier for you, here's my link. And so that's like the process around that poll and how we take this amazing content that people are excited to vote on and engage on, more likely to take your call.

Brynne Tillman: And, and someone just posted this.Mary Melton. Mary Darren Melton. I can see her on our other screen, but she's coming up as, anonymous LinkedIn user here. So she was going to do a poll for customer feedback on the brand logo and what they like best. What are your thoughts on that?

Jack Hubbard: Yeah, I think it depends on why and it depends on what logos you put up there. I think you need to be real careful about other folks' brands. and do that. I might use it without logos. I might say, I don't know, grin. This is your area.

Brynne Tillman: I can jump in. I'm happy to. so you can't post an image and a poll at the same time. What I have seen done successfully is, if you say you have four choices and in one image you have number one, number two, number three, number four. And then next to that, you can do one of two things you can say. If number one, put a thumbs up and a picture of the thumbs up, if number two, put the little insights light bulb, if number three, put a heart, and then you have all these people reacting. So you've created your own little poll that's not an actual poll. And I've actually seen that do rather well.

Jack Hubbard: Excellent. And she's driving, so both hands on the wheel, please. I'm going to do a yes and to your poll, one of the things that people often ask me is why do I need all these connections? Well, here's why Brynne just mentioned it. If you are a first degree connection to somebody, you can actually send them that message through the paperclip. You can't if you're not a first degree connection. So it does a number of things when you are a first degree connection, so many more things that you can do. and it expands your second degree as well. So, not only with polls, but you can do that, as Bryn mentioned, with your thought leadership, with articles, with anything that you want to do. Well, this went fast. This was a fast 20.

Brynne Tillman: It was fast. Just as fun as the long ones, too.

Jack Hubbard: And next week is going to be fun, too, because you alluded to, recommendations. And one of the things I always want to know is, okay, when do I give them? Who do I give them to? How do I ask for them? Well, all those questions and more are going to be answered next week because Brynne's going to talk about getting and giving recommendations. That'll be fun, Brynne.

Brynne Tillman:Oh, these are always fun. I love hanging out with you.

Jack Hubbard:  It's a great time. So, thank you for joining us. Thanks to our sponsors, RelPro and Vertical IQ. We're here every Thursday, live, 11:00 central eastern time. If you have a topic that you would love us to cover, let us know. If you're a first degree connection, you can message either one of us. And if not, certainly send us an email to [email protected]. Or [email protected]. Great to see you, Brynne. We'll see you next week.

Brynne Tillman: Excellent, Jack, thanks.

Outro:
Thanks for joining us for Jack Rants with Brynne brought to you by our good friends at Vertical IQ and RelPro. We're live on LinkedIn every Thursday at noon Eastern time helping bankers turn connections into conversations. Don't miss an episode, visit themodernbanker.com/tmbpodcast. Leave us a review if you would. You can also listen to this program and the new Jack Rants with Modern Bankers on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google Play and I Heart Radio. We're on YouTube as well. Subscribe at https://www.youtube.com/@TheModernBanker. Finally, don't forget, make today and every day a great client day!

slash at the modern banker. Finally, don't forget, make today. It's every day a. Ah, great client day.