Episode 61
Fastest Way to Generate Demand with LinkedIn Employee Advocacy (ft. Parthi Loganathan)
If you're not leveraging employee advocacy in your content strategy, you're missing out. Today, we dive into making your content work harder—shifting from mere consumption to smart distribution and repurposing. Parthi Loganathan from Letterdop gives the lowdown on empowering employees to amplify your brand's voice, build trust with your audience, and how it can benefit their personal brand too.
We also talk about ghostwriting, social selling on LinkedIn, and tracking the impact of your content. So, are you ready to scale up your content's impact and drive real business growth? Dive into the full episode of Distribution First to unlock the power of employee advocacy.
Remember, your team could be your content's best asset. Don't let their potential go untapped.
If you like distribution and repurposing playbooks, you'll love my weekly newsletter (it's free). Join 2,600+ subscribers here: https://news.justinsimon.co/
In this episode, you'll learn:
- Why employee advocacy boosts brand presence
- Strategies for tracking content ROI
- The role of ghostwriting in employee advocacy
- Benefits of social selling on LinkedIn
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Transcript
Everybody, before we get started, I want to thank my friends at hatch for producing
Speaker:this episode. You can get unlimited podcast editing and strategy for
Speaker:one flat rate by visiting Hatch FM.
Speaker:Alright, let's get in the show.
Speaker:Welcome to Distribution first, the show where we flip content marketing on its head
Speaker:and focus on what happens after you hit publish. Each week I
Speaker:share playbooks, motivations, stories and strategies to help you repurpose and
Speaker:distribute your content because you deserve to. Get the most out of everything you
Speaker:created.
Speaker:Everybody, welcome to this week's episode of Distribution. First. Love
Speaker:having repeat guests. And today we've got Parthi from Letterdrop back
Speaker:again. If you didn't listen to his first episode, it was one of the most
Speaker:popular ones we did last year on really going
Speaker:deep dive on SEO changes, on all those things and how you can do SEO
Speaker:better. But today we've got Parthi back and we're going to talk all things
Speaker:employee advocacy. I have seen the good,
Speaker:the bad, the in between. I've seen a bit of part of it,
Speaker:and now I'm advising clients on some of this stuff too. So super excited to
Speaker:have you on Parthi. Absolutely. Thanks for having me again. Like first
Speaker:time I've been on a podcast for the second. Yeah,
Speaker:yeah. It's one of my favorite things about running my own show is if
Speaker:I want to bring somebody back on and talk about something, I'm going to do
Speaker:it. So today's the day. So I guess from where we
Speaker:can start is like, and I know you've been at bigger orgs now,
Speaker:obviously you're pulling your own sort of startup world here with a small
Speaker:scrappy team. But kind of just curious, give us a lay of the land on
Speaker:where you're seeing with employee advocacy how you've been able to build that out with
Speaker:your team and really from the outside looking in, made it a
Speaker:priority probably in hiring discussions and things like that
Speaker:too. Like you all have really hit the ground running. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker:And in all fairness, I think because of the nature of our business,
Speaker:we take employee advocacy very seriously because we have a product that enables
Speaker:it. But honestly, I'm just seeing so many companies out there
Speaker:that are successful with employee advocacy in whatever way that
Speaker:they manage to do it. And so you can think about the large companies which
Speaker:have historically done this, think gong Apollo
Speaker:metadata. You can think about newer companies
Speaker:ourselves, like Lavender Hockeystack, which are just
Speaker:truly surrounding their audience on LinkedIn. And so
Speaker:regardless of how you do it, the concept behind it is very
Speaker:sound. If your audience lives on LinkedIn or honestly, like any
Speaker:channel, I think LinkedIn is the best channel. Just because you have all of this
Speaker:formographic information as well and decision makers are on there, you
Speaker:can actually get in front of them by essentially getting your employees
Speaker:to authentically talk about your product. The problem you solve
Speaker:just sort of like always be selling publicly online.
Speaker:And so that is the crux of employee advocacy. I think it is
Speaker:incredibly effective and also very important, especially as every
Speaker:channel is getting saturated right now. Right. A lot of selling today is
Speaker:based on relationships. And so if you're just one of
Speaker:100 cold emails that I open in my inbox every morning,
Speaker:one of 50 cold DMs on LinkedIn from like
Speaker:a stranger every day or a cold call, the one way
Speaker:you can stand out is to make people come to you and have your brand
Speaker:be present and for people to passively learn about your company. And I think that's
Speaker:really where employee advocacy is starting to become incredibly
Speaker:important in this new go to market as channels get saturated. Yeah.
