Creating Daily Content For Your Social Profiles Can Feel Overwhelming.

Hi everybody, welcome back to another Recruiting Conversations. It's your host, Richard Milligan, and if I sound a little bit giddy today, well, this is take 4 of this podcast. And life lesson learned, right? John Maxwell has a— has a— in the book Failing Forward, he's got a mantra in there that goes along the lines of There are no mistakes, there are only lessons. But if you don't learn those lessons, the lessons get harder. And the law of the universe is that we always learn our lessons. Well, I'm on take 4 because I'm trying to record this at home where I have 4 children between the ages of 6 and 17, and I have 2 dogs. And, and so in the craziness of that, maybe my lesson to be learned is that this is not the place to be cutting a podcast. But here I am. So I'm hopeful this take actually takes and I'm able to share this with you. So let's talk about one of the things that I bring up again and again, which is the need for you to have a leadership brand. Now, what does that mean? Well, it means that you need to be representing yourself in social media in the form of an attractive leader. Well, that brings up the question, what is an attractive leader? Well, the attractive leader is someone that has a clear vision. has clear core values, can articulate them extremely well, and then lives and acts in alignment with that. So that's the attractive leader. Now think about this. If we go back 2,000 years ago, not a lot has changed in terms of leadership. 2,000 years ago, now that's an arbitrary number that I'm not a historian, but my guess is 2,000 years ago, that was the era of kings and kingdoms, right? And so in that era, there was only a couple of reasons why people would reside underneath a kingdom. And one of those reasons was protection. Like, if you'll protect me and my family, I'll serve you. Another one was for provision. If, if you will ensure that regardless of what happens, me and my family have provisions, we can eat, we can drink, and then we're safe, then I'll serve you with my life, right? Fast forward 2,000 years, and I do, do believe there's a lot of direct correlation between what we call leadership today and what we called kingdoms 2,000 years ago. At the end of the day, there's only a handful of things that people require in order to reside underneath your umbrella as a leader. Now, you know, we call them some different things today. We call them trust, right? I need to trust you. That means that, yes, protection of my paycheck, provision is an important component to me. But today, one of the things that we have to work towards as leaders is If we're going to be successful recruiting is building trust with the people that we want on our teams. So how do we do this in an environment where the phone has diminishing results, right? Let's, let's remember this. Data says today, this is 2019 data, that only 9% of people are answering phone calls when that call comes from an unrecognized number. Let me reverse engineer the data. 91% say they will only answer calls from their contacts list. Okay, so when you look at that data, you realize the phone, the old methods that we use to recruit, don't work. So your attractive leadership matters a lot in social media. So with that said, you are required to deliver daily content if you're going to win at scale as a recruiting leader. It's a requirement. You can't be in the 1% and be outside of this. Like, the people that are winning at scale, Those are the 1 percenters, right? And those people, like, this is the craziest thing. I always use that terminology, the 1 percenters. Well, what does LinkedIn data say? LinkedIn data says right now there's 260 million people on the platform and about 3 million of those people post. What is that? It's just a little over 1%, right? Now, now on a weekly basis, those 3 million people get 9 billion pieces of engagement on their content. Now, I don't know about you, but I want a piece of that, right? That's how I represent myself as an attractive leader. That's how I ensure that people are aware what I do in my business. This is how I, how I grow, right? How I grow. And this is how you grow. So you have to deliver daily content. Okay? Yes or yes? I'm nodding my head. So now that we've made an agreement on that piece, now how you deliver the content is going to matter. Right. So let me give you a couple of incredible pieces that are tools that you can use, and I'll walk you through how I use them. So I create a lot of written word content. Now, why is that? Well, LinkedIn really is the only social business platform out there today. And so LinkedIn is a, is an incredible place to build relationships, which eventually end up, you know, being, being recruiting relationships and people on your team. So that's where I'm going to deliver a lot of my content is on that platform because of that. With that said, I am not that great at the written word. Like if you saw my first draft of anything that I wrote, you would wonder how any of my content ended up as good as it does. The truth is that when— like, the truth is that I made a C- and