All right. Welcome to the employer. Content show part of the talent insights series brought to you by hire well, and before you apply. Boom. That just happened. Thanks. I’m your host, James. Hornick joining me is my co-host from before you apply Mr.
Authenticity himself Nate Guggia that’s good. So yeah, I’m running. I was running out of simple adjective, so I had to kind of kick it up a notch. Oh God. Okay. All right. So today’s segment, don’t be a social media fraud. Yeah. I, we realized we had, we’ve had so many different thoughts on this topic over the last like month or six weeks since we kind of first like kicked this around that I’m trying to organize everything.
And I think it’s impossible. Like there’s so many different aspects of this one to pick apart, but, part of it, we were going to hit on things that related to booth, like individuals. As well as companies, because we want to tie this back to kind of employer content and those things are very much intertwined, right?
Or a lot of times representing their company. This is not specific to LinkedIn. I mean, a lot of this stuff that we’re going to talk about here is every platform ever, if anything, I think LinkedIn is behind the times. Like people are only people in our, our audiences and that kind of B2B space and professional space only see it now.
You know, cause it might be their first kind of foray, but like this has been happening on Facebook and Instagram and all this kind of stuff like forever. and you know, I think that there’s, everyone has a sense that social media is just weird. There’s something off about it. You, you you’re addicted to it.
You can’t stop using it. You like it, but there’s something weird and odd about it. And, but the way people kind of act on social versus how they act in real life and whatnot. And, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of like CrossFit, you don’t know why you’re doing it, but it seems to work. It’s kind of fun. And, but it’s definitely strange and you know that much, but anyway.
Yeah. And I also wanna kind of answer the question, why is my feed suck? You know, and I think we’ll kind of get into that too, so cool. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, just something I’m thinking about. And I think about this, like, kind of on a regular basis, because I’m so active on LinkedIn specifically, but it’s like, there, there is this version of me and there’s a version of me.
Like whenever I have. Conversations with people that I meet on LinkedIn and stuff. And then there’s this other version of me. That’s like the rest of my life, which people don’t see. And like,
I mean, seriously, it’s like, that’s what I’m getting at is like, as much as you want to try to like, mitigate that, that, that like level of posturing, it’s like. It’s kind of impossible to do it because they are two different worlds. And especially when it comes to like the B2B world of LinkedIn, the two don’t normally collide.
Yeah. I don’t know that I like I’ve gotten there, but it’s pretty well. I guess I want to, maybe we should define fraud first because of what I’m talking about here. and there’s levels of this, right? So there’s, there’s entry level entry level, tier one fraudster. And I think this is what, like, literally everybody’s guilty of, right?
So this is, this is simple things like, you know, when you first start. Posting on social media or posting on LinkedIn. You’re trying to do it for some sort of business purpose, whether it’s for your business or for yourself and your own, you know, whatever, you know, you read blogs about best practices and what time of day to post and that you should always like your posts and like everyone else who liked your post and comment back on them.
And these are the topics you should talk about because they’re the most popular you should post pictures and memes you should get post motivational stuff. And ultimately it’s like, Basic be algo hacking one Oh one, right? Like none of this is natural or yourself and it’s none of it’s important.
Absolutely. None of it’s important or necessary whatsoever. That’s like, you know it’s getting that dopamine fix, which it’s, it’s impossible to get them completely away from, but that’s, that’s kind of like, entry-level. Somewhat harmless, but still it’s kind of fraud. the second level I would say is like, chasing that to an extreme there’s people out there who kind of make it their job.
They want to become an authority or perceived authority. Right. They want to chase down. What was the name here? Cause I was talking about this with, based on Gil’s Cohen’s post a while ago. They want authority bias. That was the term I was looking for. Okay. So they want to become so big and so popular that they could say something mundane, but everyone’s going to love it and think they’re smart for it.
So taking us off, maybe, maybe the first kind of detour here, authority bias in the classic sense is when it’s typically related to people who were like. Wealthy or in high positions in their company, therefore people kind of default to them in their opinion because they’re, they’re perceived as being the authority.
And it’s, it’s a similar kind of thing on social media. When someone has a million followers, their words, just for some reason, carry more weight than someone who has a hundred followers, even though they might be making the same point. You might be saying something completely stupid. So there’s, there’s absolutely people who want to just become an authority, regardless if it has any real business impact for them or whatnot.
