Sarah Clay: 0:00

And then they said you know, we think our marketing is not very good. And I said you don't have any marketing.

Chris Norton: 0:06

Facebook then serves you more content to make you angrier, which is brilliant. Do you know what I mean? I love that.

Will Ockenden: 0:14

And we wonder why we live in a divisive society.

Chris Norton: 0:17

Exactly, yeah, exactly.

Will Ockenden: 0:19

Are you saying the lion's share of engagement now on LinkedIn is from the individual rather than company pages, where reach is inevitably kind of throttled back?

Chris Norton: 0:30

It's about the first thing I always say is Welcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes, the podcast that helps you grow your brand and your career by learning from the real world. Fails of top marketers fails of top marketers. I'm Chris Norton and my mission is to equip you, the senior marketer, with hard-won insights that save you time, budget and headaches. And today I'm thrilled to welcome Sarah Clay, author, speaker and founder of the employee advocacy firm Amplify your People. After a detour studying law and a decade producing TV commercials, sarah learned marketing on the fly, only to have the rug pulled out from under her when lockdown erased her entire client base. She then discovered employee advocacy on LinkedIn, wrote one of three books on the topic and built a methodology that empowers teams to become their own brand ambassadors.

Chris Norton: 1:20

In this episode, sarah reveals the pivotal mistake that nearly derailed her career and why it was the catalyst for her biggest success. Her proven trust framework for building personal profiles that drive real B2B engagement. How to align your corporate and employee content so both thrive in today's algorithm. Walk us through the exact steps to pivot under pressure, mobilize your employees on LinkedIn and turn a near total client wipeout into a powerful growth machine. So, as always, sit back, relax and let's hear how you can stop fearing the next marketing crisis and start embracing it for breakthrough growth.

Will Ockenden: 2:04

Enjoy.

Sarah Clay: 2:05

Sarah Clay. Welcome to the show.

Chris Norton: 2:06

Well, thank you for having, for having me, chris, it's great to be here oh, I'm excited about this because we've talked on the pod before about employee advocacy. So before we get into that though, um, I mean how I've looked through your history on LinkedIn, obviously because that's your area of expertise how does somebody who, uh, did law in york end up in doing doing linkedin? Because I mean laws, law pays the big bucks, right well, that's why I did it, you see.

Sarah Clay: 2:34

So well, kind of. So. I'm from a family of boys, I'm the only girl, I've got six brothers and my voice was never heard at all. I, I was just the girl and my brothers were loud and showy, offy and all of this kind of thing. And I thought, right, I need to get my dad's attention here. I need to do something clever. So I decided that something clever was studying for a subject I hated, which turned out to be the most stupid thing I ever did. But there you go, we all make mistakes, hey.

Sarah Clay: 3:06

So I studied law and started practicing and realized this is just awful, I don't want to. You practiced it as well for a bit. Yeah, yeah, oh, wow, yeah, okay, um, really didn't enjoy it. You know, had I been able to be Erin Brockovich, then I think it would have been all right. But I could see that those days were never going to happen. So I kind of took some part time work in my friend's shop and then did a bit of this, bit of that, ended up producing TV commercials for many years, which was great, fun, I loved doing that and it was brilliant.

Sarah Clay: 3:42

Had the kids Thought oh, I can't be producing tv commercials and, have you know, two little kids started working in the local estate agents, just bits and pieces. And then they said you know, we think our marketing's not very good. And I said you don't have any marketing, so they said can you look after it for us? I went, yeah, okay, no experience whatsoever. So became their head of marketing and just basically learnt it all on the fly, early days of social media. So got them all on social media, realised that was the the way forward, so did some training, set up an agency running social media accounts for people mostly hospitality. Running social media accounts for people mostly hospitality pubs, restaurants. Guess what happened in March 2020? I lost all my clients because it was lockdown.

Sarah Clay: 4:36

Can't relate to that, sarah, at all. What happened then? So I had to do the pivot, and it was interesting because a lot of people were coming to me and asking me how to use LinkedIn better and how to do it properly, because I was using it quite well. So I thought, right, that's what I'll do, I'll teach people how to use LinkedIn. And it started with entrepreneurs. I did the membership model, the six-week program, all of that, and gradually moved into working with companies and bigger and bigger companies.

Sarah Clay: 5:02

And then this whole thing about employee advocacy just kind of was brewing in me for ages. Didn't know it had a title or a word. I just thought we've just got to get you guys on, because this is just daft Having all of these people with personal profiles looking sad and dusty and the company page content not going anywhere. So I thought, right, guys, come on on, let's get you know you lot on. So started to train, uh, everybody in the company how to do it. Then discovered it had a name employee advocacy, and it was an actual thing. Thought, oh, I need to find out more there wouldn't? There's nothing written about it. So I thought I'll do that then. So then I wrote my book, and from there it's just snowballed.

Will Ockenden: 5:46

And I can see the book in the background, which we're always fans of on the podcast. When people put their books in the background, why don't you start by kind of defining what employee advocacy is, and particularly in the context of LinkedIn? I think there'll be people listening, think, half understanding what that actually means.