probably should have gotten a D in English in high school. Like I barely passed that class because I was awful at English. And if you follow me much inside Facebook, what you'll know is my wife is constantly correcting my spelling. She's constantly correcting, you know, everything from my sentence structure to, you know, asking me if that even makes sense. And that's just how I write. Like, I write extremely conversationally. If I don't put my content through filters, it's really not that intelligent. And so I've got to have some tools around me to make this thing work. Because look, I'm a solopreneur. Yes, I've got, I've got 7 employees here that work at this organization, but all of that's supporting the things that I'm doing. Okay. And so for the most part, I operate like a solopreneur. And so most of my content comes directly from my keyboard. It comes directly from my thought, comes directly from something that I'm doing. I don't have anybody writing this for me, and you don't either. For the most part, 99.99% of people that listen to this podcast will not have somebody delivering content for them. Now, why have I brought up the word writing versus video versus memes right now? Well, one of the reasons why I bring that up is because the written word in short-form content is extremely powerful on LinkedIn today. How do I know that? We manage social media at a high level for executive-level leaders. We have a ton of data inside 3 industries— real estate, insurance, and mortgages— that says that short-form written content is where you're going to get your best engagement. And I'm not talking about 25% better engagement. I'm talking about 400% to 500% more. I'm going to choke up over that number. I'm talking about 400% to 500% more engagement. So if I had a choice to deliver any type of content, I'm going to deliver written word. Now, with that said, not everybody can deliver the written word. Some people need to deliver video. That's what they're good at. But I'm just going to give you some of my own philosophy around this so that you can do something with it. Now, I write my content. What's my process? And what I will tell you is that I write my content, and even our freelance writers that are on staff that write content for other people, we take them through a similar methodology, which is a process. We write it and then we put it through something that's called Hemingway App. Now Hemingway App, if you just go to hemingwayapp.com, that's free software. Now what Hemingway App does is it actually measures your content for several things. It's going to measure it for your readability scoring index. That's important because the more difficult your content is to read, the less people will engage with it. So the easier it is for them to digest, the more they'll engage with it. So what we try to do is we try to write somewhere between a 3rd grade and a 6th grade level. I don't want it any higher than that because what I have been able to show is that that's the perfect place for people to engage with your content. They can read it quickly, they can digest it. It's almost like a, a mama bird chewing up the food and spitting it in the baby bird's mouth. It's easy to digest, right? So readability matters. What I know is that when I, when I first started measuring what I was writing, I was typically writing somewhere between 9th and 12th grade level, which means that it was very complex. So what the Hemingway Editor does is not only does it give you a readability score, but it also walks through like how many adverbs are you using? How many passive voices are you using? Like, are there any phrases that you're using that have simpler alternatives? And then it will actually measure the number of sentences that are hard or very hard to read. And it actually measures them in both ways, hard or very hard. And so it'll actually— you take your content, you drop it into that software, and it'll immediately color code it to let you know which is which. And it'll give you a readability score. So what I do with all of my content is I go to the Hemingway app and I put it in there. Now let me give you some input. If you're a recruiting leader, which means that you're leading other people, communication is critical forever. Yes or yes? So your emails, right? Those things are important. Anytime you send an email out, guess what? I just gave you an incredible tool that will make whatever you send to your team easier for them to digest. Easier for them to read, easier for them to respond to. I think every leader should have something like this in their hip pocket today because that technology is available. Now that's one of the processes that we go through. The next thing we do is once we run this through Hemingway App, we then go to Grammarly. Now Grammarly has a shortcut on Chrome browsers. You can pull that shortcut onto your Chrome, onto your Chrome browser as a plugin. And simply click a button and it will actually map across whatever content that you just wrote. It'll do spell check, it'll do sentence structure, it'll do a lot of things. One of the things that I would recommend to you, if you're going to