And that’s when they start taking algo hacking to an extreme plagiarizing people using engagement pods, blah, blah, blah, just to Jack up the numbers, whatever, then there’s, then there’s professional level fraud. It’s those people who are trying to sell you some package to get on their level and how they did it.
And they tell you all the things that didn’t actually get them there. And it’s like the engagement pods that really got them there. So, and there’s, there’s lots of places that people out there who want to sell you some sort of program and how to become like a great. Social media presence to people. And it never actually pays off because either it doesn’t work as well, because it’s just an engagement pod scheme or yeah.
It gets them those numbers, but they don’t actually, whatever their business objective is never actually got achieved, which is probably what we need to start tying this into as well. So, yeah. Okay. you, I don’t know if you want to, you mentioned are you were talking about your, the conversation you had earlier today, but yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, sure. okay. The thing I keep coming back to is this idea of like, what really matters and then what we think matters. And it’s easy once you’re. When you get in it to think that those numbers really matter, because they, like you were saying, like, they make you, they make you feel good. If a lot of people agree with you, then it feels like you’re doing something right.
And you can fall into that trap to continue doing those things, to keep getting people agreeing with you. More and more and more. And somehow that makes you feel like you are moving in the right direction, but then when you look at it, like, what is the thing that you’re really ultimately like trying to achieve?
You’re not getting there. I would say, just to put words in your vanity metrics versus business deliverables. Sure. Yes. That’s an easy way to say it. But at the same time, like I understand how it happens because, it’s easy to think that this, social media activity is, is really productive.
Because of that because of the instant feedback that you can get, but then you go like, okay, is this, is this actual real life? Is this like making my business or my work or whatever, move forward. And, and a lot of times there’s that disconnect between the two. Yeah. And that’s why, like, I, you know, I, and sometimes just like being at, you have to learn this through being a practitioner by just like doing it and maybe falling into one trap and then having the realization that none of that stuff really matters.
But I say this so often, but I’ll just keep repeating it that like, it comes down to creating what you want to create and detaching from those outcomes, because we can only, we can control the output. But we can’t control the input. Right. And if we separate from those, this whole thing becomes then really fun and actually really fulfilling because you’re creating for yourself, which then in turn creates the right thing for other people, because you’re not doing it just to get a number.
And if you look at like, sorry, one more thing. If, if I look at like the people that I follow on a regular basis at this point now after like doing this for so long and really paying attention to it, I bet you on, on a list of like between 15 or 20 people, five of them maybe are really well known with large, large audiences.
The rest of them are people who just post really good stuff who don’t have the biggest following, who posts don’t go viral every time they post it. and so that’s, I dunno, that’s like, I think that’s like the quality over quantity thing. So let’s let me dive a little bit deeper into this too. vanity metrics versus kind of business outcomes.
And I think this is the first kind of key thing to realize the difference between, let me define this out a little bit. The funny part about vanity metrics, cause I’ve seen people talk about vanity metrics being bad. Then the next week they’re talking about how many followers they have now. Which is just makes me realize that I think most people don’t understand what vanity metrics actually means.
And it’s like a real it’s, a thing, you know, like I think it was coined by the guy who wrote the lean startup, you know, it’s things that look like they matter because they’re measurable, but don’t actually impact a business outcome and applying this to social media. You’re the likes or comments or followers you have mean?
Absolutely nothing. If the real objective is some sort of business deliverable, if you’re trying to make a sale, trying to boost your brand within a certain kind of niche, if you’re trying to help your employer brand, if you’re trying to build relationships to build partnerships, you know, whatever it is, People who there’s inherently a level of targeting that is important there.
Yes, you have to, your goal is to become, it is to become well known, but it’s also to become perceived as, credible and an expert within that specific population of people. Right. And the only way you do that is by talking about things in interesting ways that may only be understood by that group of people.
Yeah. So these are things. These are topics that people who are in other industries, other sides of the world, you know, I mean, outside of your market, outside of your domain may have no idea what you’re even discussing that no idea what’s even going on, but it’s not like getting that audience. Isn’t getting that part of the audience is not important at all.