Speaker:And for me it's how do you consistently stay top of
Speaker:mind and a brand just doing that
Speaker:on their own with a brand page? Can't do it. Certainly
Speaker:can't do it at the same scale and at the same level as a company
Speaker:who is doing it with multiple people. I think the interesting thing, love
Speaker:that you said metadata because we did do it right there for a while. When
Speaker:I was at metadata with Mark and Jason and everybody else, it definitely
Speaker:stopped. I would say that. And so
Speaker:the crew who was there at the that and I say that because being able
Speaker:to kind of pull the curtain back there, that was a huge part
Speaker:of what we did and it was actually baked into the
Speaker:strategy of, hey, this whole LinkedIn thing
Speaker:isn't just fun and games. It's not just like
Speaker:something to waste time on. It really was valuable to be
Speaker:able to do that. The balance for me always Parthi is, and I'm curious
Speaker:your take on this because you said something about having them do product and talk
Speaker:about things. What's the balance there for like I mean it makes sense. I
Speaker:think especially for the folks on your team, it's part of the product. What you
Speaker:do is part of it makes sense to talk about those things. How do you
Speaker:balance that when it's like we make developer tools and I'm the
Speaker:content marketer and nobody's paying attention to me for developer
Speaker:tool things. What's the balance there with employee advocacy? How
Speaker:do you kind of think about that? Yeah, in your specific example,
Speaker:I think it would probably be a Devrel person, like a developer relationships
Speaker:person. They have to be able to communicate with developers. But I think
Speaker:more broadly, the question you're asking is more so, like, what happens if you
Speaker:feel uncomfortable being the voice of your company? Essentially, like,
Speaker:you feel like, hey, I can't speak to this audience because I'm not one
Speaker:of them, is essentially kind of like what you're bringing up. And so I
Speaker:think with employee advocacy, number one thing is
Speaker:it is much more effective if one of the founders
Speaker:can actually portray that. It just makes sense if a founder, the
Speaker:CEO, is not willing to show up, it's very hard for the rest of the
Speaker:company to also do that. I'm not saying it's impossible. I actually don't know who
Speaker:the founders of Metadata are, but I know the entire marketing team at Metadata. I
Speaker:just want to point that out so it doesn't have to be the founders, a
Speaker:great marketing team, or a great whoever at the company who can speak to that
Speaker:audience can fill in that role. I would prefer if it were the founders. But
Speaker:if you're a marketer and you're just trying to hit pipeline goals, I
Speaker:want to just let you know that you can be empowered to fill in that
Speaker:gap. You don't have to wait for anybody's permission. Just do things,
Speaker:make things happen, make numbers move, and I'm sure your
Speaker:organization will reward you and also be like, wow, this actually
Speaker:works. Thank you for proving that to us. I think the second thing is, if
Speaker:you really feel uncomfortable about it, try to figure out who at your company you
Speaker:can turn into that kind of advocate. I would try to do it yourself, but
Speaker:also figure out, okay, is there somebody at the company who has the right role
Speaker:or right title and are they willing to do this? If you find
Speaker:yourself in a place where you can't find that person who wants to do it,
Speaker:I would try to do it yourself. And if you really feel like you're not
Speaker:in a good place, I don't know what to tell you. I feel like the
Speaker:organization is not set up or doesn't want to try this channel. It's just
Speaker:a lost opportunity for them. It's not that it won't work. It's more that the
Speaker:organization doesn't want to do it. And I think that's a hard part
Speaker:to navigate. I think there's a whole conversation you should have in terms of
Speaker:opportunity cost and going to your CEO and talking about if you are very serious
Speaker:about hitting pipeline goals, we will structurally make changes at this organization
Speaker:to maybe think about this as a channel. That's a great point
Speaker:that I certainly don't think a founder
Speaker:or people who are unaware of the reality of kind of the landscape of
Speaker:the Internet, and especially how LinkedIn
Speaker:truly can play a role in that. And content, consistently putting
Speaker:content out can play a role in that. And how would you go about having
Speaker:that conversation with a. They might not know? Where do I begin
Speaker:to even think about that? If I'm a VP of marketing, I'm a content person
Speaker:talking to my VP like, hey, there's real opportunity
Speaker:cost for you not doing this. And it's a truly legitimate
Speaker:channel. Because my assumption would be most founders wouldn't
Speaker:think of it the same way as a paid ads program,
Speaker:a blogging program, an SEO, like a more
Speaker:traditional marketing function within a team
Speaker:where they're like, I'm just posting on LinkedIn. Like, what's that have to do with
Speaker:anything? Absolutely. And I actually feel this problem fairly
Speaker:viscerally because we sell to marketing
Speaker:organizations and look, we sell across a whole
Speaker:suite of ways in which you can actually think about generating pipelines.
Speaker:So last time on this podcast, we talked about SEO quite a bit. This time
Speaker:we're talking about LinkedIn and we tell our customers, like, hey,
Speaker:SEO stuff is going to help you with demand capture. But if you want to
Speaker:see results really quick, you need to actually start creating demand, doing
Speaker:demand Gen. And I think the way for you to do that, especially if you
Speaker:think your buyer is on LinkedIn and most decision makers are, you should
Speaker:start going hard on LinkedIn. Here's our playbook. We have like a playbook for you.
Speaker:Here's the tooling. Knock yourself out. We'll handhold you, too.
Speaker:And you would be surprised by the number of people who are
Speaker:unwilling to actually take that advice. I would not be surprised.
Speaker:Parthi not surprised. And people are just
Speaker:unwilling to actually do it. And if I think about why, I
Speaker:think they kind of see it. They see us doing it, they see all these
Speaker:companies that we mentioned doing it, and I think it comes down to being afraid
Speaker:to put their face behind something. I think there's an
Speaker:element of habit creation in here hard, in the same way that
Speaker:working out is hard or eating healthy is hard. There is an element of habit
Speaker:creation in here. And I think the last one to your point is I don't
Speaker:feel like I'm the right person to be able to talk about that. In which
Speaker:case, I think you as a company have a bigger problem. Like if your marketing
Speaker:sales team feel uncomfortable talking about your product or problems that
Speaker:your customers face, you have a larger problem than tactics over here.
