Refining Your Stories Through LinkedIn | Stories With Traction Podcast

SHOW NOTES:

EPISODE MENTIONED: Stories on a Massive Stage with Rachel Simon can be listened to HERE.

SUMMARY: In this episode, Rachel Simon and Matt Zaun talk about how you can refine your stories through posting on LinkedIn.

RACHEL SIMON BIO: Rachel is the Founder & CEO of Connect the Dots Digital, where she focuses on LinkedIn corporate strategy and how companies can utilize the platform with their employees for maximum results.

For more info, check out Rachel here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/raksimon/

MATT ZAUN BIO: Matt is an award-winning speaker and storyteller who empowers organizations to attract more clients through the art of strategic storytelling. Matt’s past engagements have catalyzed radical sales increases for over 300 organizations that range from financial institutions to the health and wellness industry.

Matt shares his expertise in persuasion with executives, sales professionals, and entrepreneurs, who he coaches on the art of influence and how to leverage this for profits and impact.

For more info, check out Matt Zaun here:
https://www.storieswithtraction.com

*Below is an AI-generated transcript, which may contain errors

Let's talk about sharing your stories on LinkedIn. One of my favorite topics to talk about last time that I unpacked elements of this topic was with Rachael Simon. If you did not check out that episode I highly recommend you do so it'll be in the show notes pause this episode go listen to the last episode with Rachel Simon this episode will make a lot more sense to you. But in the last episode, we unpacked elements of getting over the fear of posting on LinkedIn. We talked about AI and what artificial intelligence will mean regarding content creation. In addition, we talked about how simply posting on social media actually refines our messages actually makes us better public speakers, so go check out that episode, but I'm very excited to bring Rachel back. I am unbelievably grateful that she agreed to do another episode. I very much appreciate her time. For those of you who might not be familiar with Rachel Rachel Simon is the founder and CEO of connect the dots digital where she focuses on LinkedIn corporate strategy and how companies can utilize the platform with their employees for maximum results. Welcome back, Rachel.
Matt, nice to be here.
Thanks again. I appreciate you being here. I love unpacking this stuff with you. I felt like the last time we had met it was just a very interesting conversation to say the least whenever you're talking about AI and getting over fear and public speaking in general, right. It's very interesting, especially since the conversation is a LinkedIn conversation, right? But how in the world do you get to that? And you know, as you know, Rachel, there's a lot of psychology that goes into marketing, branding, and really building a community so to speak on LinkedIn. So I very much appreciate our conversations.
Always. They're always great. I love them too.
So I want to dive a little bit deeper. And we started last time we spoke we started to touch on the ideas of evergreen content. So I want to I want to explore that a little bit more. And for anyone listening that doesn't know that terminology or maybe they think they know what it means. But you know, you may have a different definition. Can you just let us know like what is your picture of evergreen content? What does that mean to you?
Yeah, I look at Evergreen content as those topics that are going to always be a part of your brand narrative. Right? So I'll use myself as an example. Evergreen content for me is all going to revolve around LinkedIn aspects of your LinkedIn profile right headlines about section it's going to talk about evergreen content is going to be how do you download your LinkedIn network? What are the elements of creating a content strategy because those are always going to be a part of the way I position my my brand, my company story the services that I offer, and whatnot. So what are those pieces that never change? And just get refined over time?
