The Power of Investing in People| Zoe Bermant | 428

Here's a paradox. If you want to develop your organization's thought leadership, you need to elevate the insights of your people and then help them practice thought leadership. But how do you do that? I asked Zoe Berman to join me and explore this question. She's the owner of social media. In today's conversation, we're going to talk about the person-to-person aspect of organizational thought leadership, and then we'll explore how to put your own self into your thought leadership work and show the right level of vulnerability. We'll also talk about a tool that she invented and took viral, the CaraSelf. And finally, we'll talk about the need for more women in thought leadership. I'm Bill Sherman, and you're listening to Leveraging Thought Leadership. Ready? Let's begin.

Welcome to the show, Zoe.

Hi, how are you today, Bill?

Fantastic.

I'm excited to have this conversation. You and I have talked about several topics both online on LinkedIn and virtually, and so I want to dive in around thought leadership And where do you start? Do you start at the company level? Do you start at the executive level? I know a lot of organizations say it's a brand investment. We've got to focus on the brand. But you and I have a different perspective on that. So let me hand off to you to get us started.

Yeah, you're right. It's a brand investment, but the power is in people. And if you think about it, it makes sense. People relate to people. You know, I often use the Elon Musk, uh, example, but there's so many we could pick to show this example. But if you look at the power behind Elon Musk as a brand and what he brings to Tesla and anything that he touches, and you take that right down to any company, if you've got executives who aren't going to leave your company, they're more invested in your brand than anybody else, and you take a top-down methodology of building a social culture, and they are your, your biggest ambassadors and your biggest voice for pain solution, then your audience will interact and engage with your brand in a much more personal way, and your visibility and your credibility is so much greater. What happens unfortunately is many people say let's invest in the brand first, and they think that that means the company profile or the company page, but it's really hard to get that credibility because what they, what they tend to do is sell, sell, sell, sell. We're the best, we're the greatest, we're the first, we solve this problem, download this white paper, read this blog, and there's no human factor to that, and you can nurture so much more through people, and that leads to better brand awareness. So essentially, it's a person-driven success.

So let's continue on that thread. You, you talked about the difference between download this white paper, and I sometimes poke fun of white papers, although I'm guilty of having written them myself, right. But I think it's a great example. A white paper tends to be intentionally abstract on the surface, but also has this ulterior motive of the let's get to a sales conversation. There's a difference when someone says, here's an idea that I've been thinking about and I'd like to share, because the white paper tends to be unsigned and in a corporate voice versus if you post on social and it's on your social, it's in your voice.

Yeah, but you can take a white paper to validate what you're saying. You can say there's some amazing statistics in this white paper. If you want more technical detail, detail, it's in this white paper. But you can tell a story that people can relate to. In a, in a tone and in a voice that shows you understand their pain and then refer to the white paper. The white paper isn't the thing. It's the story, the expertise, the opinion, the conversation, the relationship you have with people. And actually on LinkedIn, there's a really cool tool that I don't think many people even know exists. You know, everyone knows about that share button, which is like the worst thing you can do on LinkedIn. Right next to it is a send button. So, you know, I don't know if you've even noticed it there, but let's say you create a post and you tell a story and you're speaking about things that people can relate to. You can then take that post and send it to specific people and you can send it to a customer. You can send it to someone you had a conversation with last week at an event and say, Hey Bill, you know what we were talking about last week? This white paper has lots of amazing information in it that you might find relevant. And you've sent it to them privately, you've referred to a conversation you've had with them, and you're building— what you're actually doing is creating that human factor, that relationship. That's thought leadership. That's, that's how you use LinkedIn strategically rather than relying on an algorithm and sticking out post after post after post. That's like, here's a white paper, click here to download. You're actually starting to build meaningful interactions around the content that your company has created and bringing the right audience to view it and interact with it in a meaningful way. And that's, that's powerful.