Yet all those things I kind of talked about the beginning of this, you know, all the, kind of the algo hacking tricks. That’s what it points you towards is getting, you know, audiences getting engagement from audiences that don’t matter. And don’t further, whatever you’re trying to do from a business perspective.
And this is important, both from a personal perspective. But also from like, if you’re running this type of stuff for your business or on behalf of your business, it’s really important that you understand the difference between the two. Because things that, I can say with a hundred percent certainty have both helped us hire and gotten us business were things that didn’t really resonate with most people because they, it’s not their, it’s not their jam.
And I think detaching yourself. And I think so that’s kind of like as the first thing that. It’s important to get and why kind of what I’m calling, being a social media fraud, like is the wrong path to go down, but
let me jump in and add something, but, yeah, that was good. You nailed it. I would say on top of that, how do you define, like, this is how I define value. Cause I think people talk about, and you need to make sure you add value in your social media posts. Now you mean it’s telling me something I don’t already know.
Hmm. Not something I’m going to agree with. And that’s the other thing too. It’s also really easy to get high engagement. Talking to people about stuff they already know. They already agree with. That’s the whole essence of an echo chamber. You know, that’s when you get confirmation bias in play, really pulling out all the, all the biases here, but people love to hear stuff they already know, and they would love agreeing with it.
But that again, doesn’t really further your cause of building yourself. Building any kind of credibility, what builds credibility is value in the form of providing new ideas or at least new interesting takes on the ideas and the ways that people maybe haven’t thought about them before. Yeah. you know, that’s the thing it’s like, you can’t be afraid to test out ideas like social media, LinkedIn, especially which we talked about it being like a friendly environment.
It’s, it’s a great place to test ideas. We all have ideas that are a little bit outside the boundaries. Sometimes there are a lot outside the boundaries on just like different ways to approach our work. Something that is done one way and we see a way to go this way. And I, and it’s not about being right.
It’s about getting people to think, and it’s okay if people disagree with you, it doesn’t mean that you’re wrong and it doesn’t mean that they’re right. But you have to be like, you have to be okay with that with putting stuff out there because like, that’s the difference maker like you’re talking about is like, there’s agreeable and vanilla and you know that what that’s going to get you, if you deliver it.
but. If you take a right turn and put yourself out there and put some ideas out there. That’s when people start to take notice and go, Hey, like, if anything, if this is making me think differently. Yeah, I that’s a hundred percent correct.
I’m very pro I was going to cutting to the end of the whole thing. What I was gonna suggest is like, I think one of the things you do need to do is innovate. Like that has to be always kind of one. I think that’s one of the biggest issues in content creation, which maybe is another thing that we kind of want to dovetail to is the lack of innovation.
And I think in, let me, let me, let me take a category kind of hard turn here. I think there’s too much of a focus on personal brand, not enough of a focus on creating great content. And I think, when you’re focused on personal brand, that lot of times it comes down to how am I perceived? How many likes do I have?
Like your success metrics for having a personal brand in the traditional sense are how big your following is. Whereas if you focus on, let me just make the best content I can make. And that’s, I would say that from a, from an idea perspective and an innovation perspective, your brand just gonna follow, you know, that’s, that’s your, your brand’s going, gonna fall into place without having to like, worry about what it is.
You know, you’re going to become known in the circles that are important to you. As long as you’re talking about the things and doing things in a way that people are finding interesting. And I think that if people take an approach on, You know, content creation is kind of like their core of what they want to focus on and creating great stuff and putting their best effort into kind of creating new ideas.
Everything else takes care of itself, as opposed to worrying about like the top line once again, kind of vanity metrics, which really is what personal brand is you know, that part about the rep taking care of itself is so important. it’s so true. It just, it, it just does. it’s not forced it’s it just comes organically.
And I think like, I, that’s just the best way to, that’s just the best way to have an impact. We can take another turn here. Cause I had some notes that you had here and I wasn’t sure where you’re going with it. I want to hear what your, thought process was editorial teams versus content teams.
Oh yeah. Okay. So yeah, so we were having this conversation actually as a team internally about, kind of pushing the the transparency or like the authentic boundaries in the content that we create for companies getting, getting companies to delicious, just like tell more of the truth. Like tell the right stories.
The reality of it is, is that again, authenticity is a very agreeable idea. I think any company, any person would say like the more authentic we can be the better, but companies, especially, they’re not ready for it. Don’t, they’re not as ready as they think they are. So when it comes down to it, which is something that we experience is.