I love that pieces that never change and you said get get refined over time. Yeah, get refined over time. I love that. I think people should pay more attention to that. Because yes, when we when we do something initially we want to continue to refine it and make it better. I mean, isn't that the whole point of business in general is to continue to deliver Paramount value to our clients. I love that. So I want to share with everyone a little secret and this legitimately is a secret. I do not tell a lot of people this but I guess everyone's gonna know now. So I'm very big on building what I like to refer to as a content machine. Okay, so I talked extensively about story bags. On the show the importance of a story bank, what it is how to implement it in business. There's an element to it that I refer to as a content machine. And what that is, to me is creating such an incredible content machine that fuels your sales pipeline process. Okay, and I do think that there needs to be a marriage of marketing and sales. It is mind boggling to me, especially when I go in and speak to different companies that their marketing department and sales department are at each other's throats like it is mind boggling to me that there's major competition between those two departments. I mean, there needs to be a marriage of marketing and sales or you're gonna ask them a hard time in the marketplace for sure. But for me, a content machine I like to yes have new creative thoughts. 100% And when I do have a new thought that pops into my head that has incredible business theme intertwined, I like to share that. But I also like that evergreen content piece that stays consistent. Okay, so if you were to see my content machine, my content bank, you would see tons and tons and tons and tons of content pieces that would be considered evergreen content back to your point, Rachel, and some of that stuff doesn't change. Here's the beauty of it. There are things that happen every single year that should not come as a surprise to people. Okay, they just shouldn't right like for me, my wife's birthday comes the same time. Every year. So guess what, on my wife's birthday, I post a story about how she helped me in business. That's a piece of my evergreen content every year for people that follow me you will know my wife's birthday you will see a story regarding how she helped me in business. This also is really important to recognize regarding holidays, right on the last episode, we were talking how we met up in Atlanta, Martin Luther King Jr. That the day happens every year. He was born in Atlanta, I had the opportunity to check out his child childhood home I literally stood in the room that MLK was born in that is a part of my evergreen content. I love sharing that I learned a ton from MLK for it's from a sheer public speaking perspective over the years that I've used it numerous different stories. So that goes in my content bag my content machine that I've created as an evergreen evergreen piece, and leaders are missing out on that think about all the stories they could be building out their content machine with with evergreen content pieces that happen over and over and over again.
Yes, I mean, absolutely. And again let's just think about it from a really simple and achievable way. So, you know, I recommend when I'm working with clients, and they're just getting started with content to post four times a month, one post a week, because people get overwhelmed with this idea of posting content. But when I asked them Can you think of four things to talk about in a month? They're like, Oh, four things sounds so overwhelming. And almost always one of those four things is something like what you're talking about. It's a holiday, it's an annual whatever. It's you know, if your organization if you're a nonprofit, it's whatever that day that relates to your mission that comes across every year, right? So there's gonna be one of those four things in almost every single month that you can pull right from the calendar and then you can use it again the next year, and just tweak it a little bit. So it should be able to break that down. And if if you can think of one of the four things is evergreen that may be one of the other content topics is something related specifically to what your business does. And you can continue to refine that over time. And the thing about LinkedIn that's pretty nice. Is that unlike, you know, as much as I love Facebook memories, because they're delightful when I see these hilarious things that I posted 10 years ago, of my kids LinkedIn doesn't send us memories. They're not sending us. Hey, Matt posted this a year ago today, remember? So nobody remembers what you posted six months ago, let alone a year ago. Just reuse that content and just change it up a little bit.
Yeah, so let's talk about the numbers that you just laid out for us. So you said four times a month, which obviously equates to once a week. And I liked that. You mentioned that typically one of those four tends to be an evergreen content piece. Okay. So I want everyone to think about the math with that is that over time? That's how you build out this amazing content machine that I'm referring to. So in the last episode with Rachel I had mentioned actually, Rachel, you mentioned it too, that you started getting active and I started getting active in late of 2019. For me it was September of 2019. So I've had 2020 21 or 2020 2122. I've had three years of building out my content machine. So now all that evergreen content pouring in. So for me and yes, I don't want to scare people four times a month. I think that's a great place. To start. I definitely take Rachel's recommendation, but for me, it's, it's inconceivable for me now that low of an amount because of all the content that I built out and people will get there too. If they take Rachel's advice, and they keep working it they're going to start to build that content. And this is going to lead to even building a better company culture. So for every C suite leader that is listening to this, think about everything that happens that your team members get excited about one of the things that pops into my head. I don't know why this is popping into my head. I just think it's something that is an evergreen content piece is that bring your Son and Daughter to Work Day. Okay, it happens every every year. What a great way to capture that moment. And now you can use that moment again and again and again. You can talk about comparisons where your team has grown. You can highlight certain team members that obviously you need to get permission if children are involved in these posts, but there's so much that can build from that. So for me personally, I have a post ready to go on bring your Son and Daughter to Work Day bomb. It's a picture of my family. It's how I bring them into my business goals like that as a piece of evergreen content that I would miss out on if I didn't start the work now to build that out. As well. Rachel like what else can leaders do regarding that? Yeah, I
think thinking about what are those pieces that again, do happen every year. So company milestones, anniversaries. You know, my company's celebrated its fifth birthday in the beginning of 2023. And I posted about it and you know, that is content that people get excited about. They want to celebrate your wins. They want to be like That's amazing. Congratulations. You know, lots of small businesses don't make it that far. So what's a company milestone that you could share? That happens every single year? Or maybe it's beefing up your team, right and everyone loves a shout out. I mean, evergreen content might doesn't have to be recycling the same post it might be every the first Tuesday of the month. I always do a shout out to one of my team members to show how much I appreciate them. celebrating successes supporting wins. There's just an endless number of things that can be in there shouting out clients, client wins case studies. I mean, but not just sharing a boring case study like tell the story with it. But thinking about what are all the various things you want to be pushing out. And then you know planet planet. And think about where you can pop in that content that does come up again and again in your plan.
