Your Highest ROI Posts Aren’t Yours — with Jacki Lutz

If your people posted about their work today, would anyone care more than if you posted from your company page? If the answer is probably, this episode is definitely for you. Welcome to the NeuroLeadership Edge, real talk for bold leaders who want to master their mind and own their voice. I'm your host, Claire Hayek, a neuroleadership expert, ex-engineer, lifelong musician, and founder of Mind Soul Purpose Team Building. What happens around here is we get practical about the human side of leading. How your brain shows up at work, how to quiet the noise, and how to create teams that actually want to be there. So, pretty much new episodes every week. So, let's get right into it. Today, we are digging into employee-generated content, EGC. Basically, real stories shared by your employees from their own profiles. Why it works, how to start without stepping on legal landmines, and how to measure it so it doesn't become one more thing. My guest is Jackie Lutz, Content Director at the Auto Care Association, Longtime marketer in the automotive aftermarket and host of one of the 4 Auto Care On Air shows focused on professional development. She's led the charge on personal branding and employee-generated content, especially on LinkedIn, because in an AI-everywhere world, people still trust people. Jackie, welcome.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on to talk about my Favorite subject, right?

I mean, I'm so interested to know more. I'll be honest with you, I didn't know anything about EGC. I literally had to Google it or ask ChatGPT. Sorry, EGC again. Acronym that we know or we're used to. But I mean, I know if everybody's going, yeah, remind us again, EGC. Remember employee-generated content? Yes, it's a thing. And we got the person, our guest, that's going to tell us a little bit more about it. So, you know, we're all rookies here trying to understand what this whole thing is. So let's start simple. In your own words, Jackie, what is employee-generated content and why is it outperforming corporate posts right now?

At its core, employee-generated content is exactly what it sounds like. It's employees generating content, putting it out on LinkedIn. around their company, their culture, sharing the story of working at that company and helping that company brand itself really, but through its employees versus— it kind of goes down, it comes down to, you know, at the Auto Care Association, we can say that we're the best place to work all day long. We can say that our products are the best all day long. But of course you can say that, right? But like when your employees are out there saying that and they're sharing their journeys and sharing their stories, working at that company. And you notice like all of the values kind of align and you trust these people. So when they say they enjoy working at the Auto Care Association, that means a lot more to you personally than if the Auto Care Association came out and said, hey, we were voted one of the best places to work. It's more of the stories and the humanity behind it. And the entire premise is really, you know, that Dale Carnegie quote, people do business with people that they know, like, and trust. So the more people in your company that their networks know, eventually, you know, if they're consistent about it and they're constantly telling the stories and putting out that content very authentically and they're consistent, people will start to not only know them, but hopefully the right people will start to like them, right? And they'll start to build a network and eventually they will build trust within that network. So when they say things like, Our product's the best, or, you know, come see us at this trade show. We're having a blast over here. People will believe it because they trust people and they'll trust a person way more than a company any day.

That makes total sense, honestly. And I think it's a thing, the EGC, that's always existed out there. I think though, because of what's happening with AI, because of there's a lot of rehearse stuff. I think, I don't know, in my opinion, it seems to matter more now more than ever. And what's a better way to showcase your company culture when you get your employees to actually authentically share it as opposed to, of course, we're always great when we're talking about ourselves, right? So, I love that. It makes total sense. And I'm glad we're talking about it, making actually a whole show about this. Because I think it's very relevant and it's something that will add a lot of value to listeners out there. I'm actually curious to know what people, our listeners, think about this. But we're gonna keep going. Please do put your comments, whichever show you're listening to, put your comments in. Let us know what you think and whether it's something you dive right in or you want to know more about. But anyway, let's keep going. Speaking of our listeners, so someone is listening and wants to try this without creating big chaos or making big mistakes. Where would you recommend they start?

So as a, like an employee, they want to start putting out content?

Well, somebody on this team or an organization and then listening and going, oh my God, we need to do this.

Yeah.

You know, everybody's an employee somewhere unless you're the founder. But maybe you can let us know maybe from an organization point of view. do we start? And maybe from an employee point of view, where do we start in a way? You know?

Yeah, absolutely.

All.

Yeah, we can do both. Why not? It's our show, right? Yeah. So starting from like the organizational side of things, if you're starting from scratch and like no one from your company is really doing anything like this yet, I would first put a little call out, uh, and saying like, we want to do more employee-generated content. Come learn, you know, about it, whatever. Do a quick little Teams meeting, or like you can call it a webinar depending on how big your company is.