Push to be more, let’s say authentic or more transparent push back to say, no, it needs to be, look a little bit more like this. Right. And so, and that’s because in companies there’s layers, right? Yeah. Bigger companies, there’s more layers and it’s seen through a PR lens or a marketing lens or whatever.
And what you end up getting is you get this like polished version. Of what of authenticity? What’s something that starts very authentic. Then it gets polished up a little bit before it’s distributed out. so that’s the reality of it now. There’s ways to move more or more in that direction. Start pushing those boundaries a little bit.
And I think that’s the approach that anybody from, like the employer branding side needs to take at their company. I know there’s probably a lot of employer, brand leaders who just are like, we need to tell a more authentic story, but I’m getting pushback. And the way to start moving in that direction is to get people comfortable, little by little with.
Being more authentic there’s ways to do that. The ways that we do it is you just ask the right questions to get people, to understand that when they answer those questions and when those get put out publicly that it’s not as scary as you think that it actually doesn’t damage your brand. If anything, it attracts people to it.
it makes you more credible, more trustworthy. And so. That’s where this like editorial aspect comes in and it’s just, it’s like acting like a journalist, right? Asking the right questions, getting the right information out to start telling those stories and pushing that limit more and more and more until the powers that be are more comfortable with this kind of content.
And so, Oh here. I’ll give you an example. Here’s an example of, yeah. Interrupt your flow just for a second. Last time we did a show in this happy. He told me to interrupt you. I think your mic is like rubbing a little bit on your shirt or something like that, so. Okay. All right. So continue. Thanks for interrupting me.
Is this okay? You’re good. All right. We’ll probably happy to get. okay, so, so here’s an example. Here’s an example of like a pretty. This is a good question that we ask and it’s like, it gets some really cool answers fast forward two years, and your business is dead. Why did that happen? Right. We ask that question to everybody from founders to employees, depending on who we’re interviewing. Okay. That’s in some ways a bold question, But it gets people talking about, liabilities in their company about things that could potentially go wrong. I mean, those are all things like that should be talked about anyway.
Right. the other one, another one is like, how does your company make money? How do your employees get paid compensation, all that kind of stuff. Those are all like little things that companies themselves are like fearful of talking about. Like, we it’s, it’s hard for us just to say like, Hey, this is how we make money.
Yeah. So it’s like little things like that. They start pushing the limit. No, that makes sense. I can see that it’s those are awkward conversations where I think, yeah, no. It’s are you having these conversations with what level? Like everyone in the company or I’m just curious. No, it’s whoever our interview subjects are for the, content.
Got it. Okay. Yeah. but we have a standard set of like 22 to 25 questions based on the function that are all around giving more and more information, but yeah. Anyway. Okay. Just like other things I want to talk about. I was I already got into a 30 bias and confirmation bias. I was really proud of myself for that one.
Yeah, I think that you also kind of caught me on the troll post I had the other day I was talking about, everybody wants to talk about authenticity, but no one wants to stop writing like a robot. And I think that’s, that’s at the corporate level back to what you were kind of saying about that.
That’s always kind of inherently the case, right? When you got editorial teams meddling with the message, it’s going to sound, bless them less human. This is why everyone follows Elon Musk, but not Twitter or not. A Tesla. I mean, it’s like people follow the individual, not the company. And just because they know they’re actually talking to a real person versus like the process messenger.
Yeah. you know, another thing that like you and I have just developed this relationship organically, like it’s just happened. but like you and I are at the point where we push each other or encourage each other to. Put out better and better things, you know? And, and if we see something that like could be done better, we actually, at least on my side nudge the other person to say like, Oh, this could have been done better, but like, what I’m getting at is that, you know, we, because we, we do this so often and.
We’re continually thinking about it. Like we’re developing like our own group around this to, to do that, to like push each other and to help each other be better and do it the right way. And I think for anybody, especially like internally, it’s really easy to feel like you’re on an Island. You’re like, Oh, you know, With, with employer branding and recruitment marketing.
And it’s just usually like a team of one or a very small team. it’s easy to like look outside and maybe be part of these like employer branding groups, and feel intimidated and feel like other people are doing it better or differently than you. and I can’t encourage anybody who’s in that position enough to like reach out and like find like-minded people that they can just like.