I love that and congratulations on the five years. That's amazing. And also think that you can tweak that for your six, right? Tweak it and then people are like oh my gosh, that's amazing. That's incredibly well written but it might have taken you two seconds the next time around because he already have it written that's the beauty of it. And I I always found this amazing. I love studying especially incredible orators. I love unpacking elements of whether they were former presidents or even top CEOs that they could just get up on stage and they can really capture an audience. A lot of that goes back to writing and if you've ever read books about famous CEOs and former presidents, they take copious notes. They're constantly writing it refines their skill set regarding connecting. Same thing is true with the content that were posting. The more you post, the more you write, the more you're going to refine. You know, I'm almost bewildered when I'll go in and I'll talk to executives, and they always talk about how agonizing it is to write and how, man they just they don't want to go to that meeting and try to motivate people. Well, one, they're not motivated themselves, which is a whole other. It's a whole other topic of conversation and a red flag. But if they're struggling to write, they're struggling because it's not part of their habit. Once you continue to do this, it gets easier and easier and easier and you're fine those skills. My youngest son who's learning to ride a bike right now. One day he'll be doing the tricks on the bike, but he needs to get on the bike and ride it to start and there's so many C suite that they just they fail miserably when it comes to riding and then they wonder why they can't have an engaging talk in meetings and it's so frightening for them. Well, part of it is what better way to get out there time and time again by focusing on these pieces that we're talking about. Just starting with the for a month. I love that.
Yeah, it's funny, you know, I always think about and I'm glad you brought up sort of the frustration piece and I have a list of topic, post topic ideas that I keep. So I don't forget them because sometimes ideas pop into your head and then you lose them. And one of the topics I've just had on my list for a while is the power of frustration. Right? And it's something I think that we we kids are really good at it. Otherwise no one would ever learn how to walk. I mean, you know how remember watching your kids learn how to walk, and they stand up and they fall down and then they stand up again and they fall down or they fall flat on their face and they cry and then they they try again. And I think as adults we forget that frustration is actually really motivating a we learn a lot from it. So that yes, putting out content that doesn't land it is super frustrating. But what's what is what can we learn from that? So that the next time it's a little bit more successful, and we feel a little bit more confident with what we're putting out into to our audience. Yeah, I
love that power of frustration. I think it ties into something that you've mentioned to me about the importance of showing up right and even kind of leaning into that frustration and showing up again and again, even if you're not seeing instant results. So do you just want to talk about just the sheer importance of showing up?
Yeah, I mean, like ever. Your listenership I'm sure they're all amazing people. But we're all really easy to forget, if we don't remind people that we exist to be like, hey, remember me? And you know that this comes like this happens all the time where someone will come across one of your social media feeds whether you're on Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram or wherever you spend time and you're like, oh my god, I totally forgot about that person. It's because you're just not seeing them every day. It's really hard to forget about somebody when you see them all the time. So the more you when you show up whether that is again, posting your weekly post and then logging on to LinkedIn and doing and commenting on other people's content. That's a great way to show up without having to create content every single day because for a lot of us and I I am not in that category, I give you a tremendous amount of credit for being able to do posts every day. But you can still show up on LinkedIn consistently. By posting once a week and by commenting a lot. And people will remember you you want to be top of mind. You don't want to be forgotten because you've disappeared off of the news feed and so just that simple way of being like, Hello, here I am, so that when people, the best thing to me is when I have people come up to me, you know, I meet like, in the real world, and they're like, Oh, I see you all the time on LinkedIn. I'm like, awesome. That's amazing.