Speaker:And so I think those are more structural, systematic issues that
Speaker:companies really need to address fundamentally before thinking about,
Speaker:how do we do these things? Because tactics are not going to solve foundational
Speaker:issues in terms of product marketing or just understanding who you're selling
Speaker:to, how to reach them, and all that kind of stuff. And so my advice
Speaker:to somebody, if you want to have that conversation with your founder, first off, send
Speaker:them this podcast. Justin and I are talking about it. I can tell you that
Speaker:64% of our inbound pipeline comes from LinkedIn.
Speaker:A large chunk of it is from mine, the founder's LinkedIn. But we get our
Speaker:entire sales team doing it. Our BDRs, our AES
Speaker:have a higher connect rate on LinkedIn. People want to follow them, want to connect
Speaker:with them, because they show up as trusted voices in the
Speaker:ecosystem. Higher connect rate means more meetings booked,
Speaker:means they're hitting quota better. When our BDR cool calls
Speaker:somebody, they say like, hey, I've seen you guys on LinkedIn, or I've heard of
Speaker:you before, or, we connected two weeks ago, and I've seen you in my feed
Speaker:before. Instead of hanging up and swearing at them, they actually want to have a
Speaker:conversation and be like, hey, shoot your shot. You have like two minutes. Tell me
Speaker:what you're about. And so there are all of these benefits that come
Speaker:from actually social selling that sort of grease your marketing
Speaker:sales, go to market funnel. And I think you don't know it until
Speaker:you do it. And so I'd encourage every company foundationally think about it.
Speaker:You need to make it a strategic initiative that has a little bit of
Speaker:buy in and go do it for six months, the same way that you would
Speaker:say, like, hey, I'm going to commit to going to the gym three days a
Speaker:week for six months. If nothing happens, that's fine. I would be
Speaker:surprised. If you don't see positive results. You start seeing
Speaker:source deals from LinkedIn, you start seeing larger pipeline, all
Speaker:the great stuff. And I think people should do it individually first, because
Speaker:if one person isn't willing to spearhead it, it's going to be very hard for
Speaker:you to coordinate or herd a bunch of cats to do it. So do it
Speaker:once, do it as an individual. If you're the one who was taking the initiative,
Speaker:make it work at some small scale and then expand it to
Speaker:the rest of your team. Once you can back it with numbers and say, look,
Speaker:I did this for six months. Look at the number of source leads we had
Speaker:from LinkedIn six months ago. Look at the number we have today. Look at all
Speaker:of the target ICP accounts that are visiting our website
Speaker:right now. And I put in UTM params to show that they're from LinkedIn. And
Speaker:look at all these people who are connected with me and now following with me
Speaker:who are all on our ICP list. And so I think if you can do
Speaker:that, you'll have a much better chance of building an employee advocacy
Speaker:program or a social selling program at your company. And that's going to take
Speaker:you very far against a competitor where
Speaker:everything kind of sounds the same, every product is largely the same.
Speaker:Now you have a brand and you have trust with real people who know what
Speaker:they're talking about, and that's going to help you out compete them thousand percent.
Speaker:There's so many things my brain is going a million miles. You touched on a
Speaker:little bit. But as you sort of try to map that out, because this is
Speaker:what it's going to come down to, right? Proof. I need proof that, is there
Speaker:a dashboard you're setting up? Is it simply just like you mentioned, the
Speaker:UTM links? Is it something within the actual
Speaker:demo request form that you're tracking? How are you sort of tracking the
Speaker:overarch, especially as you build this out with more people and it gets a little
Speaker:bit more complex, how are you sort of looking at it from a macro level?
Speaker:It'll be like, here's baselines, here's where we're at now.
Speaker:Yeah, so sure, track the vanity metrics, impressions, clicks,
Speaker:all that kind of stuff. But that's not the conversation you want to have with
Speaker:your CEO. They'll be like, cool, good for you. What you really want to think
Speaker:about is pipeline revenue. Every marketer in this macro
Speaker:environment needs to be thinking about this. I just need to double down on that.
Speaker:I'm still surprised by a number of people who are looking at vanity metrics. Easiest
Speaker:thing is if you're plg and you're onboarding form, ask put in
Speaker:a how did you hear about us? If you are sales led and you have
Speaker:a demo form put in, like how did you hear about us? Leave it open
Speaker:ended, don't have a drop down. Because if you have a drop down, people
Speaker:are just going to select the first option that they see. You're going to get
Speaker:bad data. Let them enter whatever they want to enter. We make it
Speaker:mandatory actually at letter drop. And it helps us figure out
Speaker:how to spend tens of thousands of dollars every month in terms of
Speaker:marketing. And so it's very important for us to actually know that. And I think
Speaker:it's short sighted for people to be like, no, we're going to not have that
Speaker:field. So that's the easiest free thing that you can do right
Speaker:now. The second thing I would do is there's a lot of solutions
Speaker:out there in terms of essentially just identifying traffic on your
Speaker:website. You can get clearbit or similar for free. To get
Speaker:started, just pick your favorite, drop one of them on your website, start
Speaker:noticing the kinds of accounts that are coming in. If there's a correlation
Speaker:between the accounts that are liking commenting on your posts
Speaker:and people who are coming to your website, that is a positive indication of
Speaker:where they're coming from. You're getting ICP traffic from social and
Speaker:LinkedIn. And then the very last thing, and this is stuff that we
Speaker:work on, is trying to actually figure out, can we actually try help companies
Speaker:understand the content, journey across LinkedIn to your website to back
Speaker:your CRM data in terms of close one pipeline. And that's something that we have
Speaker:built and we have. But I think that's like, if you want to go real,
Speaker:once you've built this program out and you want to really get down to numbers,
Speaker:you can do that. But I think the first two solutions are free and you
Speaker:can get started with that literally just today. Yeah, that's awesome. That's super
Speaker:helpful. And I think, like you said, that is key. The vending metrics are
Speaker:fine, and I think in some regards they can be useful
Speaker:for, especially as you're trying to prove out growth or prove those things.