Sarah Clay: 6:06

Well, it is the most long winded daftft title really um, and it's very difficult to say, but what it is is basically it's empowering, and that's a really important word. Empowering it's not making employees do this. It's empowering to want to do it, giving them the tools. But it's getting your employees on linkedin, using their personal profiles to promote what the company is doing. But it's not only and this is where the difference is between it being a good system or a system which just dies in the water it's not only about the company and, in fact, it's not about the company. It's about the employees and it's about helping them work out what they can get out of it. So using their personal profiles to talk about what they do and become their own brand and their own brand ambassador, for their own good and also, of course, for the good of the company as well and there's a lot of.

Will Ockenden: 7:04

I always read a lot of stats around this and I noticed, looking at your LinkedIn profile, you quoted a stat saying personal profiles get up to 561% more engagement than on a company page. That varies depending on the sources you look at. But do you want to explain that? I mean, are you saying the lion's share of engagement now on LinkedIn is from the individual rather than company pages, where reach is inevitably kind of throttled back?

Sarah Clay: 7:30

Absolutely A hundred percent. So that stat is from LinkedIn itself. So I kind of think it's decent, it's done its homework and, of course, it's up to five hundred and sixty one percent. So that's a. That's a maximum, but it is a huge statistic.

Sarah Clay: 7:46

But the way that the LinkedIn algorithms are you know the way they work company page content doesn't get an awful lot of engagement. Now, there's two possible reasons for this and we don't really know the answer, and I think it's a combination of the two. One is that what LinkedIn want is for people to talk to people, which is what we do in real life. They don't want companies going and bashing personal profiles over the head, kind of thing. So if you're on other channels, you might find that you're bombarded with company page posts, which isn't really fair, because generally company pages have budgets and marketing departments and it's kind of seems more fair, in a way, to keep them separate. The other reason, of course, that company pages don't get a great deal of reach is because linkedin want them to buy ads, which is, however cynical you are or not, there's obviously an element of that because linkedin is a business.

Sarah Clay: 8:42

So, whatever the reasons are, it's the truth. You can see company pages get much less engagement than personal profile content. So when I work with you know I work with lots of companies a person you know, the page goes out on the company page. The same posts will go out on somebody's personal profile maybe the next day, a couple of days later. The difference in engagement is massive, is huge, and from a personal profile you can do so much more on LinkedIn in terms of commenting on posts, which you can do from a company page now, but I still don't think it works as well. You can DM people, you can do lots of other things and really build relationships, because that's what it's about driving traffic to your personal profile, then driving traffic perhaps to the company page or straight to the website, whichever I.

Chris Norton: 10:08

I also think that it's a thing. Basically, humans are just we're, we love gossiping and we prefer news on people. People are more interesting than companies, company. Let's be honest, 90 percent of this, which is a great opportunity, 90 of the content on linkedin is shit. It's dull, it's boring and people want to follow people. And what we know if? If a company says, oh, we've been in awards, do, and here's the official pictures, it's very different to here, to here's three people that are leathered, some awards with a bottle of champagne celebrating and a few hilarious pictures of them, which sometimes do end up on LinkedIn. It depends on how corporate they want to be.

Chris Norton: 10:48

I do think that people prefer following people because we like a bit of a gossip, that sort of thing. Do you think that? Um, do you think that linkedin has had, like a, I think, some sort of renaissance, because it it was around and then it was great. Uh, it was just a cv, but after it's copied all these other social networks with a news feed and live, live video, it seems to have become, since the Microsoft purchase, it seems to have become the platform for B2B, because Twitter was up there at one time. They were rivaling each other. And then obviously we know where that's gone. But LinkedIn has really sort of solidified its market in B2B marketing. So I wondered what sort of systems do you have to game the system then? How? What do you advise your clients on how they can make a big splash on the number one b2b platform?

Sarah Clay: 11:40

oh, how long have we got? Well, there's my book. I mean, just find my book and read that. There we are, we're done um, available on on all in all good bookstores and, obviously, amazon. The first thing I always say is stop looking at LinkedIn like it's a social media platform, because that's where people are going wrong. That's the biggest mistake that most people are making. Start reframing LinkedIn as networking, because that's what it it is. It's the biggest networking party in the world.

Sarah Clay: 12:20

So every situation on LinkedIn that you find yourself in and you don't know what to do, just think okay, if this was a real life situation, what would I do here? What would I say? So I was looking at your post about the uh theberg thing, that one of your clients. You created the big fatberg about the Yorkshire water and your post was great because you talked about why and how you came up with the campaign, and that's what's interesting. Yes, it's interesting the actual campaign itself, because it was a good campaign, but how you did it and what made it a good campaign is what people are really interested in. So, taking it, you know. So, if you're at a networking meeting, in that situation, we've just done this great campaign for Yorkshire Water, about this big fat bag, and that's one thing, but then talking to them about how and this big fat bag, and that's one thing, but then talking to them about how and why you made it, that's interesting.

Sarah Clay: 13:19

So I always say, think about if you look at a post on linkedin and you want to add a comment to somebody else's post and you don't know what to say because people get linkedin, paralysis. You know they go and they get frightened because there's a computer, there's a keyboard, in a way. If you think about that person being in a networking meeting, you're standing in a group of people and that person has spoken those words of that post. What would you say in response? Would you and I know this is a podcast so it's not visual, but would you just do this?