Uh-huh.

Just explain a little bit about what it is, very simple, what you're trying to do, why you think it's important, how you think that they can help. And then just, it's almost like a, it's more like a, you know, let us know if you're interested thing. Because the one thing you shouldn't do is try to pressure anybody who is not comfortable with social media or putting themselves out there, their content will not represent you well. I promise. It'll be, it'll feel forced. It'll be stressful. They have a day job that you want them to focus on too.

Right.

So I would recommend first, like putting a call out there and seeing who's organically interested in doing this. I think a lot of people would be very surprised to see how many employees they have that have been wanting to do this.

Mm-hmm.

But what I have found, especially in the past few years, especially on LinkedIn, is a lot of people have been apprehensive, not necessarily because they didn't have anything to say or they didn't know how to say it. It was because of a permissions thing. They didn't want their company getting upset for them talking about the company. They're worried that they're going to cross some kind of legal line or something like that. So they don't want to say anything. I started out when I was working for a publicly traded company. And I remember feeling that way.

Right.

I had done it for years under that company, but I was very, very cautious of what I actually talked about, about my company. I did a lot of other things that I talked about and built a personal brand about, but when it came to my company, that was one of like 4 things. And the things I talked about with that company were pretty vague. It was more like trying to show the culture, trying to say, hey, visit our trade show booth, you know, very, very not product related at all, because I— the last thing I wanted to do was say something wrong. And I think if you just do the call to action and employees start to see that their company's actually gonna, you know, want their employees to do this and they'll be watching and this is a way for you to stand out in your company.

Yeah.

Then employees will naturally raise their hand. And that will, that would be the first step. And the second step, I would do like a little, like a training. It doesn't have to be in depth, but you have to share like, This is what you can't— we can do. This is what you cannot do. And try to be somewhat hands-off and vague about the actual content. But if there are specific things like that don't fall in line with your values, make sure that those are known so that they know what parameters they have to work with. So they're not super timid when they go out there and start speaking on behalf of your company.

I love that. And the thing is, I love the word training. You said a keyword, training, and this is great. Not only for marketing, not only to help them open up about the company, the culture, etc. It's great for them because employees that are trusted with this, first of all, you're sending off a message of you are part of this culture. You are part of this organization. Your voice matters. You are seen. I see you. I recognize you. I trust you. You know, when you do that, just open that up. Of course, you kind of have to manage it like you said, you know, give guidelines and train, you know. But the fact that you're just letting them do it is such a great way to show support and show that we're so proud of you being our employee and sharing what you think about, you know, sharing what you love about your job.

That goes Huge.

I mean, a long way. And brain-wise, if you're talking neuroscience, that established psychological safety.

Right.

And when employees feel that they're seen, that they're not in the, oh my God, danger, danger, they really feel that they can relax and be more authentic. Communication also is clearer. There's no anxiety or worry. So, I think part of what you said, the training, And the guidelines are important. Otherwise, this could be a very stressful moment for someone going, what do you mean that you want to do this? And you said naturally, some people will come forward. There will be the people that have this natural ability for communicating. You won't get probably the introvert that hates attention that comes forward. Then again, but that's definitely very, very useful. So, of course, you know, you touch on this. You said, you know, there's— organizations get a bit nervous about the risks. So training is important. So maybe just if you can share with us general guidelines, what's okay to share versus what's off limits? When do we really need to get communications department or legal department involved? And how to handle negative comments? When somebody has posted is great, but there's negative comments. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

How do we do all that?

Yeah, there's a lot there to unpack. Yeah, there is. But it is, it's a, it's a good point. Because every time I know I do, I go on stage, and I talk about person branding and employee-generated content a lot. And I always have Q&A afterwards. And almost always, I get somebody, HR, usually HR person, something like that. And they ask these types of questions. And really, it's going to vary. Depending on the company, depending on the severity of the, you know, and how technical the product is, and, you know, how, how secretive some of the processes are and stuff like that. So what I would suggest for the company is just sharing, like, first of all, share your values again, of the company's values, and make sure that employees understand, like, we want these values to move into this as well. We want our employees to reflect our values. So that could be things like, I don't know, I don't know company's values, but say it's something like treating each other with respect, something like that.

Or collaboration.