Speaker:And even more so, I think when you're trying to build the habit, right,
Speaker:it's much more rewarding to go to the gym when you step on the scale
Speaker:and you've lost five pounds. So you can see the leading indicators of things
Speaker:happening. You haven't lost it all or you haven't gotten in super shape. You can't
Speaker:run a five k yet, but we're making progress. Kind of gives you that want
Speaker:to go back and do it again. But yeah, being able to map that down
Speaker:and understand where traffic is coming from, people ask
Speaker:me, and again, for my business, it's so scaled
Speaker:back. But same thing. I know when I'm having a conversation with
Speaker:somebody, I know where that thing started for the most part, or I
Speaker:can kind of quickly go figure out. Right, are they on the newsletter? Do they
Speaker:respond to it? Okay, yes, that makes sense. LinkedIn is very easy to see, for
Speaker:me to see that through, but that's how you start to. And again, I don't
Speaker:have any fancy CRM, but it's built out in the CRM to understand, like, where
Speaker:did this contact come from? Where did this lead come from? And I would say
Speaker:90% of them, for me, are even LinkedIn at this point. It's that
Speaker:powerful of a tool for people who are using it. Another thing, I think
Speaker:that goes in with it especially, and this was something that we experienced when we
Speaker:were at metadata is, and I think you're probably kind of touching a similar vein
Speaker:as you're building it out with letter drop, is you don't need 50
Speaker:people on the team doing this to make
Speaker:you feel so much bigger than you actually are.
Speaker:We probably had two people that were super consistent, three
Speaker:that were pretty consistent, four that were consistent enough, more
Speaker:consistent than average or average. And we still felt like, oh,
Speaker:my gosh, there's so much stuff going on here. Are you finding the same thing
Speaker:where it's like, you just need a few people who are willing and able
Speaker:to talk about these things over time? Yeah. You don't need a big
Speaker:team to do this. Our go to market team is four
Speaker:people. Right. And so it's not like we're a large company,
Speaker:but people do say they feel our presence. They see us quite
Speaker:a bit on LinkedIn at the very least, I think we're not doing as nearly
Speaker:as well as some companies our size. And I think that's more of a matter
Speaker:of nature of content, which we're trying to fix.
Speaker:But small team, you can actually get quite good results
Speaker:just by showing up a couple of times a week and actually sharing something that's
Speaker:generally insightful, thoughtful, educational. Then promote your product or
Speaker:service in the mix as well. And the reason why
Speaker:is because the bar is so low, you're competing against nothing. Essentially,
Speaker:the vast majority of companies are doing zit. And so if
Speaker:you even do something like, you will stand out. Right now, I think the
Speaker:easier thing to do is, or the low effort thing to do from the rest
Speaker:of your company is if they don't want to actually be a brand themselves,
Speaker:the least they can do is share it with their network. It's just like
Speaker:that. Like that comment. And tools like us automate that as
Speaker:well. That also goes pretty darn far, because when people
Speaker:do that, their network starts seeing that content. And as long as their
Speaker:network is prospects or buyers, that works. So what you don't want
Speaker:to do, for example, is you sell to developers, get your engineering
Speaker:team engaging with this kind of stuff, for sure. If you sell to
Speaker:HR people, getting your engineering team to like
Speaker:and comment probably isn't quite as effective. If anything, you're giving LinkedIn
Speaker:the wrong signal, telling them, hey, a bunch of engineers like this, I
Speaker:should show it to more engineers. What you need is connect people who
Speaker:are in your sales team, partnerships, team marketing team who are connected with
Speaker:prospects, connect it with partners. So hey,
Speaker:we have a customer advisory board, and these are people who have influence in
Speaker:our industry. Those are people you want to engage with you. I think that's a
Speaker:way to get your sort of extended circle your family around your
Speaker:company to essentially help promote your content. But at its
Speaker:core, in terms of the actual voices, the producers, like a
Speaker:handful of people will go a very, very long way. So that's how I would
Speaker:structure it. Founder and then maybe like a handful of people
Speaker:on sales, marketing, whoever it may be. And then broader
Speaker:reach is employees who have the right network. And then
Speaker:broader reach beyond that is partners,
Speaker:investors, customers who have the right network. And that is
Speaker:how I would kind of layer on LinkedIn. Employee or
Speaker:partner advocacy, essentially. I know letter drop lets
Speaker:you have the people come in from the like. You can assign the people to
Speaker:be able to automatically engage and comment and things like that. Is it similar
Speaker:for customer advocacy programs or is there like a weird
Speaker:sort, know you're not at our company, how do we add you in there? Or
Speaker:like, have you seen anybody think of doing it that way? Yeah,
Speaker:we have a bunch of customers who do that. So for example, signal fire is
Speaker:a VC firm that works with us. And whenever they launch a
Speaker:new company, they want to make sure all the partners have, all investors have
Speaker:a lot of great portfolio companies who could be customers. And so
Speaker:that's an example of non employees or people essentially
Speaker:boosting stuff. We have other customers, companies like warmly, for
Speaker:example, who essentially get their friends and partners to
Speaker:participate, and then they essentially give them different permissions. So