That's awesome. I love that. And what better way to warm prospects up than showing up like that ties in that sales pipeline piece that we're talking about like this. There are a lot of teams out there that their leaders aren't thinking enough about this where they're still doing old archaic marketing practices where they could be doing content pieces and something as simple as just commenting on a prospects post. Storing the conversation I'm not saying comment and then you know, pitch them but common starting to build somewhat of a relationship and then tying them into what you do. There's there's so much missed opportunity in that regard across the country with companies that they're not empowering their sales teams to do this. That all goes back to showing up again and again. And the marriage of marketing and sales.
Yeah, and you know, what is it like? You have to, like, touch somebody's like, get in front of them like 10 times before they're ready to move to the next step. And I care and their steps are all around there about like how many touch points it takes. Well, LinkedIn is a constant way to be getting in front of people. If you do it the right way. Right. We're not pitching them in the DMS we're not we are putting out content that is relevant and relatable. And commenting in a meaningful way in to the people who we want to be seen by. And you know, this is a strategy that works great. If you're trying to sell your product or service or you're a job seeker. There's a company you want to work for. start commenting on the posts of people that work for that company. You know, there's a prospect that you want to be working with. You want to sell you want them to buy your services, start engaging with their content, so that when you do send them a connection request, they know who you are already. It's very easy for them to say of course I'm gonna connect with Matt, he always comments on my posts. I really appreciate that. There's
so much strategy you could build around this you know, just to use your example of someone looking for a new position or a career advancement. Imagine they comment on someone's post again and again and again, not in a creepy weird way. But just consistently they have that curiosity they start more of a back and forth of engagement. And then a few weeks later, they say hey, do you mind hopping on a 15 minute call? I'd love to talk more about your company. Learn more about what you have going on. They get on the call and it's Hey, do you know the hiring manager is for this one position. I really appreciate seeing about your culture, I think it'd be a good fit. And then they make that connection like there there is a lot of legitimacy to the strategy of that. Instead of picking up the phone and blindly calling a company or putting in a resume that's not even probably going to get read. There's a lot of strategy regarding what you're saying RACHEL So I very much appreciate you sharing that. Yeah,
absolutely. My My dad always used to say you know, it's it's it's who you know, are you give us a big network guy. And the beauty is on LinkedIn, it's that we actually have a lot of power to to be to do that for ourselves, right? We can create that ability to be the person that people want to know. By simply showing up consistently 100%
And I love I love the consistency. I also like talking about the intentionality behind it. I don't want that to get missed. I do think there's a difference between passion versus profit. What I mean by that is there is a little bit of a psychological game or not a little bit, a lot that I want people to recognize. So obviously LinkedIn is in the business of making money so they will do everything they possibly can to protect their entity. They are very focused on tweaking the algorithm that fits their needs. And rightly so right. They're in business. With that said, what ends up happening is people start getting sucked into the dopamine hit where they just start randomly posting or commenting to get that spike of dopamine. There's a ton of research surrounding social media. And dopamine that I could direct people to. If you're interested, shoot me a message and I'll send you all kinds of material regarding the psychology of social media. So the danger in this was getting sucked into the I need this to make me feel better. Stroke my ego, I mean, fill in whatever you want, and they get away from strategy and that could hurt credibility. It could hurt their brand. So I do want people to be mindful of this. I want them to be intentional. They need to make sure it doesn't really tie into who they are their brand is it really tied to the authenticity we talked about? Ai on the last episode that we did. I mean, you could use AI to crank out all kinds of content pieces for you that have nothing to do with your industry with what you do with you know for software for content putting out in the world. perspective, it's great, but doesn't really tie into your mission, your values, your beliefs. So that's what I would challenge everyone listening to really evaluate is what kind of strategy are you bringing to the table if you truly want to bring in business you have to have a strategy surrounding it. Yeah,