I love that example because it ties to something that I deeply believe, which is you can't just scatter thought leadership to the wind and hope those seeds land where you want them to. The algorithm in this case may work for a content marketing strategy, but you have— whether they are prospects or clients or policymakers, people that your organization and that you want to reach with thought leadership, that you know by name. And so why don't you deliver it to them in a way that they would appreciate and give it a little bit of white glove VIP valet service? And they go, wow, you were thinking of me. Now you can't do it in a salesy way, but like you said, I was thinking of our last conversation. Here's something you might want to look at.

Yeah. And you know, forcing it on them. You're not offering them a demo. You're not trying to sell something. It's just piece of information and making it personal. That's like, that's where you win. And I think that if people, more people did that and warmed up their audience, I talk all the time about warming up your audience. You're warming people up. You're keeping visible to them. You're keeping part of that relationship. And some of that comes through interaction as well. You, you sometimes need to actively go and view the profiles and engage with people that you want to be visible to, so that when you post meaningful and valuable content, it's being seen by those, those people. It's not relying on some random algorithm that's out there. You're actually actively going and, and making it happen for yourself. And you really can.

You talk about with that making an investment in people, right? First at the executive level. And I think when it comes to thought leadership, some people have pieces of the skills, but they've never put it together in the way that we're talking about. So what do you think about when you you think about investing in executives and their thought leadership? How do you help them become successful?

Let's be honest, not everybody can be a thought leader.

Absolutely.

100%. It's, it's one of those terms that I, I love and hate in equal measure. Um, but everybody is a subject matter expert. And the reason why I say start with your executives is because it creates a culture. If they're— and it's internal and external because your thought leaders need to, or your executives need to engage with people internally as much as they engage with people externally. It builds that culture. It builds an atmosphere of caring. And it's not, oh, big brother's watching me. It's, oh, the CEO just liked my post. And you feel validated and you feel there's worth. So there's a value in that. And the same with your customers. The same value comes to engaging and keeping a relationship with customers and partners and analysts and journalists and influencers. And it stretches out. I mean, it's not one audience, there are multiple audiences here. So if you start with your executives, then that starts to filter down into Well, the CEO's being seen and talking, and I wanna be visible to my CEO. I wanna be visible to my manager. It filters down through the company, and then it's not thought leadership. It becomes subject matter expertise. And this is something that we train a lot in when we are looking at advocacy as a program within a company is how can your employees, investing in them. You know, so many people say, but if they get more active on social, then they'll go find a job somewhere else. Because while they're getting active, they're talking the talk for you. They're representing your company. They're gonna go anyway at some point somewhere else. Your senior executives won't, which is why you invest the most in them first. But everybody else, as it filters down within the company, it's all about building your strong brand. And the stronger your brand is, the more success you have. The more success you have, it doesn't matter if someone leaves. It just brings you more success. It makes it easier to recruit their replacement. 100%. From recruitment to customer success to customer retention to employee retention, the value of investing in your people, it's— you can't just equate it to one thing. Across your organization, you will see value.

There's so much good there. I want to underline a few things. One, that investment that's made in your people and the fear of them leaving. Well, what if they stay, right? What if you haven't invested in your people and you have that silence on social across the brand? Well, the brand is what most people do most of the time. And if you are people are silent and unseen in social, they're not sharing their subject matter expertise, guess what? People thinking about joining you, you know, for recruitment, they're not going to do it. Your customers and prospects are going to form an opinion of, well, maybe they're smart, but I don't see much about them. And so— Exactly, exactly. And the other thing that I want to underline is not only start at the top, but start with the willing, right? It is very hard, especially in the early days of a thought leadership or employee advocacy program, to drag someone over that line if they feel like they're doing homework, right? If they don't have excitement for it. But once you get a little momentum, there's a prairie dog effect. Everyone starts popping their heads up and going, 'Oh, that's cool. What is this?' And like you said, if you get a CEO liking your post as an employee, not only does that feel good, but it also solves some of the question of, in a virtual or hybrid work environment, how does a leader lead and manage by walking around? How do you create that intimacy and connection? When you can't just pop in and say hi in someone's cube.