Chris Norton: 13:54

no for the sake of those people, to our audio listeners.

Will Ockenden: 13:59

Sarah just put her thumb up that's the de facto emoji for middle-aged men, isn't it? I read somewhere, every, every single, um every single message it's the thumb up yeah and it, well, it is, and it is.

Chris Norton: 14:12

I mean, you've got what? Have you got insight, like you, I like, I mean I have. I have found that a bit more content is funnier on linkedin recently, and I'm hoping that the more because I know we, we do social media for loads of different brands and stuff and, um, we've done training and there's it. And when, um, when the angry face came out, we used to tell when we're doing training, we were like, if you like, using Facebook for the company page, for instance, we said did you, do you realize that if you do the angry emoji, it's something that really pisses you off? Facebook then serves you more content to make you angrier, which is brilliant. Do you know what I mean?

Will Ockenden: 14:52

And we wonder why we live in a divisive society exactly, yeah, exactly okay.

Will Ockenden: 14:57

So, um, conversations aside, um how, how much should we care about the content type? Um, you know, I know I see a lot of um to a varying degree, of success videos, lots of individuals doing very candid videos of themselves. Some, a lot of people are using linkedin articles and doing kind of longer form content. Some people are using um polls or, um, you know, carousel pdfs. You know where's it at in terms of the engagement on linkedin at the moment from an individual perspective in terms of content types great question.

Sarah Clay: 15:31

So, um, video is. You'll see a lot of videos at the moment because recently the algorithm has shifted and they're pushing more video. So when linkedin bring in a new feature or start putting more emphasis on a particular thing, jump on that. Jump on it, whatever it is, if you can jump on it, because LinkedIn will push it out to more people. So, for example, when they first introduced polls, everybody was doing polls and they were getting the most amazing engagement until we all got sick of them and LinkedIn switched the algorithm a different way and suddenly they weren't but make the most of those. But in terms of a sort of longer term plan, everybody's audience is obviously different. So if you're starting out, you know, really looking at starting a content strategy, mix it up, because your audience aren't all the same. So some people will want to scroll through a PDF document, some people will want to read a really long post. Some people will only have time to read a really short post. So mix up, obviously, your types, what you're talking about, but also mix up your types of posts and how you're making them.

Sarah Clay: 16:48

Keep an eye on your metrics. Always, always keep an eye on your metrics. And what's a little bit frustrating on LinkedIn is that we can't they don't keep our metrics on our personal profiles, so we have to record them ourselves. You can't go back to you know, a week, last Tuesday and see how, how well overall you can look at each individual post, but you can't look at your you know, know your engagement a year ago or a week ago to compare. So it's important that everybody records their own metrics and just keep an eye on your metrics, see which posts are working the most, which will take a while, take a, you know, a couple of months or so, and focus on those, but definitely, when you're starting out, mix it up and see what's working and how often should you be posting?

Chris Norton: 17:34

because I, I saw um. There's a guy called rob, rob mayhew shout out to rob in his um, in his sweaters, and he's a. He's a stand-up comedian. I don't know if you've seen him. He does all the yeah, yeah, he does all the little clips like of him, um in agencies and pitching and everything. For those of you, he's that guy and um, I saw it. I saw him talking about um, his videos. Obviously, again, more funny content. That worked well.

Chris Norton: 17:59

Who knew funny content would work well on linkedin? And he was saying that people, everyone said to him oh, you, you shouldn't post more than uh, three times a week and these times these are the best times to post. And he said, ah, fuck that, and just started posting. I think he posted four or five videos a day and just whacked them out and smashed them out and he said they were just going completely and they built his profile up and that's what's so. I thought it was quite interesting because some people just completely defy the, like you just said about the. The audiences are different. They defy the, the logic on, on what you hear. You hear that and I often think that if you follow too many of the rules. You end up just being vanilla, don't you? Because you're trying to tick every single bloody box. Yeah so yeah, how often do you think you should post, and what times and things? So?

Sarah Clay: 18:46

my the most important thing is to be consistent, and I use this word so many times. Um, and what's consistent for you, what's manageable for you? So I have clients who think, right off we go, we're out the gate, let's post every day. This is fantastic. And, oh God, we've fallen at the first hurdle, we've run out of ideas, we've run out of steam and we're not posting anything at all. Wrong, that's definitely the wrong approach.

Sarah Clay: 19:13

So I was with a client this morning and she was really stressing about how much she should post and I said well, how does once a week start? You know, to start, how does once a week sound? Really, is that all right? It's like, yes, that's absolutely fine, because if you can post once a week consistently, let's say for a year, that's a lot of content, that's a lot of value going out. If you can post twice a week, then post twice a week. But what's interesting is recently I think it was HubSpot about three weeks ago has been doing some research to say that actually we should be posting less because there's now over a billion people on linkedin and people are posting more. It used to be only one percent of people on linkedin posted regularly. That number's now almost at two percent. Two percent of a billion is quite a lot, a lot of content, especially if they buy your book, especially if they buy your book, especially if they buy my book.

Chris Norton: 20:13

Yes, 2% of a billion, you'll take that.