Speaker:some people can, you can post on their behalf, some people you can comment on
Speaker:their behalf, and some people you can only like on their behalf. It depends on
Speaker:how comfortable they are with different levels of permissions. You can set that out
Speaker:for an individual, just group them and say like, hey, here's my advisor list,
Speaker:here's my employee list, here's my sales team. And then for the
Speaker:right type of content, you can get the support from the people you
Speaker:need. It's all opt in. They still have to authenticate into your LinkedIn
Speaker:account. So they are opting in. They see the permissions and they can also choose
Speaker:to disconnect the app. Any point in time if they're like, yeah, this is not
Speaker:something I want to do. Yeah, that's cool though. I could even see it around,
Speaker:like you said, when they're launching or doing something, but like, hey, I've got this
Speaker:thing I'm launching. Are you willing to kind of help me do this even in
Speaker:a short term period of, I'm just looking for your help, but I'll do it
Speaker:for you because I think that's one of the hard things too. And I'd
Speaker:be curious, kind of getting your thoughts on that as well as it's hard
Speaker:to get people to do things that aren't part of their
Speaker:daily job. I've even seen that like podcast, right? Like, I
Speaker:have you, come on, I can create a bunch of stuff for you and hand
Speaker:it over to you and it can sit on a folder because it's just not,
Speaker:you know what I mean? We've all been there and done that, and so how
Speaker:can we better arm folks to
Speaker:actually either know what's coming, know what
Speaker:content? I think that's a huge part is like one of the struggles I always
Speaker:had at companies was, hey, I've got this new blog
Speaker:post. Oh, okay, cool, what do I write? I feel like there's
Speaker:a lot of, you got to make it kind of almost a program in a
Speaker:lot of ways, like you talked about. It's got to be embedded as
Speaker:a thing that we're doing because otherwise it won't be
Speaker:successful if it's just like, oh, here's our boilerplate for new feature came
Speaker:out. We've all seen this on LinkedIn. Probably like company comes out, it's all the
Speaker:same post all day long. Okay, yeah, totally
Speaker:agree with you. And which is why I think my view on this is
Speaker:almost like, don't rely on people. It's
Speaker:boring work. Nobody wants to do it. It's not part of their day to day
Speaker:job. If you can automate it, if you can let software do it, just let
Speaker:software do it. Let people focus on the things that they are good at, which
Speaker:is probably the initial insight, which becomes your content that you want to
Speaker:share. That's where people should be. What we want to do at the
Speaker:end stage, which is distributing stuff, like just making things happen, that's where it
Speaker:has to be as automated as possible. Because to your point, yeah, there's a lot
Speaker:of clips just sitting in folders out there. There's probably
Speaker:a lot of pipeline companies could be generating if they just took the
Speaker:effort to distribute that, redistribute that on a regular basis on a
Speaker:regular cadence. Just because our first podcast is still relevant today,
Speaker:there's nothing from that podcast that wouldn't be beneficial to somebody
Speaker:today. And there's no reason why it shouldn't be shared. And we do do it.
Speaker:We have a lot of content. We do share it occasionally, but I think not
Speaker:enough companies think about it that way. They don't think about, here's an asset that
Speaker:is evergreen and I just need to create the infrastructure in
Speaker:place to be able to get it in front of my buyers
Speaker:on a consistent basis to stay top of mind until they're ready to actually
Speaker:have a conversation with me about a purchase. I was doing a
Speaker:workshop with a company last month, and one of the things their team brought
Speaker:up was there's still a big disconnect, I think, for a lot of companies
Speaker:in terms of the push and pull strategy as far as like, the
Speaker:goal of my social content is to get you to come back to my bigger
Speaker:thing and you must consume my bigger thing in order for me to check a
Speaker:box and be like, that was a successful content campaign. And I think it's
Speaker:a huge shift for folks to understand, like, the goal of creating this piece
Speaker:of content is not necessarily for you to consume all of
Speaker:it. The goal is so we can chop up on these ideas, get
Speaker:different things out there, and then I can, as a smart marketer, find the best
Speaker:pieces and then distribute those things out in front of the audience because
Speaker:I want the audience to get the information. So if I take this episode,
Speaker:and I think a huge part of distribution in 2024 is employee advocacy.
Speaker:So that's a huge thing that I should be talking about. It's obviously a huge
Speaker:thing that your company is going to be wanting to talk about. It's not necessarily
Speaker:like, my goal is to get everybody to listen to this 30 to 40
Speaker:minutes podcast episode, the goal is, I bet if I
Speaker:dripped, if I get ten clips out of this and I dripped ten clips over
Speaker:the next six months, that's going to be pretty effective, too. Now I'm going to
Speaker:talk about employee advocacy probably way more than I normally
Speaker:would because it's maybe not part of the everyday conversation that I'm
Speaker:having, but it is important. Yeah, absolutely. I do think that
Speaker:a lot of people think about the base asset, your
Speaker:long blog posts, your 40 minutes podcast episode,
Speaker:and I think those assets are very important. Don't get me wrong, the person who
Speaker:is sufficiently motivated, who wants to learn about something, will go and do
Speaker:it. Guess what? That person is also very much in the market to buy
Speaker:if they're willing to do that work. So don't get me wrong, those assets matter.