Yeah, 100%. It filters all the way through the organization. And, and as I, I use the word power a lot, it's powerful. You know, we run managed services for CEOs, so sometimes when our clients, the CEO is liking a post, it's one of us doing it together or on behalf of the CEO. The transparency is not as great in that situation, but we do see employees go, wow, you know, look at what the CEO has done. And, and, and that shows that if the CEO would embrace it and do it themselves, the power that they would bring to their organization is so much greater. You know, if the employees know that it's a managed service, it's not as powerful.

But, right, right.

But the power's there, just has to be tapped into. And you're right, 100%, Bill. Sometimes you just need one person to do it and do it well. And then everybody else is like, well, why's he got all the visibility? Or she's got all the visibility. How do I get it? Or wants to have a piece of that pie. And then it's a trigger effect for the rest of the organization.

I think you can easily get lost in social media by focusing on the technology rather than thinking of it as a tool for relationships and person-to-person, you know, connection and communication. Right. And if you obsess over the algorithm, which we talked about earlier, will lead you astray. Yeah, it's going to lead you astray. But if you use it as a tool to connect with people, that's where, to use your word, the power is. I see a theme emerging in this conversation.

You know, it's easy to forget also, you get mired down in the algorithm and how many views and how many likes and whatever. But the other rabbit hole you can go down is using it as a sounding board and getting too personal or sharing things that are not valuable. And that's also, it's important. I even, I have to remind myself when I'm putting out my own posts, how is this useful? How is this valuable? What am I sharing that is going to help somebody else so that I'm not just spewing out my own thoughts and things that aren't necessarily meaningful to anybody else. So those are two big rabbit holes. I want more likes, I want more views. And we see it all the time. Unfortunately, on LinkedIn, there are people that just chase those likes and those views, and that there's very little value in what they share. And they often even copying other people's content, which is a really bad practice. And there's the other one, which is the oversharing and, and being very personal and not necessarily having a purpose. Of value and expertise sharing, which is to me, that's not thought leadership.

So there's a balance point and I agree you can either overshare where you're almost Instagramming, hey, I had this great meal, here's a photo sort of thing. And everybody goes, yeah, that's not LinkedIn content, right? How does this relate to me? And then there's also the undersharing where people don't have a sense of who you are, your voice, your story. So let's talk about revealing self and vulnerability in an appropriate way for thought leadership, because if it is a person-to-person activity, you have to include some pieces of your humanity.

Yeah, I think that that should come through. It's funny, I was thinking today of a post and I was thinking thought leadership is this, but it's not that. To me, thought leadership is expertise. I'm an expert in this. It's experience. I have experience with something. So you can tell a story or give an anecdote about something, a lesson you learned that could help other people. It's opinion and it's conversation. And if you can fit everything that you share into expertise, experience, opinion, conversation, then that, that's thought leadership. When it becomes you're telling a story about, you know, your— an interaction you had with the grocer, and, and, and it's a life— it's— that's a life experience, but it's a very personal one, and you cannot relate it to expertise or relate it to experience in a professional sense, that's oversharing. And I think that if people could differentiate and think, in my professional life, how does this give expertise to someone? How do I share my experience and the things that I've learned and lessons in a valuable way? How do we talk about opinions? And opinions could be on industry trends, it could be on, you know, if you relate to our world, it would be about thought leadership. That's opinion and conversation, conversation starters. You know, would you do something this way instead of that way? And then you begin a conversation. That's, I think, how you differentiate in how to put out the right kind of content. And it comes across in your tone, the way you write, putting your personality into it. I always say personal isn't you have got an ingrown toenail. Personal is personality. It's your personality, showing your fun side, showing your serious side, showing who you are as a person.