make that leap and you're going to actually move towards creating daily content, then you will want to actually have the paid version of Grammarly. Now, why do I say that? Well, the reason why I say that is because I'm right. No, the reason why I say that is that Grammarly will actually not only run a spell check on the document, it's actually going to allow you to set a number of goals on the content. So one of the things that's now beginning to take place in society is that we are beginning to be able to create algorithms around sentence structure, around paragraph structure, around any type of word structure. And we're able to actually map where the sentence structure is correct, where we're delivering the tonality that we want to deliver. And I'm not sure if tonality is a word, but the tone that we're writing, what are we wanting to deliver, we can actually measure that now. You may have heard IBM, you know, advertise Watson. Well, what Watson is, is Watson is an alchemy tool that you put your content into, which is like your— whatever the word structure is— into it, and it will actually tell you a lot of information about it. Well, Grammarly is now moving towards that. Grammarly is going to cost you— I think it's $99 for an entire year, don't quote me on that— but we here at Forcé Recruiting use the paid version of Grammarly. So what happens when we drop something in it is it asks us to set goals. Now, here are the goals it asks us to set. Who's our audience? They ask us, is it, is it a general audience, a knowledgeable audience, an expert audience? So most times I will actually select knowledgeable. Then it asked me the formality of my content. So it wants to know, you know, is this casual or is this highly professional? So the formality of it, is it informal, is it neutral, or is it formal? Most times in social media I'm writing informal. I want it conversational. The next question asks me is, what domain am I going to use this in? Is it an academic domain, a business domain, a general domain, casual, creative, technical? So I typically select business for my domain. The last thing that asks me is, what tone do I want to use? It can be a variety of tones, but what I typically choose is confident. I want a confident tone. The last question it will ask me is, what's my intent? Do I want to inform? Do I want to describe? Do I want to convince? Do I want to tell a story? And what I would say is that most times I'm wanting to convince. I want to sound as though I know what I'm talking about. So I set those goals and I simply click a button and it will map across the score on what I just wrote. I'm doing this in real time, by the way, while I'm doing this podcast. I just took a piece of content that I wrote. I put it in Hemingway. So if you're watching the video of this, which this video will be on my Vimeo channel or my YouTube channel, you'll see me looking off to the right. The original content that I created was 8th grade level. Out of the sentences that I wrote, one of those— one of the 20 sentences was hard to read. 3 of the 20 were extremely hard to read. Okay, so that tells you that I'm not lying to you when I'm talking about my C- D that I made in English in high school. Right? So what I did then was I then restructured that. I moved that to Grammarly, and Grammarly gives me a 0 out of 100 score, and then it actually creates alerts. I simply have to click through. It will actually correct everything that I did wrong on it by clicking through it. So when I, when I put this now, move this over into Grammarly, my overall score is a 68 out of 100. I want to get it to a 98 or 99, and I can do that by just clicking through the things that Grammarly has said need to be corrected. So with that said, those 2 tools will make you a great writer. Okay, so you'll have great sentence structure. It'll be easy for people to understand and read. Like you will be accomplishing the goals that you want to accomplish in terms of the tone that you want to set for your writing. Those things are important. Now, from time to time when I'm writing an article, something that's a really important piece to me, I go one step beyond that and I will use a language alchemy tool. Now what that does is it tells me the overall tonality of the entire piece and I can measure it by simply cutting and pasting it into that and clicking submit. And it will say that this is a highly positive piece. Or there are times where I've written content and it says that I'm angry or that I'm sad. And that is not the tone that I want to use. Like, I want my content to be motivational, inspirational. I want it to be educational. I want it to transform people, right? I want people to take something, be able to apply it to their business, and then have that— and have that actual application of that transform their business. And so I don't want anger or sadness. If I wanted anything, I'd move closer to being neutral or positive for sure. Okay. Those are some tools. Now with that said, here's my process. I'll do Hemingway app, I'll do Grammarly, and then I will read it out loud multiple times. I want to make sure that it sounds