Connect with on a regular basis, they’re going to plug the plug. The Slack channel is going to just go for it. I was waiting for you to do it. Hang on me. Or did you want me to jump in? No, but I mean, seriously, like I think it’s like important. It’s really important. Yeah. So on this point I had a, cause I just kicked this off this week to give everyone a heads up and it’s something you and I talked about for awhile and actually set up probably a month ago, but just didn’t have the time until the holidays came around.
I find it I’ve had three or four or clients and companies we work with that are way better marketing than I am. I’m not, I’m not a real marketer. I’m a recruiter who started doing content. I love it. Right? So it’s by default, it’s marketing, but I’m not classically trained in marketing. but I’ve had multiple clients for our recruiting services.
Come to me asking me, like, how do you do this stuff? Like, how’d you get your podcasts going? How do you do the video? Kind of all this kind of, you know, fairly tactical stuff. But these are all places that have like actual money to spend on this. You know what I mean? An actual marketing staffs and I was talking with a a contact.
Probably a week ago about this. Who’s actually a CMO of a company here in Chicago and she kind of explained that the thing is, is that content is kind of like design in that a lot of companies will have a design studio, right? So they’ll have their designers and UX people kind of like, and copyright like focused in one area.
You know, that studio might work with a market. They’re not really marketers. You know what I mean? They’re working with a marketing department, but it’s its own competency contents. The same thing. Yeah. content is not truly at its core marketing. It’s kind of, it’s a different thing. It, it makes it falls into marketing roles into marketing, but like people who are classically trained marketers, aren’t naturally content creators.
And I think that anyone who is a good content creator, I mean, Everyone figured that out on their own, you know, everyone is a do it yourself person and they started doing it for their company or for themselves. And that’s why I think there’s a big gap in terms of where most there’s some companies that are excellent at marketing that really, really struggle at content creation, which I think is most companies that are, that are good.
I’m getting to the point I set up a Slack group. DIY content creators. so it’s small. We just launched it this Monday. If anybody’s interested, this is a free group. No one’s selling anything. There is no agenda. It is strictly for people who want to make better content, share ideas with. understand how to do things, tactically run ideas off each other in terms of what’s catching, whatever, you know, it’s, it’s meant to be a feedback group for kind of like-minded people who are really passionate about this kind of stuff I want to, and want to focus on content creation instead of focusing on personal brand.
Right. So, there’s a signup. Only assigned to make sure I want to make sure everyone’s a real, they’re real people and I’ll add you so adding everybody. But if you go to DIY content, creators.com and hit the sign up page, I will add you to the Slack group shortly thereafter. But it’s been a pretty good group so far.
I don’t know how many people that are 40 50, just in the last, like first three days. So, and it’s really there’s like, it’s pretty fun to see the engagement. There’s like there’s a lot of back and forth. There’s a lot of conversations going on. I think this is a really good community for employer branding leaders who feel like they’re on an Island, anybody who touches recruitment, marketing, or employer branding.
And they feel like they’re just kind of alone in all this, it’s such a great place. , if you’re a solo marketing person at a company or, you know, it can be, I guess the examples I had before were replaced with more people and, you know, your management wants you to start a podcast. You have no idea how, you know what I mean, perfect community, like people on here who can kind of tell you what to do, bounce ideas off of how to get set up.
or just bouncing ideas off of like what content could be cool. Like join the group. Happy to chat. Yeah. I had like even, even today, Gill. . And like, he shot me a message. And he said like, here’s what I’m thinking about posting tomorrow. What do you think? You know? And I just like gave him my quick feedback on it.
It’s like, that’s exactly what it’s for. Yeah. It’s cool. Yeah. So trying to, trying to do something proactive, not just complain about the issue. That’s the other show I do the 10 minute talent rant. That’s just complaining about stuff. what haven’t we talked about? I think a small point I wanted to make is when it comes to social, I think there is an opportunity cost.
and this is why I don’t subscribe to the idea that, you have to post a lot. You have to post every day, you know, there’s definitely people out there that feel that pressure they need to. but back to credibility every post you have now, I guess on one hand, I’ll say that I think people should be experimenting as we said before, but every time you post something lame, That’s one more person probably out there it’s tuning you out.