I found also that, like you said, if you have that experience in the grocery store and you're thinking about your area of expertise or thought leadership, you're usually making the connection because when you practice thought leadership, most people have a part of their brain that is 24/7 focused on their topic and they have this moment or experience and go, oh, that helps me see this aspect in a new way. Maybe it's an analogy, maybe it's a metaphor, but it brings a complex idea to life in a simple way. As long as you make that connection, and that it's clear for people and they get value, that's doing well. And I think that personality piece, the— if you, when you are posting and sharing, sound like a hostage to your own social media, right? Everybody's going to read it in your tone or hear it in your voice.

You've got to share your joy. You've got to share genuine that, that at the end of the day, you've got to sound genuine. And it's a hard, it's a hard balance, you know. You've got to be professional, you've got to be genuine, you've got to give value, but you also need to show your personality and not overshare. And because of that, a lot of people are scared to even get started or get to share part of themselves. But there's so many mechanisms, so many amazing things, uh, that you can on LinkedIn and on social media today to make it easier to do that. On TikTok, I don't know if you spend any time on TikTok, but on TikTok people have, you know, you see the same video again and again with different people telling their story using the same music and like it's a different world. I don't live in that world, but on LinkedIn there are mechanisms for it and I even invented one.

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Exactly. And I want to go there. I want to talk about the story of the carousel, which began with, if I remember correctly, a typo. So what is the carousel and how did it come to be?

So a carousel. Let's start with what is a carousel? Because some people call them documents, some people call them sliders, some people call them carousels. So I think it's already nearly a year and a half, 2 years ago, LinkedIn gave us the ability to upload a document as a PDF and people could slide through page after page and they drive the most phenomenal engagement because the way the algorithm works is every time someone moves from one slide to the next, it's considered an engagement and that engagement, if you've got 5 slides, and someone's going through all 5 to get to the end, the algorithm thinks, wow, this is content people are engaged with and interested in. There's this concept on LinkedIn of dwell time. So a slider that requires people to slide through keeps people on the post, keeps them interested, and they're taking an active action to show their interest. So I was typing to someone, I think it was someone on my team, Elisa, who you've interviewed in the past. She's our Director of Thought Leadership, and I mistyped the word carousel and I wrote carouself. And I'm like, ah, that would be really cool. What if we had a carousel that was about yourself and then you're encouraged to tell people a little bit more about yourself? And it doesn't have to be completely professional. This is actually like an opportunity for you to say, here's a little bit about me that you might not know. So I did one for myself and it was like who I am. It was something about my name, about where I was born, where I grew up, my interests, what I studied, 3 things I like, 3 things I hate. And I kind of built a formula around it called the carousel. And then I was like, I even could see it going a little viral. So I wanted to make it viral. So the first carousel that I shared I tagged 5 other people, some of them influencers and some of them not, and I said, I challenge you to share something about yourself and tell your story. Not everybody did it. 3 or 4 people did it, but when they shared their own carousel, they tagged another 5 people and asked 5 more people to do it. And it started this amazing amplification, which by the way, it's an amazing methodology. It doesn't always work. You can sometimes tag people and they just don't pick up on it. But what's nice about the carousel feed is that people are a little afraid to get too personal or a little afraid to share that little bit of themselves. They hide behind their professional persona, and it is okay, not if every post is like that, but I think people want to know who you are. They want to learn a little bit about you, and this gives you a mechanism to be able to do that. And the format is really easy and engaging. And people pretty much stuck to my formula of who they were, where they went to school, where they grew up. And eventually, uh, there is a group called LinkedIn Creators. It has about, I don't know, 500,000 members, if not more. And they approached me and said that they would like to share it within the LinkedIn Creator group. And they did. And within, I think, 3 or 4 weeks, there were thousands of them going out. And every time one went out, people were tagging 5 more people. So I actually trademarked the carousel. I own the trademark for it just because I wanted to, not because I expect to make any money from it or anything. I just like the idea that I I started something that became a trend and gives people a comfortable place. I then tried to create the Cara selfie so you could share some selfies of people you've met professionally during your time, maybe at an event or something. But I think we were just coming out of Corona and people were not really sharing photos of themselves with other people. And, and I, and then took it one level higher. I made a Sell, so that with Sell, S-E-L-L, which is a comfortable place for you to actually sell what you do. Tell us what you do, what does it cost, why are you better than your competitors, like actually sell yourself. And that didn't take off either, but the carousel still keeps going and people still keep sharing them. Every week I go in and I, I interacted with every single one that has ever been shared in the tens of thousands. And it's, it's an amazing, uh, it's an amazing thing to see. And I think its success has been because of that reluctance. And it goes back to the first thing you said today, Bill, is where do people start? And it, it, that it, it really taps into that fear of starting, of sharing, of putting yourself out there. And it gives you a way to do it. That people interact with and, and a lot of fun. And some of the people, some of the influencers have shared their carousels, have done, uh, phenomenally well. I met with Ellie Middleton, who's a very big influencer on LinkedIn around ADHD and professionalism and workplace. She told me that her carousel had hundreds of thousands of views, so it's, it's amazing to watch and to be a part of.