Speaker:Brian law talks about this like long form content isn't dying. We watch
Speaker:three hour long movies. All these assets matter. But these
Speaker:assets are not easy to distribute. To your point, what you need to do is
Speaker:take these assets, make them easily consumable, and use those
Speaker:as essentially leads for people who are not quite
Speaker:ready to sit down. They might be in a couple of weeks, that's fine, in
Speaker:months, whatever. But nurturing them through that journey over many months
Speaker:or many weeks to get them to the point where like, yes, I'm thinking
Speaker:about employee advocacy. I'm thinking about Justin, I'm thinking about Parthi, I'm
Speaker:thinking about distribution version, I'm thinking about letter drop. And I'm ready to go in,
Speaker:listen to that podcast, read that blog post and actually think about it. Because my
Speaker:CEO just told me today that we need to think about lowering our CAC.
Speaker:We need to think about new acquisition strategies, because what we're doing right now is
Speaker:not working. And that's where all of these consumable things
Speaker:come in. And to your point, I think more people need to start
Speaker:thinking about content from that perspective. It's a long term game, and I
Speaker:think attribution is important. But attribution over a six month,
Speaker:twelve month period, not over like lead clicked on my thing, went
Speaker:to the long form thing, signed up a demo request in a funnel in the
Speaker:same minute. That doesn't happen. Yeah, in one false roof, they just did it
Speaker:all. Amazing. Yeah. No, it's interesting, too. And I think for
Speaker:anybody who's, as you're building out this sort of employee advocacy
Speaker:structure at your team, or you're doing more LinkedIn posting on your own as a
Speaker:founder, or however it is, there's also just the reality of
Speaker:LinkedIn. And how that platform works is like, your buyers are probably your
Speaker:lurkers, they may not be your commenters, and even the people
Speaker:who like your stuff. So I think that can be true. But
Speaker:I've even seen that, for me, where there's people who I've
Speaker:never interacted with, literally never interacted with or seen
Speaker:on LinkedIn engaging with my stuff, who fill out the form, become a
Speaker:client, and say, I just been listening to the podcast and been seeing your content
Speaker:for six months straight, and I'm like, oh, I didn't even know that you knew
Speaker:it existed. So amazing. So I think that's another thing to understand,
Speaker:too. Is it? Isn't that direct line. It's sort of
Speaker:like all of those things working together to then make the system run in
Speaker:the long run. Happens all the time, literally. We'll get
Speaker:inbound DMs from CMOs, from 500
Speaker:employee companies, people who we would normally struggle to get in front
Speaker:of our BDR would struggle to get in front of decision maker at that
Speaker:level. Inbound. They're like, oh, yeah, I've just been following you on LinkedIn for the
Speaker:past three months. I like your stuff. Some initiative came up. I thought of
Speaker:you. Can you give this person on my team a demo? Happens all the
Speaker:time, and I don't think enough companies know that this is
Speaker:possible and they're just sleeping on it. And how much better of
Speaker:a conversation is that? That's one of the things when I've been talking to content
Speaker:teams as well, in terms of really the distribution, the
Speaker:repurposing. Why do it? Why get your stuff out there? It's a ton of
Speaker:work. We're already doing a bunch of other things. I don't have time for it.
Speaker:It's not a priority. The hardest thing in a lot of this is you're
Speaker:battling status quo, whether it's the founders who need to post
Speaker:or they're not, or the teams who are doing things one way and doing another.
Speaker:But I think what you said right there is so key, which is you're priming
Speaker:the market. There's people who are not ready to buy.
Speaker:It's the fact or whatever the status. 3% of the folks that you're engaging
Speaker:with are actually potentially ready to buy and 97 aren't. And
Speaker:so of those 97% of people, it's your job to be
Speaker:the first person they think of when they're ready to solve that problem.
Speaker:And the trick with it now is the idea
Speaker:of being known, liked and trusted. You can't be
Speaker:this nameless, faceless corporation and compete on
Speaker:features for you. It's, you know, I
Speaker:saw, you know, I saw like, when I was
Speaker:a know Mark and Jason and the podcast know, even my stuff from time
Speaker:to, like, that stuff really matters because now it feels like
Speaker:when you hop on a call or when somebody else hops on a call,
Speaker:oh, man, I feel like we've talked before, or I feel like, gosh, it seems
Speaker:like we're connected in this way. And I saw something, I was
Speaker:reading a book the other day and they were talking about this. And the idea
Speaker:being that your brain cannot decipher digital
Speaker:from real. And so a human brain is like, the
Speaker:connections are there regardless of whether and obviously, I think if you're in
Speaker:person and there's probably a different level to it, but just at a baseline,
Speaker:your brain is connecting you to these other people. Totally true. Which is
Speaker:why a lot of people feel closer to celebs or
Speaker:famous personalities than they are. They feel like they know. It's this information
Speaker:asymmetry. I think you touched upon a very important point. You
Speaker:just mentioned Zach from our sales team. I've never talked to you about
Speaker:Zach. You've never met him. No. You know him. You
Speaker:mentioned Jason and Mark and all these people from
Speaker:metadata, who I've all have had the pleasure of meeting over the past
Speaker:year or two, and none of you are at metadata anymore.
Speaker:And so one of the pushbacks I see with these programs is people are like,
Speaker:I don't want to attach myself to my company's brand. I don't want to hurt
Speaker:my own brand. Guess what? A, if you're not doing anything, you probably
Speaker:don't have a brand to hurt in the first place. Two, it's viewed
Speaker:positively, right? If I'm a future employer and I look at that, I'm like, you
Speaker:could do that for your previous employer. As a company, you're an
Speaker:asset. Make yourself more sellable. You are helping your company. It's
Speaker:just win win for everybody. And I think we can point to that.