Sarah Clay: 20:15

Yeah, that would be good, wouldn't it? I'll have to get some more printed. So sometimes less can be more. So, rather than just putting out stuff for the sake of the numbers, put out good quality content less often. Rob Mayhew, he's a clever guy and he's got the most clever, amazing content. And we all would watch Rob Mayhew all day, every day, wouldn't we? Because he is really funny and very poignant. So the fact that he was able to post start with that much content and putting it out people were watching it because it was really funny rather than watering it down and posting nonsense just for the sake of the numbers so, um, you've got a proprietary model which I quite like, the trust model, um, which presumably you, you, you kind of walk people through when they're starting out on linkedin.

Will Ockenden: 21:11

Why don't you walk us through, um, the sort of the stages of that process and explain why they're important? Really, because people will be listening to this, thinking, right, I need to get on LinkedIn, but I don't know what to talk about, I don't know how often to post, I don't know what to post about. So, yeah, talk us through that model.

Sarah Clay: 21:27

So this is a new thing that I've recently been working on this whole trust thing, because how to do LinkedIn is? I just got a bit bored of doing it really and also, trust is so, so important. It's the key factor in any transactional relationship. Nobody well people will transact if there's no trust. But at the end of the day day, if you want people to buy from you over and over again, you have to create that trust. And it's hard to build, but it's so easy to lose, really easy to lose. So I came up with this analogy. Is it analogy with t-r-u-s-t? No, it's not. It's called an acronym, isn't it? Um?

Will Ockenden: 22:11

it's't it? Is it an acrostic as?

Sarah Clay: 22:14

well, acrostic, that's it.

Will Ockenden: 22:16

Or is that something else? Well an acrostic poem is when the word goes.

Chris Norton: 22:21

That's good Keep that in. I like the humanism of it Is humanism a word yeah, why not?

Sarah Clay: 22:29

And I started doing this and I did a talk in a venue in London and I've actually done a video of it where I walk on with a paper bag over my head which isn't easy, I can tell you, it's quite difficult and talking about your profile photo and how you need to have your profile photo, and that's where the whole trust thing started to grow. So the T is tell people what you do, because if people don't know what it is that you do they, you know how can they buy from you. Just tell them. Tell them what you do is clear. So, using your profile, use really clear language. Be Ron Seal. You know this is what I do. This is who I work with. This is how I can help you conceal. You know this is what I do. This is who I work with. This is how I can help you. So that's your building your profile and part of that is your reputation. Sorry, airplane overhead. Build your reputation. So, talking about what you do, talk about how you help people share some testimonials this is all your reputation building. That. Share some testimonials, this is all your reputation building. That the you is understanding your audience. So many people just post, post, post. But by going out onto LinkedIn, by talking to people, by reading other people's posts and commenting on their posts and having conversations with people, you'll understand your audience and what they want. And until you do this, how are you going to know what resonates? How are you going to know what to talk about in your posts?

Sarah Clay: 24:03

The next S, or the S, rather, is we can call it social selling, but I call it shaking hands. Don't sell, shake people's hands. Back to the networking situation. You're in a networking meeting. Somebody comes over to you. What's the first thing you do? You shake hands with them. You might hug them, but there's no H in trust. Shake people's hands, tell them what you do and talk to them.

Sarah Clay: 24:32

If you're in a networking meeting, we've all been there when somebody pins you up in the corner and starts talking about the hundred ways that you know you can put wheels on cars or something like that, whatever it is, and it's like I don't want to know. I just want to know who you are and have a conversation with you. Stop selling to me, because that just doesn't work. And then the T at the end is to find and build your tribe.

Sarah Clay: 25:01

So your tribe on LinkedIn aren't necessarily people who will ever buy from you, but they'll support you, they'll comment on your post, they'll like your post, they'll help you, they'll refer other people to you and I get this a lot. Somebody will message me and go, oh, so-and-so, says that you know I need to speak to you because you're a great LinkedIn trainer, whatever, whatever and I'm thinking I hardly know this person, but they're in my tribe, they're in my sort of group of people and referring, as we know, is so, so valuable and you get a you know referral that counts for so much more than a direct connection. So that's the model of trust and if everybody just did this, did these five steps, linkedin would be a much happier place yeah.

Will Ockenden: 25:44

Why are your pet peeves then, when it comes to individuals on linkedin? I've got a few chris has got a few and, um, well, it's the humble brag that I don't like, you know, and and typically it's um you know isn't that what everyone does on linkedin?

Chris Norton: 26:02

yeah, but it's a humble brag, I mean.

Will Ockenden: 26:04

I mean you don't get so much for it anymore, but people would talk about their daily routine and invariably it would start at half past three in the morning with a cold plunge. I think this is your routine, isn't it, chris?

Will Ockenden: 26:15

cold plunge or 4 am a round of meetings before most people's days even start, you know, and it's just this kind of completely unrealistic um, I mean, you don't get so much of that anymore. It's become a bit of a joke, but that, that, yeah, that used to irritate me no end yeah, no, I, yes, that's.

