Episode 76 Sharing Valuable Content on LinkedIn

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 ledgers to laptops, typewriters to technology. One thing, however, remains the same banking. So people business and I'll be talking with those people that make banking grade here and Jack Rants with Modern Bankers.

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Jack Hubbard: Hello, everybody. Hey Brynne!

Brynne Tillman: Hey, Jack, How are you? 

Jack Hubbard: Well, good. It's another great sale linked on Thursday. And Jack Rant's with Brynne is here. We're very excited about that. You know, we finished yesterday. We had a Jack Rants with modern bankers and Thomas and Sarah were on. You got a list of the replay of this. Thomas is the CEO of Integra Bank out of Phenix.

It's a startup bank. It's about $5,060 million in assets bank. But they have some amazing things. The CEO club Integra 360, is an amazing software and we've got some great programs coming up. Ben, you devil next Wednesday at noon Eastern time. Chris Nichols the following week, Corey Pearlman the week after that, and Dave Brock the week after that.

So we got some really great people coming up. Jack rants with modern bankers every Wednesday, noon Eastern time. And then certainly there are replays as time goes along. But today we're going to talk about what I discussed with some of these folks, which is Trent and Brant. It's one of your favorite subjects, so why don't you riff on it to get started we'll we'll get into this.

Brynne Tillman: So content for LinkedIn and for social selling is very different than content generally. So there's lots of different content pictures from events, economic, you know, programs lot. There's lots and lots of different kinds of content, but social selling content needs to do five things. It needs to first resonate with the reader, the expected reader. It needs to create curiosity so that they want to dive in and it needs number three, it needs to get to teach them something new so resonate, create curiosity, teach them something new.

What you taught them needs to get them thinking differently about their current situation and ultimately create a compelling move, a compelling moment, moving them from spectator to engage. Right. Really, really important to do that. Now, again, not all your content has to do this. Some content is, you know, you're promoting a quote from someone else, right? And so you're getting engagement.

But if we want our content to be social selling content to start real sales conversations, we want to create those elements. But I do want to talk today because we're talking about sharing valuable content and it is just a riff on this for a second because value is in the eyes of the consumer or of that content. What we think is valuable may not translate to our buyers, to our prospects.

So there's a lot of social listening that has to happen, some research, what's happening inside of our prospects and what's happening with their clients. And so in order to really share valuable content, we first have to research. So I'll turn that over. 

Jack Hubbard: Well, let's, let's go. So you mentioned resonate so let's start with that you know I'm a big fan of Chief Marketing Officers in community banking and they have such power at their click clicker tips at their fingertips.

But one of the things I think they can help with and maybe you can discuss what you've seen is helping executives at the bank who aren't content creators or aren't content savvy. I think marketing has a key role in helping create and share content that really resonates with the buyer. And I'm disappointed that more senior executives of banks and more CEOs aren't engaging in this resignation. Importance of Content. Let's start there.

Brynne Tillman: That's a lot to unpack, but I love it. So there are a lot of different elements here. There is an economic outlook, right? So be here curating content. Let's start with are we sharing valuable curated content content from other places? But as bankers, there are things that are really valuable to us. We have to take a look at this curated piece of content and is this what my small business wants to consume?

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Is this what you know, if you're selling into manufacturing, is this something a manufacturing CFO would care about? Right. And so as we go out and curate content and develop content, we want to start with finding content that is meaningful to our prospect and then putting our own perspective. And this is where I feel like executives really come in.

What is their perspective on how this is happening? How does this affect the small businesses in banking? How does this affect them getting capital for things based on that economic outreach or the economic report? So I think there's that's the first thing is how these executives are putting their perspective around industry and curated content. If you are a community bank, look at content from your local chamber of commerce, though, that's often content.

So you may not think, well, you know, that's not really where I would get my thought leadership, but it is content most likely that your prospects want to consume. So consider these different sources and again, in some research on social listening, you'll start to see what content your prospects are consuming. The other piece is the original content, and this draft, I think is mostly what you've been talking about how do we download the brilliance of our executives?

How do we leverage what the banking executives know, how the community is being impacted, what the trends that are happening, and what their predictions are on certain things? Right. And what's going on and grabbing that thought leadership in a way that is relevant to your prospects is a great way to elevate the bank's voice. So one of the things I might recommend if you are a commercial banker, is to interview your executive. So for valuable content, what do you think, Jack?

Jack Hubbard: Yeah, you are going in exactly where I was headed to. If I'm a marketing professional in the bank, one of the things I want is I want to see the big kids' table and one of the ways to do that is to have visibility. So let's do a practical example of last month and hopefully, they'll start reducing, but let's say they don't in April or May, the Fed has going to make some decisions.