And it’s a real thing, you know, like I think that, posting, when you have nothing to say, and you’re just doing it to like go through the motions, or you’re, you’re posting something motivational. If you’re not back to what I was saying about value. If you’re not trying to like, provide something valuable in the message that you’re giving you, open yourself up to people, just losing interest and.
I think you, and I can say, because as a big consumer of social content, which sounds like a horrible thing to say, probably because it is, there’s a lot of people out there that I kind of quit following just because like, yeah, they said some cool things every once in a while, but now it’s just, it’s either repetitive or they’re just posting what kind of nothing.
So, and I’m saying, I’m not saying this to criticize, I’m saying this, that people should just don’t fall in the trap of feeling like you have to post something. Because, there’s, you know, just don’t force it, so, yeah. and you need to be getting something out of it yourself. , like there’s a lot of days that the reason I post is because I just really, really enjoy writing process of putting a post together.
I just really enjoy that. And so I do it because of that, like, I took two weeks off in December at the end of December. And I still posted, I think most days just because I really wanted to. and I think that’s, that’s a really important piece and don’t force that piece either. But I think like the more you do it, the more you get into like, just creating for yourself, like I talked about earlier, I don’t know, man, this is like well, we didn’t really touch about engagement or we didn’t talk about engagement pods. you mentioned that, but hold on one sec. I’ll start it off real quick. lately I feel like this is probably been going on a lot longer. I’m sure it has. but lately I’ve been seeing people go from having.
Relatively like normal engagement on a, on a post to like astronomical engagement, almost like overnight. And then it’s just like on a consistent basis. And we’re talking like leaps. Yeah. Multiple exponential. And that like, every time I see that, like the first it’s just like a red flag where I’m like, what’s going on here?
Like, how did. How’d that it wasn’t that. And, and actually like, it’s getting worse, like you’re, but the engagement kids going on and like, it’s funny. Like, I, I’m not, like I talked so much about not caring about engagement and so this isn’t me like caring about engagement. It’s more like observing behaviors that just make me really.
I don’t know, curious about this stuff. Well, it’s, this relates back to what I was saying. Kind of like the advanced levels of fraud and whatnot. So engagement pods for anybody who doesn’t know, it could be simple groups like a WhatsApp chat, or it could be, there’s actual automated programs out there, like Chrome extensions that do this, where if you post.
Everyone else in the group is going to like, or comment on it, no matter what that could be, and they’re going to do it in the first 10 minutes or whatever. So that could be 50 people. That could be 200 people that could be 300 people. and that’s how engagement gets artificially inflated. So it’s like, I’ll go gaming, on an extreme level.
So is it, you know, it’s the issue is that it’s not, that’s how. A lot of these posts that are kind of lame. And a lot of these people keep getting consistently insane engagement. I don’t know what actually gets them though, because it’s, like I said before, it’s And this kind of comes back to the scammers though.
So in terms of the individuals. If you’re not providing value, you’re not building credibility. You’re just racking up numbers. That don’t matter. You know what I mean? People aren’t gonna want to do more business with you just because they saw you had a viral post that didn’t really say anything. And the problem is that there’s a lot of people out there who haven’t realized that yet.
They just know they just want to build a bigger, bigger following. And some of these other people are selling well. Here’s how you do a kid, right? Join my group, you know, we’ll charge you money for it. And then obviously, you know, we’ll help. And then the engagement numbers go up, but guess what? They don’t, they don’t make more sales.
They don’t improve their marketing. They don’t, they just get nonsense crap engagement. and it’s, it drives me crazy only from the standpoint of it just clogs my feet up, you know, like You end up seeing stuff that really, you know, that the algo and it should work where the best content rises to the top.
But you, and I know that obviously doesn’t because of engaging pods and because of more like less, and just because of people’s inability to not like means right. But, that’s the issue I have with, with pods is that It makes the feed less valuable for everybody else. It destroys the value of the overall network by propping up stuff that isn’t that good.
And it gets even worse when it’s on a pay-to-play sidebar. Hmm. Actual fraud. I didn’t know that it could just be automated like that. Yeah. There’s, there’s a few programs out there that do it. And if you go to there, go to those programs, websites even says, like, here’s how we keep from being detected by the algo and by LinkedIn and all this kind of stuff.