Sarah Clay: 26:34

That's an annoying one. What was mine? Oh, there's so many. You know the, the sales emails, the pitch slapping when somebody says, hello, how are you, I'd love to be your friend, and then I'll buy my thing, you know, and it's like no, I don't want to buy your thing. But what I'm coming across lately is and the linkedin trainers are very guilty of this, but, as lots and lots of people is, you can do this in five seconds flat. It's really easy and whatever it is, and it's like make a, make a um, make a year's content in five minutes. It's such a promise you can't do that. It's, you know, whatever tricks you have, whatever tools you have, it takes time. It does take time and, yes, of course, there are hacks and things you can do, but it's not an overnight success. So, yeah, those people who say, yeah, we can create your content plan in five minutes and guaranteeing you um 10 000 new followers if you use our you know our system, click this, do that, follow these people and whatever, whatever.

Chris Norton: 27:38

And being really formulaic about it, because it isn't formulaic, because this is people, you know, we're talking about people here, so that's that annoys me good shout that the, the I mean for me, the linkedin one, that the p for me, if I'm going to go, is um, hi, chris, I'm, I'm, I'm generate, I'm growing my network. Um, I work in it sales. Are you struggling with it sales right now? Thanks for connecting to me. I'm going to sell to you instantly within the first 15 minutes of connecting. And this is an automated uh message where I bet the best one is where it says hi first name. I mean, if not correctly, that's quite a good one as well. I do like the hi first name, yeah, really really personal thanks.

Sarah Clay: 28:24

You know really appreciate the time you've taken.

Will Ockenden: 28:26

Yeah yeah, I got. I got tapped up by a recruit, a recruitment consultant, about six months ago saying and they're offering me an entry-level pr job um account executive I'll let you go I'll accept your resignation yeah, and I was just like. I mean my, my ego doesn't particularly care, but um, I was just like, have you? Have you read my profile? I own an agency, but it's just so untargeted isn't it?

Sarah Clay: 28:52

yeah, I've had. Would I like some LinkedIn training yeah, well there we go. That's great, I would have taken that.

Chris Norton: 28:58

I would have gone to town on that. We will. Will's got this thing right in the agency. If someone sends them any like a really stupid email which you do get sometimes will's known for replying like copying everybody when it goes to the teammate alias and it'll reply with exactly like a mirror image of what they've said back to them Like oh, that sounds great. I'd love a million pounds in Nigeria If you can just send it across to this.

Chris Norton: 29:24

That you know, because you do get some random things, don't you Spam that you get? I mean, there's a lot of spam on LinkedIn. Yeah, the content is the content can a bit vanilla as well. So how do you get these people to be well, interesting, because that's that's one of the hardest things. We, we, we do media training for a lot of ceos and stuff working in vr and I know you've done a bit pr as well yourself and then, and we, and sometimes we're amazed that when we get them in front of a camp, like we start doing media training, recording in comfort of the camera, grilling them, and they actually don't know what to say about anything that they're doing. Is that the terror is like? Hence why they do the training.

Will Ockenden: 30:09

Yeah, it's like no opinions, is it? And I mean, academics are the best because they absolutely have opinions about everything and it's great. But yeah, ceos, often ceos, no opinions about anything. I mean they're great obviously, some of them have an amazing, amazing opinions and they're brilliant, but you'd be surprised at the number that don't is it that they don't know, or is it that they're frightened to say? Well, exactly, it's probably that, isn't it?

Chris Norton: 30:33

yeah, well, I think some of them they don't as well.

Will Ockenden: 30:36

And actually what? What do you do when you often, when we're doing, we do we we work in this space as well and you're kind of wheeled in to train a cohort, half of them will be super engaged, but the people that you really want to get engaged you know the C-suite often aren't engaged and you sort of feel they're not going to be committed to it, it's not really going to work. They're going to be enthusiastic for a few weeks and then they'll probably, you know, their day job will take over, is it? You know? Have you got any kind of techniques to make it work and make it easy for those people, or should you not even try to do it because it'll end up being inauthentic?

Sarah Clay: 31:18

Yeah, really good observation actually. So when I'm working in a company, I start small. So my the person I'm working with is usually the marketing, head of marketing or, you know, marketing lead in the company, and we will work together to identify the people who we think will do this and will move forward. But we start very small because when I first started doing, I thought, right, we're going to train the whole company, it'll be fantastic. And I see that, you know, because it was in lockdown. So, on zoom and I see half of the people on the screen, though all like this, doing something completely different and, yeah, you can watch their eyes, that you can see their eyes moving.

Sarah Clay: 32:00

So reading, reading like a word document exactly so then I I thought, well, actually this isn't working, this doesn't work. So in fact, what we need to do here is create a core group of people who will do it really well and be really engaged and show that how it can work really successfully. And then what happens is you start to get other people going. I quite like what they're doing. Can I come and play? You know, a little bit of FOMO setting in. So identifying the right people at the beginning is really important and starting small.

Sarah Clay: 32:30

But in terms of the CEO, it has to come from the top. So you've got to get one person from that C-suite involved in the system. If you can. I've always been able to. I'm just trying to think, can, um, I've always been able to. I'm just trying to think, yes, I have always been able to get one person at least to kick off the system. And what's really nice is if you can get, if I can get the ceo to personally invite the people to be part of the employee advocacy system, that is a massive buy-in.