Speaker:Like, Metadata's organic presence has
Speaker:declined since that cohort or marketing team has
Speaker:left the company. And all of you are doing great things
Speaker:at new places distribution first, Jason's own consulting
Speaker:shop. Mark at user evidence. You're running the same playbooks at different
Speaker:places and doing so successfully. And so I want to just encourage
Speaker:every marketer out there to be like, if you can hit numbers
Speaker:for your company and run these employee advocacy programs for your
Speaker:business, you can technically do it anywhere. It is a
Speaker:skill you can take from company to company. Don't think of it as, like, tying
Speaker:yourself to a brand. The brand can change. I might start a new company in
Speaker:the future, or people may not be in market tech. People are going to be
Speaker:like, oh, M. Parthi is a Martech guy. I was like, heck, I was a
Speaker:software engineer and a product manager two years ago. I'm not a marketing person.
Speaker:But here I am. Now I am, and I can reinvent myself in a couple
Speaker:of years as well. And I think every individual you can do that, too, is
Speaker:what I would say. If that is an objection in your head as to why
Speaker:you can't do. This, I think another objection that I was thinking
Speaker:of, too, and I've heard this is the flip side of that coin, which is
Speaker:like, why? And I feel like this is dying down a little bit, at least
Speaker:in SaaS startup land, because I think they're starting to see that's kind of a
Speaker:silly point. But what if these people leave who are now they're the
Speaker:faces of my organization. What happens? Know, in this case, let's
Speaker:say you propped Zach up as this thing and now Zach
Speaker:leaves to another company and what the heck, right? He was our guy and
Speaker:now he's somebody. Like, how do you think about that? Or how would you maybe
Speaker:have that conversation with another founder who is
Speaker:sort of questioning like, should we really buy into this
Speaker:one? You as a founder should do it yourself. So you need a
Speaker:baseline, which is, hey, like I was, I'm with the company
Speaker:and I'm stuck with the company. And so this is our baseline. The second
Speaker:thing is you want at least a couple of employees to do this.
Speaker:We get our whole go to market team to do this. It's not just Zach,
Speaker:it's Ryan, it's Matt, it's Keelin, it's everybody. And anybody who joins our
Speaker:go to market team is going to be expected to do this as well. And
Speaker:they can get up to speed in a couple of months. It's not a big
Speaker:deal to get someone up to speed. We've done it already. We can do it
Speaker:again. Sure. There's a short term hit where your person,
Speaker:like in metadata's case you guys left. There's no reason why they can't
Speaker:done that with other people and they still do have some people, I think like
Speaker:Rachel for, like I still see her on LinkedIn, they can build that program up
Speaker:again. And so in the same way that I think
Speaker:it's a transferable skill or a transferable thing for an individual
Speaker:from a company's perspective, I think you can figure out
Speaker:how to encourage employees and build this every time. That
Speaker:said, I would highly encourage the founders, do it and have a little bit of
Speaker:a baseline there. I think a lot of very successful companies are able to
Speaker:do it with the founders. If you're not doing it with the founders, I would
Speaker:just say it is completely possible to do that over and over
Speaker:again with new members of the marketing team. There's no reason why metadata can't just
Speaker:prop up like, hey, look, here are new faces right now. And it's the same
Speaker:thing. It's customer education. I think your customers, at the end of the day,
Speaker:they care about their problems, whether the face, it's coming from changes
Speaker:every now and then is almost secondary. Yeah. And I saw somebody talking about this
Speaker:the other day with YouTube. They were talking about how some companies are
Speaker:hesitant to prop somebody up to, say, be the YouTube
Speaker:person on the team, because if that person builds their
Speaker:own brand or leaves or something, now the face of the company
Speaker:is sort of gone. And the point they made was like, well, sure.
Speaker:What if you had an engineer who was a star engineer and they left? Of
Speaker:course, it's not at the front end, but you would try to find another great
Speaker:engineer. So your goal in that case would be to find another great person who
Speaker:could be in front of the camera and be that. And so I think that's
Speaker:the same thing where it's like, to your point, these playbooks can be
Speaker:redone with different people and built out in different ways. I do
Speaker:think at the end of the day, it does come down to the founder. I'm
Speaker:curious, before we wrap, because it's been in the back of my brain for
Speaker:the founders, this is just not what they're going to do. They're not going to
Speaker:do it. What's your take on ghost writing? I feel like ghostwriters are
Speaker:booming everywhere, or multiple people kind of in
Speaker:my world, like solopreneurs, they're doing ghost writing for founders.
Speaker:Is that a viable avenue for at least, let's say, if it's done
Speaker:really well? Do you see that as viable in case the founder is like,
Speaker:I'm not willing to write this content. I don't know what it is, but I'll
Speaker:have a conversation once a month. And you can do it for me. Absolutely. I
Speaker:think that is incredibly viable to have ghost writing. Here's a little
Speaker:secret for the audience out there. Half of my content is not written by me.