So, yeah. Or then it’s just like a matter of time before you get the, your, before you see the buy my ebook post or something. Right. It’s like people selling their books and I can never, it’s always life coaches, man. It’s always life coaching. Well, yeah, I don’t think sales coaches are immune to it.
Either sales consultants or anybody who’s XL gross. Who’s ex in-house something or other who is now independent. former VP of sales at three companies now, independent consultant. You go chief. That’s the one. Anyway. Anything else? I, I did have some focus points that one dimension too, to wrap up on what to do and what I think is valuable, but anything else you want to complain about first?
Cause I like to getting all the, all the dirt out of the way now. We’re good. All right. What’d you got, so here’s the last things. And the first one, I think we could actually do kind of a, another deeper conversation on one, if you’re serious about content creation and you want to build you want to build a reputation when build credibility and you want to do it through content.
First thing I focused on is idea capture. And this is, I think I just coined that phrase by the way, some really impressive myself, Google it just in case like I didn’t, but, it’s a combination of expanding your own knowledge base. And then applying that to your subject matter. And, you know, we could talk about how like, like no idea that you or I have is like ever like unique, original, right?
It’s just like human nature. Everything is always borrowed a rip off of something. But the more range you have, whether it’s from reading books, listening to audio books, blogs, videos, you know, whatever of things I think personally, outside your industry, that’s where you’re going to expand and get new insights and new ideas.
You’re going to find new ways to apply that to what it is, you’re what it is you do and what your domain is. That’s how you start like coming up with ideas that are they’re legitimately things people haven’t heard before. You know, there’s things that, I think you an employer brand it’s, it’s, you’re very much in kind of Greenfield because there’s not that many people do it.
Right. compared to it’s a lot of other fields, but if you want to really create good biking stuff, you can create. Literally unique ideas that you created by taking other, by expanding your own domain knowledge and other areas. And applying that to what you do. Other part of idea capture, I think is also just not forgetting those things, which is what everyone kind of screws up on.
You have to write these things down when a good idea comes to you, make sure you’ve kind of logged it somewhere as something for like, you know, another day, second thing, right? Every day. I can’t underscore this enough. Like, I was kind of weird dumping on posting every day. I post pretty much every day, not because I’m trying to post everyday, just because I’m forcing myself to write every day.
Like I want to make sure I’m actually like making effort to kind of keep my skills sharp. I do think that’s important. I do think that is one of their best uses or best reasons to post every day. If you’re hinted, that kind of thing. just to like force yourself to make it a habit of coming up with an idea or flexing your writing skills.
you want to become a better writer, but too I think for me personally, if I don’t write every day and I take lots of time off, it comes more daunting. Like I don’t want to get back into it. Cause I feel like it just seems like it’s going to pay in gas. Yeah. So by kind of staying current and making sure I force myself to kind of do a writing exercise every day.
I think that’s, that’s another key thing. And I’m saying this too, even if you’re in a video content, I think that writing every day, even if you’re not in like a real content creator, if you’re a sales person or a recruiter or marketer or engineer, whatever. I think writing is hugely important. and the last thing is the one thing that, you mentioned, is experimenting innovation.
Like no one’s figured out by the time everyone else has figured things out. It’s if something is successful, just had copied, if all you’re doing is copying other people, do you know, that’s cool. If you’re maybe a unique person in your space, it’s doing it, but eventually someone else is going to copy it too, you know?
And I think you always need to be kind of pushing forward. and it’s another reason why we created the DIY content creators is to like help bounce ideas off each other to hopefully find new, innovative ways to make content. Yeah. So cool. Now ma’am what will said, I’d add something, but, want me to end it? Oh man. 40 minutes in, how do we do this? Don’t worry. No, one’s watching right now. Anyway.
Whatever. All right. Well, I think our first show back and first one a month was pretty good. I didn’t know if I remembered my login codes to get into the streaming program here. So that wasn’t, that was like the first thing that worked out well in my favor. But anyways, that’s a wrap for the employer content show.
If you want to hear more of what Nate and I have to say, you can subscribe to the Hirewell channel on YouTube, where we have a playlist of all of our episodes and the talent insights podcast, which is available on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts. Spotify and Amazon Nate’s pleasure is always good to see you, man.
Everyone out there we’ll see you soon.