Your guideline would be like, don't go on social media, make a big name for yourself, and then disrespect our competitors, right? Or, you know, don't, don't go on there and bash our competitors' products. You know, don't, don't even mention our competitors. Maybe that's your guideline. Like, keep it clean, keep it, you know, like, just like look at your values and just make sure that You know, you put some guidelines next to those so that your employees representing your brand online are reflecting the values of your company. I think that probably would give you 90% of the guidelines that you need to give. Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, the other ones are, you know, I used to work for a publicly traded company. And I was always very nervous to talk about the product because it was a very technical product. And I, first of all, I didn't want to talk about the product and then say something wrong because it's way over my head. I'm not an engineer. I am in marketing. So I didn't want other people asking me a bunch of questions and then me not be able to answer them. And I didn't want to give away any of our trade secrets that, you know, and then cause a ruckus. So I was very—

I'm feeling the nervousness.

Very true.

If you put us in that situation, like, I would be terrified. I'd be like, forget it. Yeah.

But you know, it's good enough for you to say, like, if you're not comfortable with the product, don't talk about the product. Talk about the culture. Talk about your team. Talk about a day in the life. Talk about, you know, this charity event that we did, or, you know, we collect gifts or, you know, like whatever. Talk about all those things, the culture and the, and the, the, experience you're having working at the company. You don't have to talk about the product. So give any of those kind of guidelines that are really important. And I think there's also some, you know, some companies that are a little bit closer to like government and things like that. They're going to have their own set of guidelines. Like literally, we cannot talk about A, B, and C, you know, like just give them those guidelines so that they know that what they put out is going to be okay and they don't have to be timid about it. But, you know, those guidelines are really gonna, are gonna change everywhere. And then as far as the communications department, the best advice I can give there is I think it should be more of a communication department communicating down to these people what their main messages are. And it's up to those people if they want to even touch them. I don't think there's a forced thing here. I don't think you say like, OK, we want all of our employees to talk about these 3 things this month.

Right.

Nothing that specific.

Sure. Yeah.

It's just like, hey, we have a trade show coming up next month. We really want to get our customers to. We have this new feature rolling out. If you feel compelled to talk about that, it's our owner's birthday.

It's like, you know, milestone we're celebrating.

Oh yeah. Milestones are great. Yeah. So like, I think it's more of the communications speaking down to the people about what might be useful things for them to share on behalf of the company.

Right. Okay. Yeah. Very useful and makes total sense. So how do we handle negative comments?

Oh yeah. Negative comments. I do suggest that you share ideas with people if they get negative comments. I have been doing this for, I want to say like 7 years and I've gotten like barely like one negative comment. The good thing about, you don't have to, if you're going to go, it depends on the, on the product.

And too, right? I mean, some people just want to bash everything and it's just really irrelevant.

Ruffling feathers, which I don't think is the goal for employees on creating their content. People aren't going to have their feathers ruffled. And I don't think you really, especially because this is business stuff, I would personally advise stay out of political matters. You know, try to keep, keep sensitive things off of your LinkedIn platform. That's my suggestion. You don't have to follow it, but that's the kind of stuff that gets these really negative comments. I haven't had an issue with this, but what I always tell companies to do is to give, you know, if, if you have an HR team that's willing to take this on, get a negative comment on your LinkedIn post, whatever, Shoot it over to them, ask what they would want you to do. A lot of times though, you can delete it. You can say thank you for your thoughts. I would always say, you know, defuse it. That's what I would say, or leave it on there. Honestly, especially on LinkedIn, people are a little bit more apprehensive of what they post out there because future employers can see it. So they can see the nasty comment that they put, you know, on a post.

Yeah.

You know, so People are a little bit more apprehensive to do that. And if they want to act a fool, I say, let them. It doesn't do— it doesn't make anybody look at your post any differently. It's—

yeah, that's so relevant because we did mention LinkedIn, you know, that this is really relevant in LinkedIn. I mean, you know, it's corporate, it's B2B, et cetera. Of course, there's companies that are very, very present on other social media platforms like Instagram or TikTok more and more. Actually, now it depends on the product, what you're doing. But I don't know about you, and you're the expert, but I noticed that there's more of this kind of negative comments and bashing and all that free-for-all kind of, I'm just gonna say what I'm gonna say, more on Instagram and other platforms out there, maybe Facebook as well. I find on LinkedIn, you're absolutely right. I think people do communicate and do say what they think, but they're a bit more respectful about it. They're more professional about it. Although I have seen some crazy comments, but it's not the same rate that you see maybe on Instagram or TikTok.