I think that people do get sucked into the we'd like to refer to them as vanity metrics, right? Oh, I got 10,000 views on my post. But, you know, what does that actually mean? We definitely want to get eyeballs on our content, but I'd rather get meaningful comments from people who potentially can either be referral partners or targets for me then have just a bunch of views of random people that are never going to be my customer. So you're really thinking about what those what's most important to you when it comes to you know, your the way your content is delivering, you know, and what people people kind of are always looking for the easy button. That's why they lean into tools like aI they, you know, do things like engagement pods, you know, where people are all buying into a group and agreeing to comment on each other's posts. While that might get you a lot of views on your posts, it's not necessarily getting you the right views. So really thinking about how do you balance those two and I think the passion and the profit is a good way of doing it right. We don't want to just willy nilly put stuff out there it needs to be for a specific purpose and and be within your brand. I mean, you and I have lots of great LinkedIn friends in common and then they you know, like Michelle Griffin, who you know, she's like always comes top of mind when it comes to branding for me and you know, it has to be within your brand. Otherwise it confuses people. You don't want to be confusing would be like if coke suddenly had a can that was blue. Is this Pepsi but it has the coke logo I don't understand, which isn't
for sure. Yeah. And it kind of goes into almost the popularity content. piece. So I see this more and more where people are so into the followership. And I do think there's something to be said about it showing relevance, but at some point, it could really get people away from what they need to be doing, you know, the popularity contest, it almost like reminds me of like high school where you have certain tables and who's the most popular? And it's like, is that really getting you what you want business wise. And I see this all the time, especially with current events, and I want people to really recognize this and grab a hold of it. Just because something's happening news wise doesn't necessarily mean you need to talk about it. Because it might not tie into your brand might not find anything. I see this all the time when people were they will jump on a bandwagon and they will post something they'll share a story but that story doesn't actually connect to their target market. And that is a really dangerous game to play. It causes confusion, like you said that Bluecoat cam just causes a lot of brand confusion. So highly recommend people focus on the strategy. Yeah,
I think sometimes getting an I mean, I I see this all the time too, you know companies feel like something big is happening newsworthy and oh, I need to I it's gonna look bad if I don't say something. But sometimes, depending on what that thing is, it may not be helping you to say something you can you can support things that are happening. In the world current events wise, but in other ways, right. You can comment on other people's content. You can share a news story, but sometimes it's better just to take a step back and be quiet. Read. For
sure for sure. So I won't give specific examples, but I did see a company several months ago share a story of a celebrity that unexpectedly passed away the way they share the story and the details of it. I can tell you based on what I know did not connect to their prospects in any way, shape, or form. And I have to think someone thought it was appropriate to jump on the bandwagon of this is what everyone's talking about this one celebrity that unfortunately passed away. We need to put out the statement. It had nothing to do with their industry. It had no relevance whatsoever to the product. Or service. I can guarantee within connect to their prospects, especially based on some like comments that I read. So you storytelling is unbelievably powerful. It can also be dangerous because of its heightened sense of power. You need to make sure that your words are truly connecting with your target audience. I appreciate you sharing that Rachel.
Yeah, and I think that that gets into the you know, the balancing those two things because while jumping on the bandwagon of something trending might get you eyeballs. Again, those are those aren't always necessarily the right ones or are going to serve you in the long term. So it's just like really thinking about what what makes the most sense for me. You know, if I am showing up consistently and let's say I am doing four posts a month, I want to use those really strategically, as I start to build up my content bank and my confidence in posting and I think that those two pieces go hand in hand, right? We're building up our content that we have, that we're creating, and the more we post the more confident we are in putting it out there.