I love that example of how a typo sparks an idea which reaches scale and produces impact. So there's a little bit of serendipity in there, but there's also awareness of this might work. And I thank you also for sharing the ideas that you tried that didn't, right? Because one of the things I think with thought leadership as well, is when you're in your area of expertise, it's easy for someone on the outside to expect, oh, everything that this person touches is not only smart but has the golden touch. No, that's not true. We try a lot of ideas, and even when you practice thought leadership, a fraction of them really reach scale.

It's true. It's really true. We worked with the head of a technology company with 26,000 employees, a telecommunications tech, and we wanted him to share personal stories and personal stuff. And he was very, very straight, very narrow, very interesting. But, you know, it was all low-code, no-code and big data centers. And, and his content was very interesting. And he would interview in his podcast people from IBM and from Intel and very interesting, who kept saying, show a little bit of yourself. And finally, finally, finally, after a year of working with him, got him to do a post about family today with a picture of his family. And he started the post with, this is not a technical post. He felt the need to like justify that it wasn't going to be a technical post, it was going to be something else. That post did so well. And it comes back to that people relate to people thing, you know, and, and why the carousel works so well, because it gives you a way to say, it's okay, I'm gonna share something now that's not technical, or it's not about my business or my profession, my expertise. It's just about me in a nice way.

So I want to turn to the topic of women and thought leadership. I know it's something that you have a passion for, as well as something that's deeply important to me. And so let me hand the conversation to you. What is it that sparks you on that topic, and what do you see?

Let's start with the fact that, let's say, we represent about 100 C-level executives and building thought leadership with them. 10 of them are women. Okay, now that doesn't mean there aren't other female executives. It means that they're much shyer to get out there and push themselves and show that expertise. And I think that this is not— I'm not saying anything that people don't already recognize and know. Yes, there is a misbalance between male and female C-level executives. But this isn't that problem. This is actually about the ones that want to be out there and the ones that don't, the ones that recognize the value and the ones that don't. And I actually run every Women's Day, uh, or Women's Month, I run these seminars for my companies and clients where I go in and I talk about women on social media. It— what triggers me is how All the stereotypes, all the things you know about women being more apologetic and being more shy and not wanting to put themselves out there or be seen that they're, you know, too verbal or too aggressive, it carries all the way through to the digital persona. And it's something we need to overcome. It's something that we need to find a comfortable place for. Everybody, no matter who you are, to, to get out there and build a personal brand. It shouldn't be male-dominated. It should be equal across the board. And, and it's, it's a difficult thing to do, um, and I see it again and again when we're meeting with executives. There's always quick buy-in from men and hesitation from women. And it's— I don't have a solution. I don't have all the answers.

I think on a couple levels, from my experience, I'll relate to the podcast and inviting guests for the podcast first.