Yeah.

And I would agree, but you know, my observations. Yeah.

I tell people to look at it as an opportunity. You know, if somebody like, if you're taught, say you're talking about, you know, you share a photo of you at a trade show booth or something and say, hey, come visit us. We have a new product. We're featuring something like that. And then someone goes on there and being like, I tried that product and it failed on me or whatever. And it just, you know, it's kind of negative. It's an opportunity to show your, your customer support, right?

Absolutely.

You can respond to that and say, I'm so sorry that you had this experience. We're going to contact you right away and try to make it right. Somebody will see like, okay, somebody had a negative comment, but this company was really responsive. Or this person was really responsive and they took care of it. It's just another brand impression at the end of the day. And it's an opportunity to show what type of company you are.

It's all good. It's like a Google review. Yeah. You always reply to your reviews. You're not gonna get always a 5-star and that's okay. Actually, I'm very reluctant when I see it's a 5-star perfect rating company. I'm just looking at the, you know, it's like 4. Okay. They're, they're good. They're really good because like you're always gonna get somebody who's not gonna be Happy, or you're not perfect, nobody is, and it's okay. But then I will look at how did they respond to the 1-star comment.

Yeah, absolutely.

So every— even a challenge or negative comment is an opportunity, is, is a gift. And it's funny because I always talk about gifts and challenges. Whenever we're faced with a challenge, you can see the gift or see it as a negative thing, you know. But this is the great opportunity for you to show that you care. So, I love that. I love that just full circle. Let's get one quick question here about if we want to measure. We launched this thing. It's been going on for a month. What do we want to be tracking? What do we want to measure so we know what's happening? Is this really working? Is this good? What should we change, etc.? What would you recommend?

Yeah, so it depends on a lot of things. Again, sorry, but it depends on like who you have going out there and generating this content? Did they already have a wide network? Are they starting from scratch? Did they already know how to do social media or are they starting from scratch? So like, I wouldn't— what I wouldn't do is count likes and followers and all those vanity metrics.

Okay.

I wouldn't look at that, especially with LinkedIn, which is really the one that I focus on the most. I can't speak much to the others, but for LinkedIn specifically, I do know that the LinkedIn algorithm is not going to like, you know, somebody's content right away. Yeah. Several weeks of consistency to show the algorithm like, I'm here to play.

Yeah.

And then it'll start really, you know, bumping up your impressions. So if you want to measure something, I would suggest measuring impressions on these posts.

Okay.

How many people did it reach? Because especially on LinkedIn, like there's, I mean, this is a whole different podcast, but like there's a lot of things you can do within your posts to make the algorithm like it a lot, even if you are just starting out. But you know, that's—

I have to stop you here. Give us one. Because now I'm going, you can't say that and not give us one.

Well, one I just learned. I just learned this, the new LinkedIn algorithm Yeah, will dock your post if you have one link, but will promote it if it has 3 or more.

Really?

It'll, it'll consider it like a, um, a resource post. And it will, like, we know, especially for the podcast, I was only doing one link, you know, obviously, it's everywhere, right? On every single audio platform, YouTube, everywhere. But I would only share Spotify because it was our biggest one. And I didn't want— and it used to be that the LinkedIn algorithm would dock you if you had Multiple links. Yeah, doesn't want you linking people off of LinkedIn, right? So that just changed, and I now I'm putting three links in those posts. That's just one hashtags now are seen as more of a spam post. Ditch the hashtags. Who knew? I've been doing hashtags forever. I knew. I knew. I knew not to do more than five. That used to be the algorithm is don't do more than five hashtags. Now it's done with 2 hashtags. You know, it's just, there's little like things like that that can help your post perform well. But any newbie isn't necessarily going to know what's going to perform the best with their networks until they try a few things. But what you would want to see is those impressions kind of going up. You know, it's going to be like this because it's going to depend on the day and the time, and they have to see what works the best. That first month is like a trial and error. I would baseline and then— Yeah. I would measure this over the course of maybe like 6 months to a year and see how things are going. I think the effort is something that you could also measure, giving them some kind of, say like, hey, let's everybody try to do 2 posts a week. Let's start there. And then how are things going at 2 posts a week versus then you bump it up in 2 months and say, let's try for 3. That's the max we're going to do. Let's just do 3 a week. But I would, in what's more important than all just the vanity metrics are the impressions and then the overall engagement. Once you kind of get those impressions up, if your impressions start getting up into like 5,000 impressions and you're only getting like one like, there's gotta be something else that you want to try to like get people's attention. LinkedIn can be very noisy. So is there some tagging you can do? Is there, maybe you need to try video. Video is really huge on LinkedIn right now. People hate doing it, but it is the biggest one. You know, maybe there's a couple of different mediums and stuff you can try to just try to get that up, but that'll tell you like something's just not clicking with your—

Okay. That's really helpful. Thank you. Awesome. So let's, let's dive into the rapid fire. So these are very short answers. Ready?