When they make those decisions, I'm going to be on the dance card of my CEO. I want to get on their calendar and I want to say to that CEO, all right, The Fed meeting is this time they're going to make comments and they're going to either raise they won't keep the rates the same or reduce. Do you have 10 minutes to have me interview you with them on my phone or my laptop or desktop or tablet or just on audio so that I can get a few comments and all my questions are going to relate to how will that affect our customers?

What are some things that I'll go back and edit, I'll let you hear it and we can do it in audio, We can do it in video, we can do it in text, we can do it in a lot of different kinds of ways. And that's where a marketing professional is so smart. We need to take advantage as marketing people of those interview opportunities that you bring up.

And I want to come back to the interview because there's another way that you can interview a prospect for content that I'd like to talk about. But the other thing from a marketing perspective is, you know, where do you where do I get content? This is where whoever owns the company page on LinkedIn, the bank company page, that is not a job board.

That is something where someone can post content marketing people who help whoever and I can go to that company page and I can look and see if there's content there that it's on the if it's on the company page, it's approved and I can repost that to my network. So you make some great points on the interviews. I think that's really lacking and it's absolutely so easy to do it. 

Brynne Tillman: Yeah. And you know, and I do, I love doing that internally, but we can also interview externally. What if you were interviewing, you know, manufacturing companies in the greater Chicago area and that and every week, whether again, you could do this on Zoom, you could do a livestream.

We're doing a live stream now. If you were seeing a podcast, it was on Livestream. But you know, there are a lot of mediums to do this. And I think doing a Zoom is great. If you can get in person, I prefer that relationship, that relationship-building opportunity, or maybe you get in person and that's where you invite them to the Zoom interview, right?

But you want to make sure you're still kneecap to kneecap if you can. And you know, and now we're interviewing the trends of small businesses. So other small businesses want to know what their colleagues are saying. Maybe you interview the leaders of the Chambers of Commerce and then talk about what's happening. So I love interviewing the brilliance inside the bank.

But let's also capture some of the brilliance in our community. What ultimately happens from there as well is you're going to start to get inbound. You're going to get small businesses that are now going to ask for you to interview them. And if you do this consistently, the prospects start to come to you. And I find that to be such a fascinating kind of extra that comes out of it.

Jack Hubbard: Well, I'll give you a perfect example of that. So my friend Neil Stevens at Oconee State Bank down in Georgia took a branch and it cost him a few thousand dollars, the attic of a branch, and he turned it into a remarkable studio. And what they do is exact only what you suggest. They invite prospects and clients to the studio.

And Neil, the president of the bank interviews them. He loves expanding the interviewer, by the way. And then they put that out as content. Now they've hired a producer who is there and helps with editing and sound and things like that. And I've been on a show and it's it's really an amazing thing. Didn't cost a lot of money to do this, but there is a commitment there and there is a real position that if I'm a CEO or a senior executive I can interview somebody.

A that's impressive to the prospect and B, it helps the prospect in the community and see it helps the community. So there's no loser here. It's an investment. So you need to make that investment and we need to have a level of commitment. I think the other thing I'd love to have you comment on, Brynne, I know we can go in a lot of different directions with this is the importance of consistency in content.

What I see a lot of bankers do is they'll post something, especially when they get promoted or they change jobs or whatever, and I'll go to their profile and they haven't posted anything for four months except for their change in jobs or their promotion. Talk about the importance of consistency in putting out content. 

Brynne Tillman: So there are a lot of reasons for consistency. I'm going to start with further out and then I'll come back in. But number one, when you first connect with someone, they will see your content in the first two weeks that you're newly connected. So if we want to nurture and consistently connect with people, we need to be consistently putting our content so that we're nurturing our new connections.

So, you know, a perfect example, I just recently saw this amazing post. I said it just was an AI fabulous thing and I sent it out to her and one of our friends and he's like, this is a friend of mine. And I knew that they were talking about Oklahoma. How many people live in Oklahoma anyway? So I say this is a friend of mine.

How did you see this? They said, Well, it was in my news feed. And then I looked and I had just connected with this guy. So I've never seen his stuff before. But because we just connected, I'm now seeing his stuff. So if you are not consistently putting stuff out there, you're missing the opportunity to nurture some of these new connections.

So that's number one. Number two, not everyone is going to read all your stuff. They're just not. But if you are in front of them a few times a week, you will see your face. They see the engagement. And I'll tell you, one of the greatest things I find is LinkedIn will say Jack Hubbard commented on Brynne's post.