conversational, that is something that as you read this out loud, people understand it very clearly. There's a concise thought there, clear thought. that they understand. Now with that said, there's another piece. You need hashtags. Now data— the data says that right now any more than 3 hashtags is too much. So those of you that have gone hashtag wild, you need to tame it down. So here's kind of our rule of thumb here in-house, okay? One hashtag that represents the leader. So as an example, if you follow my content, I use Richard Nugget, okay? And my— and I don't know where that came from. I don't have any like Very professional, you know, highly intelligent answer to give you regarding that. But what I can tell you is my kids run around the house singing some dang chicken and a biscuit, chicken and a nugget song. I don't even know where it came from. And I hope that that is like rated G. But what I can tell you is that the nugget word just stuck with me. And so I was actually being the hero of my kids by actually creating the hashtag Richard Nugget. So if you go and you follow on LinkedIn, hashtag Richard Nugget, guess what? You will see all of my content in your newsfeed first. So that's that. I do think you should have one that represents you, whatever that is. It doesn't have to have your name in it, but it could be something as simple as your first name, last name. It could also be something that you think is important to what you want to represent, right? I've seen a leader that has a hashtag of iron sharpens iron. I think that's brilliant. Okay, coaching leader, another great hashtag that you could have. So I think one that represents you, one that represents your organization. Because when people go search your organization, you want them to be able to find you. And then another one that actually represents the main theme of whatever it is that you're writing. So when I look across the piece that I'm writing right now and I say, what's the main theme here that I'm trying to represent? For me, it's really going to come down to recruiting conversations. And so that's going to be my tag in this. It's a, it's a conversation that I'm sharing around recruiting. That would be my third tag. But I see things like, you know, an industry-specific tag. So it might be insurance industry, real estate industry, mortgage industry. Those would be tags you could use in addition to it. It could be something that's just specifically, specifically hashtag leadership if it's leadership content. Right? So 3 hashtags, no more. And if you will take those 4 components into consideration— Hemingway App, Grammarly, read through it out loud multiple times, ensure that you're not using any more than 3 hashtags— your content will, will have better engagement. I know this because I have the data in-house to prove it. That's what we're after. We want the engagement. Like, if we're going to go to the trouble of actually creating content on a daily basis, then we might as well look to maximize the engagement because you never know when someone's going to like or comment on your post, which will then push that into their newsfeed. And that person that will see that will actually engage with that as well and move that person into a relationship with you. Right? So there you have it, some great framework. Look, this took me a long time to get to a place. I have written consistently Every single day for several years. And as I look back through the content that I've created, that I created several years ago, one of the things that I would say is that my content has gotten exponentially better. And because of that, I actually have exponential better engagement. And I want the engagement because I need to be seen as an influencer in my community in order to move people towards me. Because remember, 75% of people today Now move to this. If we're talking about sales positions, we're talking about experienced salespeople. The experienced salesperson at a rate of 3 out of 4 now moves towards their next organization through non-direct solicitation. They're not being contacted. This is important to your success as a recruiting leader. So thanks for listening to this. If you feel like someone on your team or someone inside your organization could find value from this, look, one of the things that's actually hilarious to do is go take someone else's content and then drop it into Hemingway App, drop it into Grammarly. And look, if you want to actually give a coworker a hard time that's delivering content, that's a great way to say your writing is too hard to read, you need to simplify it, listen to this podcast. These are some great tools that have taken me a long time to come across and to actually create a process around so that my content's better. I hope this brings value to you. I know I say that every single week. That's my largest hope, that someone here is able to apply what I'm teaching them and then move the needle on their recruiting efforts. So if I can help you in any way, you know how to reach me. And until I hear you or see you or speak to you again on the next Recruiting Conversations, have a great week, everybody.