Yeah. Yeah.

So best first post idea for someone shy who's never posted before.

What you're working on that day.

Easy. All right.

Um, biggest photo with a little text.

Biggest EGC mistake you see companies make and how to avoid it.

I think that there's 2 big mistakes I see. One of them is they immediately want this to be a sales thing, and they need to look at this like it's a branding thing. This is branding. The difference between sales and branding is sales is you're selling a product, put the link in the post to this product, buy it. That's a sale, right? It is social media for a reason. And it's coming from your employees and not your company for a reason. They're trying to establish trust and build a personal brand with their networks that their networks start to trust. So if their networks start seeing them just pitching stuff and they're like, oh, this guy's just trying to sell me something I don't need. Then they lose that person who could have been a tie-in to somebody else in their life that might need that product. And then they could, you know, say like, oh, but I know somebody who sells that, right? It's a branding thing. So the idea is that your employees are out there, not necessarily pitching product. They are selling your company. They're showing the culture. They're showing why they're so proud of their product. They're showing them out in the community, or they're showing them at a trade show and like just sharing what it's like to work for your company. That's branding because it's going to reach a lot further than a targeted group of potential sales. So it's a branding exercise. It's not just for sales. And the moment you start pushing sales, it's the moment the authenticity goes out the window. And so does the trust within that network. The other one is people worry way too much about the quality of the content of the employees.

Okay.

So almost every time I do these sessions, I get someone in marketing usually raising their hand and saying, I have this salesperson that's doing content and it's horrible. Like, it's blurry. They're, they're always moving around. They don't use a mic. It's just, it's not good. What I usually tell them is, first of all, this person is not your company. So no one's going to look at that person's content and judge the company off of it.

Right.

Unless he's going against their values, right? As far as the quality of the content, People are very, very understanding that not everybody is a video producer. So as long as the content is right and it's very clear, don't worry so much about the quality of the content.

Wow. This is so helpful. So quick recap, EGC works because people trust people. Start small, maybe 10 minutes a day commenting, one helpful post a week. Keep it natural.

Keep it real.

Keep it authentic. Train your people to make sure that, you know, they know what to avoid and what not to do. What's kind of crazy. Give them ideas. The communication department can give them ideas of what's going on. Keep them in the loop. Don't share any confidential information. Teach, don't pitch. And if you're not sure, just ask your people, ask the team. Measure early. I think I've pretty much summarized everything.

Yeah. And I just want to say, I love what you said about commenting. there's something called a comment strategy, not just a content strategy over here, but there's also a comment strategy. And one, maybe the tip I'll leave people with is to not just put content out and expect people to engage with you. Make sure you're engaging with your network's content too. Make sure you're commenting on their content, liking their content, sharing it, especially on days that you don't post, because warming up your network like that. will help your network. Anyone who is brave enough to post on LinkedIn appreciates every single person who likes that post. I guarantee you they click and they look and they're like, oh, Jackie, Jackie liked it again. Jackie likes it all the time, right? So then when I post something, they're going to make sure they like my post too. And that's just how you're going to help feed that engagement. So it's not just about pushing content out. You have to engage with your network and really build it.

That's so helpful. And that is so true. So Jackie, thanks again. Thanks for the straight talk. Thanks for the tips. So many. This is full of gold nuggets.

Yeah.

Thanks so much, really. If this was helpful, this was useful, follow the show and share this episode with maybe one organization, one leader, one person who needs to hear it, who needs to see it. If you want more, do scan the QR code that you see here on screen and check. There's a lot of stuff going on all the time. Maybe grab an upcoming webinar, a masterclass, and there's a lot of free resources. So don't be shy just to scan that QR code or always check the description. I always put links in there. And that was the show. Thanks again for joining us today. Remember, stay human, stay authentic, and find the gift in each challenge.