Sarah Clay: 33:02

So if they've had an email from the CEO saying I'd like you I've chosen you to come into this and do this, would you please do it? They were. You know they're much more likely to say yes and think, wow, this is, and this is an important thing that we're doing here. We've brought, you know, sarah in, so we're giving this some time, we're giving this some money. We've got an external person coming in. This is not just a fluffy thing we want you to do while you're waiting for the kettle to boil. Just comment on the linkedin post. No, this is a full structure. This is a part of the company that we're moving this forward. This is going to become a cultural shift in the company, and having this one of the c-suite on board in that process really helps that happen and what's your view to um, it almost being outsourced for those key individuals?

Will Ockenden: 33:51

so you know, a ceo might say look, I'm this. I recognize this is really important but I just haven't got the time to dedicate to it. I'm going to brief you into the types of things I want to say, my tone of voice, and I want to outsource that. How do you feel about that?

Sarah Clay: 34:05

Had you asked me that question six months ago, I would have said no, no, not doing it, absolutely not doing it. I'm not writing content for other people, but actually I now see that it is a valid thing that we can do. So, as long as we know the voice of the CEO. We understand who the CEO is, what they want, who they are. Yes, we will write content for a CEO. They will have to approve it and make sure it's right for them. But, yes, we do do that.

Sarah Clay: 34:39

And we use an app called Disseminate to get that onto LinkedIn. So we're not taking over personal profiles of CEOs. It will go to the platform. And we got to a point where we realized, actually, the CEOs need help and if we want them to do this, how can we help them the best way possible? So we're working with them, not for them, creating posts and helping them. So, yes, that is something that I think everybody's doing it. You know, if you look at your Richard Branson's, your Stephen Bartlett's, I don't know, I can't say hand on heart either way or the other, but I don't. You know they must have help and as long as they're happy with it and it's their voice and they're saying, and it's true to them, I think it's okay yeah, I mean, stephen bartler had a.

Chris Norton: 35:31

He had a job advert, didn't he not? Uh, was it two years ago or something for social media manager to get? And his content was all overlinked. That's before he went moved to america. So, yeah, they all, they all do it, and ghost writers with celebrities writing books. It's a thing, isn't it? As long as you get, I think, if, as long as you get the tonality right. For me it's just the tonality, the style and their opinion.

Chris Norton: 35:52

What are the three sort of soapbox issues that they like to talk about? What are they passionate about? That's what you've got to like tap into, isn't it like? What are they passionate about? What gets them out of bed? Don't start putting words into their mouths that they're not. They're not, that they don't agree with, because, you know, just because it feels like the right thing to do.

Chris Norton: 36:10

During lockdown, we saw loads of that, didn't we? Where brands were jumping on anything they could just to be relevant because they had nothing to talk about. Yeah, and when, when people do it, it's just, oh god. I remember, during lockdown, people started sharing pictures of their swimming pools and stuff on LinkedIn. That was a brief spell, wasn't it? It was like really like random personal posts all over and everyone thought, oh, this is the new algorithm, linkedin is going to be people on holiday, and it's no, it went straight back, didn't it? Straight back as soon as we got to 2021. So yeah, so we talk a lot about mistakes on this podcast and you, you, um, I'm sure you've made a few in your time, especially linkedin's. All about testing and making mistakes anyway, um, but you, you said that yours was about hiring and firing at the wrong times. Do you want to explain a little bit about what you've had with that it's been a constant problem for me.

Sarah Clay: 37:05

I think my problem is well, I know what my problem has been, because it's now all changing, because I've got help, which is what I needed. I hire people I like and I think, right, I like you, you're funny or interesting or whatever. Let's get you into the business and see what you can do here and maybe in a bigger organization that could work, where you've got space and time and money for people to move around. But I found at one point I had two fabulous employees. Oh my gosh, they were just brilliant. I loved both of them, but they were both doing exactly the same job and I had a big hole in my business that nobody was doing because neither of them wanted to do it and neither of them were really capable. They didn't really have the skillset. So I thought, right, I've got to get rid of one of you. And that was horrible. Actually that wasn't a nice thing to have to do, but you know, we did it.

Sarah Clay: 38:06

But I did have early days, very early days. I had this amazing assistant, and this was before lockdown. She used to come here three days a week, sit at my other desk over there, and we were great together and I let her go and I still look back and think why did I do that? Why did I let that amazing person go? She's now gone on to do some of those incredible things. So, yeah, hiring people has been my weak spot and, as I say, I now have invested a bit of money in getting somebody to help me with that and actually not just hire people who are like me, because I need people who are not like me, and I think a lot of people actually make that mistake. Oh yeah, they're great, we really like them, and they say that they're good at this thing. That person comes into the business and actually they're not great at that thing, but they're good at something else or whatever. But it's really looking at the skill set of the people rather than their personalities.

Chris Norton: 39:07

So you know, hiring, hiring people is a. It's a difficult thing because I go with gut and if I'm like you, I go with my heart and if I like somebody I'll think I've learned. Like, um, if don't don't just be nice and hire everyone, so you, they have to be, they have to be, you know, smart and clever and articulate for what we do. But then sometimes you hire people and they just it's the value system that they've got, they're not bought into. How, you know, our business is. We've got a certain set of values, you know we've got, but everybody sort of agrees them, but it's not.