Well, when he does that, that's also in the news feed. And so you know that his comment is driving more visibility to our posts and we are expanding our network into the network of people that are engaging in our content. Number three, it's a wonderful way to start a conversation. So typically, I would say always have a poll open that you can ask someone to engage on if you want to.

If you have some good content, you can get it into their inbox and say, Hey, I love your perspective on this. It's easy to do, especially Jack. You know, you mentioned that if it's on the company page or even the website, just start there. Start with that content. But also if you are a member of a Chamber of Commerce, just keep your eye on what events are happening.

So that's not social selling content. And as I said, there's lots of content, but you can post an event for that you're going to for a, you know, networking opportunity, and then you can send it in the inbox of people in your area and say, Hey, I'm going to be at this event by chance. Are you going to be there?

I'd love to see you. It's been a while. So you need to always have that to start those conversations. 

Jack Hubbard: Yeah, no doubt there is a misconception. I think that content takes hours and hours to do. You want to be careful because that's your reputation out there. But it doesn't take hours. There are all kinds of things that you can do.

For example, one of our sponsors, Vertical IQ, has just come out with brand new localized industry data and they're going to do on April 11th, which is next week, they're going to do a podcast or a webinar where people can learn a little bit more about that. Now, if I know if I'm Jack Hubbard, I'm going to send that to some bankers and I'm going to say this might be a great podcast for you to listen to me or I'll put it out on LinkedIn.

That's content. You don't have to write anything except you put it out there. Maybe make a quick comment and tag a couple of people, and boom, you're done. It doesn't take a long time to do that. Now, you've talked about resonating. We've talked about create, which can be photos or polls or whatever the case might be. Short videos you've talked about educate.

So I want to talk about education for a second. But I don't want to leave this topic before I talk about commentating. One of the things that you talk about is a 10 to 1 ratio. So I'm not going to steal any of your thunder. What's a 10 to 1 ratio?

Brynne Tillman: You can take the thunder away anytime. But anytime but a 10 to 1 ratio, you should be engaging ten times more than your share. That sounds like a lot, but an engagement is a reaction or comment really. Basically. I mean, there's some other things, but that might be a vote on a poll. But if you can engage ten times more than you share the people that you're engaging with will start to see your content.

So we have a little control over who is seeing that content, and we can do that easily by engaging with them. I'm going to throw in a few kinds of ten-tangent tips. If there are people that you want to engage with, go on to their LinkedIn. If you're a first-degree connection, go on to their profile. There's a little bell you can ring that if you are not a connection, you have to go in and follow them and the bell will appear and you can then click that.

LinkedIn will alert you in notifications. Most of the time when they share content. And so if you do that with enough folks, all you have to do is go into your notifications every day and those are the people you're going to engage with. So it creates those opportunities all in one place. So you can engage ten times in under 10 minutes.

Jack Hubbard: Well, and isn't that the point? Because one of the things people always complain about with content is it takes so much time. But if you do a 10 to 1 ratio and if you're going to post something, it doesn't take you a long time to make five comments, post something, and then go make five additional comments.

I asked Richard Bliss, who is a real expert at LinkedIn. He wrote a terrific book, at least is going to be on my show on May 8th. One of the things I said to him was, okay, Richard, I have two options here. I can only do one. I post content or comment on somebody else. He said, By far, hands down, the most important thing is to comment and that helps you.

The commenter. It helps the comment, he helps everybody and it takes a lot less time. And I like your idea of the notifications because too often what happens is people are trying to scroll through their feed to find something to comment on. That takes a lot of time. Now I do some of that, but not much anymore. I always go to my notifications because there are always plenty of people there who are posting things that I can comment on.

All right, let's go back to educate. What do you mean? What do you know? I want to post content that educates. How do I do that? And that sounds hard. 

Brynne Tillman: Well, so one of the things I would say is to start to capture your genius when you are out in the world and your clients or your prospects are asking questions and you're answering them, that's probably education, I would think.

And if one prospect is interested in that, many others will look at your email answers to clients. So the key is to start thinking about what am I doing and saying out in the physical world and capture what I will. I have on my phone, I have synched my notes on my phone to my computer, so if I take a note on my phone, I can get it on my computer.

So if I have an idea or I share something or I'm on the call with someone and I say something, as soon as I get off, I will take a note. And typically enough at least to remind you what I talked about. Also, so many of our calls are on, teams on Zoom. If it's appropriate, ask if can I record this answer.

You don't have to have the client talk at all. Just click record. You talk about it, you've got it. There are just so many ways to capture your genius, and that really typically will lead to content that other people will care about. 

Jack Hubbard: Wow. That's just that's outstanding. So let's go back. We've talked about resonate, create, educate, and commentate, which I sort of made up, but there are two others. Remind us of the other two of the five that you talked about. 