I—

when I reach out to guests, the most typical answer I will get from a man if I reach out to them is, sure, I'll be on the podcast. What's it about? Right? From a woman, I will get a number of questions to understand and then often say, I'm not sure I'm a fit or I'm not sure I'm ready. And so I hear that and I respect that. But at the same time, one of two things, either I push or if they're genuinely feeling, okay, I've only been in this role for a short period of time or here's a better time. I put a reminder on the calendar and say, I'm going to circle back to that person at that point because I think one of the things that happens is it's systemic. So you were talking about at the executive level, but even at the senior level, right? That is the place where thought leadership, one step away from executive level where you can start making a name for yourself. You get the higher visibility opportunity for projects. Building your brand within your area of expertise beyond the organization. And it's such a career differentiator long-term. If the organization is not investing in women and people who don't look like today's C-suite, at least in the US, we are losing perspective, we are losing insights, and we won't change.

I've got, uh, I won't say who the client is, but I've got a very well-known client, and there are 5 senior executives we're meant to be working with. The 3 men who, yes, they're slightly more senior than the, the 2 women we were meant to work with, they just went right in. There was no hesitation, and the results have been phenomenal, and they're growing month over month in visibility and interactions, and the thought leadership, it is there, and it is front and center. And we are still, a year later, struggling to get these women to approve a post. Every post is thought about and then thought about again, and then thought about again and rewritten and hesitation. And, and I just, I keep thinking, if you just do it, if you just put it out there, okay, so maybe you might not get it 100% right, or— but while they're hesitating, these three guys, they're rocking it. And, and again, if you're not yet at the top of the company, if you're not at the top of the food chain, if you're in the food chain but you're near the top, you're just distancing yourself from the opportunity. And at the end of the day, I always say what brand awareness and personal brand brings you is opportunity. Whether it's opportunity to grow within your company, opportunity to go and work at another company, opportunity to have that, uh, interaction with a potential customer that you can actually sell to them. That's what it is, it's opportunity. And they're missing those opportunities that every time they hesitate, every time they let their own insecurities get in the way. And it's, as I said, I don't have the answers case by case. Every time we get a new female executive, I get so excited because it's, for me, it's another opportunity for me to like change someone and show success. And that success brings more women. I'm sure of it.

So as we begin to wrap up, I have a question for you. You've been in thought leadership and social media for a while. My question is, what advice would you give your younger self when you were just starting out?

Gosh, that's a good question. I would give my younger self the advice to start earlier. I really only have been doing it for the last 4 or 5 years intensely. And in that 4 or 5 years, I am where I am because of the investment I've made. If I started much earlier, I'd be much further along. And, you know, everyone always thinks I always say there's no magic wand on social media. You know, these people that join or post something and think it's going to go viral, or they join and they think they're going to get 1,000 new connections and followers, it doesn't happen. Happens from consistency and from value and from being there, from showing up. So the more you do it, the more you get seen. The more you do it, the more validity you have and credibility you have. So that time that I wasted before I got serious about it, I can't get it back, but I can keep building on what I have today. So the advice I would give to anyone is just stop, you know, even if you don't have the most profound stuff to share, you've got to be there, you've got to show up 10 minutes a day, do 10 minutes a day, and in that 10 minutes ask yourself, who can I engage with that I need to to be visible to. Just like a post, comment on something, show up. What can I post if you're going to post something? And who can I connect to? Who do I need in my network and in my connections? Do that for 10 minutes a day every day and it will come more naturally. And you know why? Because you're going to start to get opportunities. They're going to start to come to you. And when they start coming to you, go, ah, I've invested 10 minutes a day, but I'm getting something back from this. And so you invest another 10 minutes and another 10 minutes, and then you go down the rabbit hole spending all day on LinkedIn.

And I think that piece of advice of it doesn't have to be perfect when you start, but make the commitment and, and stick with it because there's a compounding effect. Your first post probably isn't going to change the world. If you do, great, more power to you. But it's the 100th post, the 1,000th post that have more impact because you've shown up and you've done the work again and again. Zoe, I want to thank you for taking time for a wonderful conversation today about thought leadership.

I've loved every minute of it. Thank you, Bill.

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