Chris Norton: 39:42

It's a moving thing, and when you get somebody, then that doesn't sort of fit with the values of your business. God, it's awful. You can really tell everybody starts complaining because they don't do, they don't act the same way and they might be a nice person, but it's like, oh, they don't, they don't. You know, if we've got flexi time and all sorts, and people coming in late, starting, you know, and just like taking a bit extra time, you can, you learn, though, I think, once you've made a few mistakes in hiring, don't you, as to what you should, you should go with your gut, but you also need a second opinion, I think, and that's what is difficult, it's one of the hardest things, yeah it is.

Sarah Clay: 40:18

It's really hard and I think it's, I think, particularly for a small business. It's hard because you know I don't have an HR department, you know if I, well, that's where I'm getting help with an external HR. And I think identifying where and this is throughout the whole of business is identifying where you need help and pulling in help at the right point where you need help. And pulling in help at the right point and the right help um is is it's hard, and it's hard sometimes. It's hard even identifying what you need. You know, you know your problem, but you're trying to work out how to plug that gap or how to plug that problem, and even trying to work that out is hard sometimes yeah, I'm gonna.

Will Ockenden: 41:00

I'm gonna ask a similar question but in a different way. So, um, you know that's your mistake, um, and we've sort of touched on this, but have you ever seen somebody one of your, one of your clients or somebody else that's done a horrific, ill-judged, ill-conceived linkedin post? I can think of a couple over the years I've seen, which have made me wince when I've read them and thought, my god, what are you trying to do there? Have you ever thought, have you ever seen anything when you thought they've just got that absolutely wrong?

Sarah Clay: 41:29

yeah, so I had a client who were a finance company working in sort of debts and loans, that kind of thing, so you know, working in money, so that obviously the trust is really high, the stakes are really high. And they had a junior member of their team who was very political and she was her whole feed when we shared screen on the training. Her whole screen was full of all political stuff, um, all middle eastern or it was just really quite aggressive stuff, and she was. She started commenting once she realized how linkedin worked, due to the training that her bosses paid for. She started commenting on these posts and I I went in. So you, you know, it's like right, I'm going to go, you know, train them on. Let's say, we had a training on the Tuesday, so on the Thursday I'll check in to see how they're doing, what's going on. Has anybody actually done anything?

Sarah Clay: 42:36

And she put all loads of comments, really, you know, comments on all of these posts. So I had to say you've got to stop doing this. And she said this is my personal profile, I can do what I like. Legally, technically, yes, she can. She can do what she likes, but you're not speaking the voice of the company here and I had to say you know, you've got to take those comments down because they're not helpful to anybody. And then of course her boss saw them and could he fire her for putting comments on her personal profile? Probably not, actually, and it wouldn't stand up in in court, but anyway, their whole alignment with her and the rest of the company just wasn't going away and she left um and that was fine, but it was, that was a scary moment really.

Sarah Clay: 43:27

Yeah, and that's interesting.

Will Ockenden: 43:29

That's an interesting debate, isn't it? Um? I mean not not so much that example, but you want to, um, you want people to have autonomy to post about what they want and what's authentic, but equally you want them to be in line with company policy. But you can't be so prescriptive, you don't want to be so prescriptive that they can't talk about anything. So how can companies strike that balance? You know, empowering people to authentically talk about their job, but then should they step in if they don't like what they post?

Sarah Clay: 43:56

yeah, there's a balance, obviously, and this is why choosing a small team who are really keen to get going and want to be on board and want to do it the right way, or the the way that the company wants to do it, if you like. Um, that's why that's important, rather than just pulling in anybody who who you think might be any any good at this. So that's important. Not having a 20 page social media LinkedIn policy is one thing. I do not do that because A who's going to read it? And B it's as you said. It's just too restrictive, it's going to make people too frightened to do anything. Basically saying to them just be a representative of the company and be proud to be a representative of the company, and by using that kind of language, you're going to get people to want to do it the right way and not, you know, just mess up. And I was going to use was going to use a rude word. Then I thought I better not, but it's. It's getting the emotional and psychological buy-in in the first place when their hearts and minds is what you're saying um and so

Will Ockenden: 45:14

that they want to do it.

Chris Norton: 45:15

Yeah, interesting yeah it's quite, it's quite interesting to do. Go rogue, though, like what, how you, how you stop them, because I I feel your pain there. Like because we do a lot of crisis management and if someone's done that, it can cause a real problem by taking their own political views and starting to rant and rave online. It's less like posting useful content and more ranting and raving and showing a political stance, and there's, like you say, that legally I'm not sure there's much you can do about it, other than this doesn't quite fit our policy and you have to. It's a it's an awkward position to be in that.