Brynne Tillman: Well so four social selling content, not all content. So a lot of what we did will work for social selling content. What we've taught them needs to get them thinking a little differently about their current banking relationship or their current solution or I didn't I never really thought about getting a bridge loan for this kind of thing or I never thought about it, that's interesting.

Why isn't my banker talking about that? And then the last one is creating a compelling moment, and this is where we're moving them from spectator to engager. So we used to say, lurker to engage or I'm trying to change it. Someone told me that they thought that was creepy. I like it, but so I'm sticking with Lurker engagement for a minute.

So it's just more natural for me. So we can't have a conversation with someone until we know who they are. And so to start a conversation we need to create a compelling moment That means that they liked, they commented, they shared, they reposted it sometimes we'll get someone that reposts something. Maybe they accepted your connection request or asked you to connect, but they've come out of the woodwork and that's what we have to do with our content.

Whether we're asking them to engage and encouraging them to engage, or it's just naturally engaging. We cannot start a conversation with a lurker or a spectator. They have to do something for us to know they're there. And so that call to action is really important. I want to talk about one more thing with you, but here's what I think I heard you say, because I make up words, my wife doesn't like it, but maybe that's why I do it.

Jack Hubbard: You said you didn't say it this way. In every situation, resonate content that resonates, creates, educates, differentiates. you're making I'll do it again. Start over in your way. Resonate, create, educate, differentiate, and commentate on mine. And the last one is moments, right? So make those moments. Sorry. Make those moments when you share content or comment on something, make it a moment that's going to be memorable.

Look, you're not, you know, let's make sure do something that's that's going to really help people. And it's easy to do because you have expertise in that. But there's one more that I want to talk about and it's collaboration. LinkedIn fairly recently put together a series of collaborative articles. They are very easy to find, number one, and you'll help us with that.

But number two, if you start to comment on these, collaborate to have articles. When you go to your LinkedIn home page, you'll actually see a box that we're linked. It says in its algorithm, that this person started right in the collaborative articles. Maybe you'd like to comment on this. I always try to do that. 

You can win a top, top-of-voice bad knockabout collaborative article. And you have them. I mean, you've done that. Our friend has done them. So talk about the importance of collaborative articles and what they are collaborative articles.

Brynne Tillman: This is a different badge, right? So collaborative articles are where we engage on air generated articles and comments, this will attract a lot of attention. The content does go into your typical activity, but it will ultimately get you a badge for top voice in a particular subject. So yeah, highly recommend doing that. So we're very excited there.

Jack Hubbard: Awesome. Well, good. 

Brynne Tillman: I just signed to Jack and you're going to laugh. And then we've got to add some of your words to this I'm in the middle of an e-book for us, which is the nine right now. I have the 9/8 of the sales process and I assassinate, educate, validate, navigate, dedicate, activate, advocate, calculate, and graduate.

Jack Hubbard: So now you've got to add your collaboration. We've got so many more to add to this. Now differentiate commentary moment. So there's a lot of them. The fact is, Brynne, that so many folks are passive members of LinkedIn. Being active is really important and being active and content doesn't simply mean getting up in the morning looking at five articles and clicking like lazy likes lackluster or it is very easy to do that.

But it's more important to our readers and to the author for you to go in and make a few comments. That's one way to share content. And we've talked about a number of others today. Well, other than my horrible faux pas, this was a pretty good piece of good. So good. It's not the last stick I'll make today.

So I don't feel so bad about that. No, no, it's all good. I'm sorry. I just we're. We're excited for a big reveal. Okay. There you go stay tuned. Well, great. So we've got we've got a number of great programs coming up, too. We're going to talk about polls and a number of other things. And every Thursday we do this and we love engagement.

We like people to ask questions. And if you if you do, great. If you see the replay and you want to repost it and share it with somebody else, please do. We always try to provide a lot of practical help. It's always good to see you on a Thursday, Brynne.

Brynne Tillman: It's great. Thanks, Jack. So much fun. 

Jack Hubbard: See you next week. Bye, guys.

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Outro

Thanks for joining us for Jack Rants with Brynne, brought to you by our good friends at Vertical IQ and Real Pro. We're live on LinkedIn every Thursday at noon Eastern time, helping bankers turn connections into conversations. Don't miss an episode. Visit the modern Bankrate.com slash team a podcast. Leave us a review, if you would. You can also listen to this program and the new Jack Rabbits with modern bankers on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, and iHeartRadio. We're on YouTube as well. Subscribe at YouTube.com slash at the Modern Banker. Finally, don't forget to to make today and every day a great client day.