Speaker:Heyo. Keelin, who's on our team, takes a lot of the core
Speaker:ideas we have on our blog, on our podcast, on our videos like
Speaker:this, or I have said something intelligent or smart, we've turned
Speaker:it into a long form asset. She uses our toolian platform to
Speaker:essentially repurpose them. We have a bunch of templates which for
Speaker:like advice with strong hook or product launch
Speaker:or bullet points or whatever, we have a lot of templates. We pop them
Speaker:into letter job. Out comes something. She gets her 90% there. She
Speaker:edits it a little bit, and then she says, okay, this is going out on
Speaker:parties. LinkedIn next Tuesday in review, and I just get an
Speaker:email in my inbox. I'm like, cool. I don't like this word or whatever. I'll
Speaker:change it and goes out there. And that is 50% of my LinkedIn
Speaker:content, quite honestly. And so I think ghost writing is very viable. The
Speaker:catch is you do need the long form assets or you need something
Speaker:sensible to say. I've put in the work at some point in time. I've
Speaker:had those thoughts or opinions or perspectives. We're just
Speaker:repurposing them at some point in the future. And so that's what makes the ghost
Speaker:writing effective, is that they have a good source. And so if
Speaker:you ghostwrite and the person who's ghostwriting for you, how much ever
Speaker:that may be assisted with AI, if they don't have good source
Speaker:material, they don't actually understand the business, the customer, the
Speaker:problem, they will fail and you will get content that you are not
Speaker:proud of putting out on your LinkedIn. And so that would be
Speaker:my sort of caveat or catch there is you
Speaker:still need to have an opinion, perspective, and be able to
Speaker:educate your customers. Without that. It's the equivalent of the SEO
Speaker:spammy article, which make no sense. But on LinkedIn form, that's
Speaker:it. It's interesting. Like, I've definitely done ghostwriting for people. When I was in
Speaker:house, I was that person. I've done that.
Speaker:And now I've actually worked with a couple. I never thought about it as
Speaker:ghostwriting, but I guess that's what it is like at the end of the day,
Speaker:working with them to sometimes they do it for brands, and sometimes that
Speaker:content is spun off and given to the founder or things like that. But it's
Speaker:why hiring a good ghostwriter costs a decent chunk of change, or having somebody
Speaker:who's on your team to learn that and spend time to do that, because it
Speaker:takes time to learn the audience, to learn what is going to matter, to learn
Speaker:the voice and tone of that founder. And obviously, the more you do it, the
Speaker:better it gets. But as somebody who's done that, having a piece of content
Speaker:that's really solid, you can get a lot of content. And that's what
Speaker:I think people don't quite understand is this podcast for you, Parthi,
Speaker:you'll get a lot of content out of this, or your team will get a
Speaker:lot of content out of this. 40, less than an hour to record.
Speaker:And so I think for that time, the ROI is pretty
Speaker:high to be able to do something like that. And this is obviously an
Speaker:external thing. But even if you did that internally, and this was a Zoom
Speaker:call, and you just had a conversation for 30 minutes to an hour
Speaker:every month, you're pretty well set to be able to have a pretty good stream
Speaker:of content. And then I think tools like letter drop, other things like having a
Speaker:strategy using the distribution first frameworks, why people are here and listening to this
Speaker:show, all of those things are how you scale yourself. It's how
Speaker:you get more done, be more efficient. We're in a wild transition where there
Speaker:are groups of people who are stuck doing it the old way, and there are
Speaker:groups of people who are massively more efficient in being able to get way
Speaker:more done by using proper strategy and proper tooling.
Speaker:Absolutely. And I think, to your point, you don't need a podcast. I mean,
Speaker:a podcast is great. You can talk to another person, you can share audiences,
Speaker:but you can just have an internal conversation with somebody who's a subject matter
Speaker:expert in your company and create lots of great content.
Speaker:And a lot of people don't want to do that. Initial bit of hard
Speaker:work takes half an hour, but will have an outsized
Speaker:impact on everything else you can create. Yeah, and that's the thing. If you did
Speaker:one interview, and again, whether you do it manually, whether you use a
Speaker:tool like letter drop, whether you do it in a different way, that can
Speaker:become a blog post which becomes LinkedIn content, which all
Speaker:fuels that thing to be able to get way more and to get those
Speaker:thoughts out in different perspectives as well. So this has been
Speaker:super great. Hopefully, it's been a helpful episode for folks listening and trying to
Speaker:get in on what the heck I should be doing. From an employee
Speaker:advocacy standpoint, I think my biggest perspective and takeaway is
Speaker:if you don't have your founder on board, it's going to be tough, but
Speaker:there are ways around that. I think some of the ghost writing stuff is a
Speaker:way around that. I think building the habit and starting on
Speaker:your own and then building out the proof of what that is. So I talk
Speaker:a lot about this with concept programs, doing pilots. So starting something and just
Speaker:doing, again, not saying you're going to run a marathon, but hey, I'm going to
Speaker:learn to run a five k. It's a different animal in a whole different world,
Speaker:and it's a little bit more achievable. So those are my big takeaways. And Parthi,
Speaker:thanks for coming on, man. This has been great. Thank you for having me. It
Speaker:was a pleasure coming on a second time. Yeah, we'll see. Well, you know, six
Speaker:months from now, you come back and we'll chat about something else. So it'll be
Speaker:great. Thanks, Parthi. Absolutely.
Speaker:All right. I hope you enjoyed this episode of distribution
Speaker:first, and thank you for listening. All the way through. I appreciate you
Speaker:so, so much and I hope you're able to apply what you learned in
Speaker:this episode one way or another, into your content strategy as
Speaker:well. Speaking of strategy, we have a lot of things going on this year that
Speaker:are going to help you build your brand, ten x your content and transform
Speaker:the way you do content marketing. Make sure to subscribe to the show and sign
Speaker:up for my newsletter at Justinsimon Co. So you don't miss
Speaker:a thing. I look forward to serving you in the next episode as well. And
Speaker:until then, take care and I'll see you next time.