Sarah Clay: 45:53

Actually, it is awkward and actually I had one company I worked with and I was brought in by the ceo rather than the marketing manager, and I did a hybrid training. So there were some people in the room, some people on the screen and the marketing manager was on the screen and at the end he ranted and raved and said I'm not doing this, you've got no right to tell me what to do, et cetera, et cetera. So I said, well, don't do it, it's fine. You know, if you didn't want to do it, don't do it, it's fine. You know, if you didn't want to do it, don't do it. And the ceo was really worried that that marketing manager would start to post sort of aggressive, unpleasant content. He didn't, he just didn't do anything, which was the best thing he was just having a bad day.

Will Ockenden: 46:36

Yeah, maybe he was the other conversation we have often with um. You know, when we're having these conversations, you know people will say, well, what if they leave? You know it's a case of like, why do we want to train them up? What if they leave? And you know. But then the conversation is more about well, what? What if it works? What if it works for a year? And it's amazing, and then they leave. I mean, it's almost collateral damage, isn't it? You inevitably not everybody you train is going to stay, stay with that company forever, but actually you, you might get it right and for you know, it might work really, really well while they're there. So I suppose it's a bit of a, it's a bit of a flawed argument, isn't it?

Sarah Clay: 47:15

it is. I can see it, I can understand it. But what's really interesting and I didn't realize this was going to happen when I started doing this and in fact I in fact started doing employee advocacy when I worked in the pubs before I knew it was called, uh, employee advocacy again, and I started getting the bar staff to post stuff on the company's instagram and post stories and stuff. And what I noticed was happening then and it happens much more doing it now is that the bar stuff start to pull together. So and it's a bit like when now I'm doing it with linkedin and with with bigger companies. I call it the netflix effect.

Sarah Clay: 47:56

So it's like oh, I like your post that you put up yesterday or did you see, you know, did you see that post that rob mayhew did? That was really funny and and people start talking about it and there's a cultural shift. And I've got one client who said I just love the fact that we all meet together once a month on Zoom, because the company is in different places all over the world. So there's this cultural shift which starts to happen. And I think if you've got a great culture in your organization, if you're upskilling your team, which is what is going on here. There's more reason for them to stay and if an employee gets poached because they've updated their LinkedIn profile etc. They're going to get poached at some point And's kind of that's not my, you know it's. It's your responsibility to try and encourage your employees and nurture them so they want to stay, however big and popular they are on linkedin.

Will Ockenden: 48:53

So I do see the argument, but there's definitely a counter argument to it you touched on something there, actually, and this, this is my final question, really along this line um, what's the relationship between, um, a cohort of employees on linkedin and the company page? Should they be completely independent? Should they work in harmony? You know how do the two relate to each other, I suppose, because I think one can fuel the other, can't it?

Sarah Clay: 49:21

if I love that question. So I always do this because I use my hands a lot, as you may have noticed. It's it should be a symbiotic relationship. There you go, I'm doing it, um, between the personal profiles and the company page. So the company page should support the posts of the personal profiles as well as the other way around, and not only as far as an algorithm is concerned, because the algorithmic effect of that is actually quite powerful, but it shows that the company is a cohesive unit, all working together, which is brilliant. And if you've got a junior, let's say, an intern puts a post out on LinkedIn and the company page then supports that post and puts a comment on, or likes it or shares it, whatever repost it onto the company page how valuable does that intern feel? It's brilliant. It's such a brilliant thing to do.

Sarah Clay: 50:18

And if you know if you can get the employees to even like and not even comment, but just hit like on the posts on the company page, that will encourage more engagement on those posts and so you'll get employees who won't want to do, won't want to do posts, won't want to create their own posts on their personal profile, but they're happy to support the company page posts and obviously there's a.

Will Ockenden: 50:45

You know, there's a kind of different levels of what people want to do, but yeah, the two should definitely support each other, for sure, yeah, and that's certainly the um, that's certainly our viewpoint, really, and you know our conversation, particularly in b2b is um, you know you have to be doing this stuff. This, you know the, the. In our view, the future of thought leadership on linkedin is with the individual and there's still a role for a company page. But really, the it's a superpower, isn't it? If you can leverage the power of your individuals and they become even if 10 of them become brand advocates, everybody's going to benefit. Um, you know um, and certainly your company page is going to benefit absolutely a hundred percent.

Sarah Clay: 51:26

Um, yeah, I'm completely second that, definitely everything you said.

Chris Norton: 51:31

Yeah so you've you've been on the show. Now, sarah, if you were us, who is the next person you would interview for this, to tell their mistake and why?

Sarah Clay: 51:44

oh, my goodness me. I'll tell you. Who comes to mind is my very good friend, amanda fitzgerald pr. Oh, ah, there you go. So amanda teaches people how to do their own pr. She doesn't do it for them and I wouldn't like to bet on it, but I can imagine she's made a mistake or two in her career sorry, I'm adam.

Chris Norton: 52:13

We all um how can people get, how can people get hold of you and find your book?

Sarah Clay: 52:18

obviously. Well, they can get hold of me on LinkedIn. I am Sarah Clay Dash Clay. I am very purple and very orange, so I'm quite easy to find my book. If you want a signed copy directly from me, you can do that. Send me a DM and I'll send one to you in the post in the old fashioned postal system. Or you can order it on Amazon, and the best way to find it on Amazon is to type in employee advocacy, because I think there are only three books published about employee advocacy and mine is the only one that specifies LinkedIn.