Yeah, it's really important that that strategic aspect. I was actually unpacking this with a mutual friend Erin Geiger not too long ago or you'd mentioned that you were actually on her podcast, highly recommend that I had the opportunity to go on her podcast. It was a lot of fun. She is masterful at copywriting and writing in general and I used to throw out this term ICP all the time I see p ideal client persona she actually stretch push me to stretch beyond that she added a C so it's ICP slash C ideal client persona slash community. So the stories that we're sharing, are we actually sharing them strategically, bacteria point Rachael to our community. When I saw regarding this one post I'm talking about with it didn't connect to the community. So I give a very real example that I'm sure a lot of people might recognize. I'm not I'm not belittling this person. Obviously this person is in many ways a marketing genius. This individual has done masterfully well when it comes to social media. So
people might recognize I'm not I'm not
I'm referring to as Gary Vaynerchuk phenomenal I've read his books I there's a lot that can be said. about him. Good, bad, ugly, multiple different ways. Gary Vaynerchuk though I personally view him as a marketing genius in many ways. I feel like he has dominated the social media space in a big big way. He does not communicate to my target community. Okay, so my my community, my ICP slash C would be more readers of Seth Godin, and Malcolm Gladwell. That's really important for me to recognize because if I start talking like Gary Vaynerchuk, and I start sharing stories like Gary Vee, that's going to alienate my audience. So we need to be very cognizant of does this person does this topic really tiny as stories we want to be sharing?
I think that's a really, really great example because there are creators that have massive followings that just don't that don't speak to every audience. And I mean, you know, Gary, these a great one, you know, I've never, I've never been, you know, gotten found a way at an entry point into his content. It just doesn't do anything for me. I recognize that he's got a massive following and is hugely successful. But you know, I would fall into that category of I'm not his audience, and that's fine. So if I suddenly started, you know, using him as an example of the kind of content and the content style to share that would be inauthentic with who I am.
So I appreciate myself I'm actually laughing because I recently had a conversation I was talking about PR with someone and this person she actually said to me, she said don't fall into the Gary Vee trap and what she had said was exactly back to your point. Sometimes we see someone doing exceptionally well. They have a huge massive mind boggling if you will, audience and following to backup what they're doing. But the Gary Vee trap was she said if I started talking like Gary Vee, my whole business would have collapsed. He's like I can't get on stage and started throwing out F bombs and start being bombastic in my communication. So we have to know the community what we're trying to speak to. Absolutely.
It's so funny. My I'm in a networking group, and the guy who runs it is is basically every other word out of his mouth is is the F word. That's just his brand. That's who he is. And so when I tried to recruit people to come into to check out a meeting, it's a great group, awesome business, you know, business leaders. Lots of small business owners. I always kind of give them that caveat. If you have a problem with profanity, this is not the place for you. Sure. I mean, and it's a good way of thinking about it is that everybody isn't going to resonate with every one. So be who you are and authentically put yourself out there because what is that brands, your vibe is your tribe, but like you're gonna, you've got to attract the people who get you authentically by just showing up as yourself. Sure.
No, I really, really appreciate myself that is so so important to recognize for sure. Again, I very much appreciate your time. I do want to be respectful of your time. I know you have a lot going on. So thank you again, a lot that we can pull from this this episode from this conversation. I think there were three specific ones that stood out to me that I don't want to be lost with everyone listening is the first thing is right out of the gate. You talked about that evergreen content piece. And really it becomes part of your signature stories you had mentioned you want the evergreen content to be part of your narrative. You want to continue to tweak it but you want it to be pieces of who you are. Right? You can still refine it, but it's really part of who you are. The second thing I took away was just the element of strategically starting setting aside four times a month, which obviously equates to once a week and just starting the process because as you do that, based on what you said Rachel, people will quickly find that typically one out of those four pieces are evergreen content pieces. That they could start to build out their content bank with. And then the third piece I just really appreciate the verbiage of power of frustration doing it anyway, sometimes we get frustrated but we just need to do it anyway and continue to show up and as we show up focused on our community. So all in all, I got a ton out of us, Rachel, thank you again for your time. I very much appreciate it. If anyone wants to get more information on you and what you do, where's the best place they can go to get that information?
They can find me on LinkedIn. Feel free to connect just put stories with traction and your message so I know where you came across my profile and I'm always happy to engage with fans of the stories with attraction podcast.
Thank you so much. I'll have that in the show notes. Super convenient. People could just click