EP 53 - How B2B Brand Can Grow on LinkedIn with Alex Boyd @ Aware

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: I have Alex Boyd with me on uh, on the podcast. He is the CEO and founder of Aware. Thanks for jumping on, my friend.

Speaker A: Always a pleasure.

Speaker B: We're just chatting about Costa Rica and all the adventures you've had down there. It's a great place. But uh, where I wanted to start is there was a post I think you had, I think it was, I think it was a month ago or so. And uh, you were basically addressing that reaches down and I think it's clearly something that all of us have experienced at some level. But you had an interesting take on it that was a little bit different than I thought, than most people are thinking about it. And you said that really the issue is that there's a whole offline set of events that are not happening as much as they said, the offline activities like DMs, I assume you mean, and other things like that. But I thought we could start there and just kind of get your take on that because you had some interesting data, you shared some nice graph that we can add into this podcast as well. But you want to expand on that just a little bit more. And your take there, there's a ton there.

Speaker A: Um, it's so hard to be binary about it because at the high level, uh, yes, the average reach per person creating is down mostly because there are more people doing it. And the user growth of US based LinkedIn users, which is who most people are marketing to, is growing at like 1 to 2% a year. So there's just a supply and demand problem when it comes to average reach per person trying to get some of it. Um, but what we see in Aware is that there's ah, a big outlier sample on either side. So there's people who are just like dropping like a rock. The ones who are burning out, who used to be big and are just like for whatever reason stopping, um, and then there are plenty of people who are 10 times their last year reach. And so there's just no one answer. And the spread is so wide, like mine is up about 25 year over year. So it's up, um, so within the big supply and demand sample, if you take the um, the aggregate and we don't know aggregate reach overall, like that's impossible to know unless you're LinkedIn. Um, but if you use Engagement as a proxy it's down about 25%, um, on average. And so people in the awareness user base have just been making that up by posting 28 more on average at least 20, 24, 2023. And they're they're gaining very slightly but the average is lower for that reason. So, um, a lot of things going on, but just like broad supply and demand imbalance where there's just more supply of people creating than there used to be, um, demand is increasing more slowly. And then you have outliers in both sides, plenty of examples in the middle. I mean you have, you know, uh, people from 2018 who are huge that you just never hear of anymore. And you have Darren McKee who few had heard of two years ago and now everyone has. So like, have all the. And Chris Walker hasn't posted, uh, on LinkedIn in a month and a half. So you know, is it down, is it up? I mean this, that you know, for whom, uh, and then what correlates with that? And then does it matter as the definition of an impression changed? It's a fun one with short form video impressions, but so many questions around it. Um, overall down on average, plenty of outliers is the shortest way I can answer that.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that's, I think what people are looking at is they're looking at the amount of impressions that a typical post would get and people are saying, well, wait a minute, you know, I maybe was getting thousands or tens of thousands before, now I'm getting maybe a few thousand. And so when they're seeing that, they're saying, well, wait a minute, what's going on here? Does my content suck? Do I need to do something differently? Is it the ad format? Uh, can I do anything else? There was some interesting data I was looking up, uh, my notes here. But X global ad revenue, of course when Elon took over, dropped about 46% back in 2023, which was huge. And a lot of that money. While we don't know exactly where all that ad revenue went, we do know that LinkedIn also saw a pretty big increase in ad revenue in that same time period. So you can call that coincidence, who knows, or maybe regular growth. So that was interesting. And then you've also got, you know, the introduction of thought leader ads, which was I believe about a year ago or so. And of course now LinkedIn allowing you to just boost posts. And so there's been clearly a, uh, push as they've realized. Right, well, wait a minute, we can actually monetize and make a lot more money off of all these content creators that want to increase their reach. And so like any good company does, they want to get more money of it. So that's going on as well. And then again, this is a lot here. Then you've got, uh, ChatGPT, which has been around for a couple of years now. And so all the LLMs have been making it a lot easier to make a lot of content a lot quicker. And so there's just more content flowing into the platform than there ever was before. So I love your take on those elements too. Do you think that those are also, in your opinion, having a pretty big impact in terms of just reach exposure, getting your content in front of the right audience, those types of, of things?

Speaker A: Yeah. It seemed from the best estimates I could find that LinkedIn ad revenue was their, their growth rate year over year was about, um, like half higher than it was. So they typically grow at 10, 11%. I think I saw it was like 14, 15 that they were forecasted to grow. So like it wasn't, you know, a tidal wave. But I mean, in corporate terms that's a good amount of difference. Um, and yes, like you said, even they have been incentivizing you to create content with AI. So you got everyone just like taking a tiny bit of reach to their crappy posts, you know, um, because LinkedIn's gonna show it to some people. Even if you get a hundred impressions on average, uh, that's a hundred. You know, if many more people are getting 100, then it'll whittle away at the few who are getting thousands. Um, so yeah, I mean, I've noticed there's a bigger spread these days. So the standard deviation is much bigger. Like the typical floor of how a post will do, at least for me, and is lower. And then some will get very big. Um, so rather than it being 10, 12, 15, 18, 9, 20, it's more like, you know, 2, 3, 5, 1, um, 8, 5, 000, uh, and they're back down. So this is big spread of like, it's more post by post rather than creator by creator, um, which I think aligns with more of what I've been seeing, which is that LinkedIn's algorithm is becoming more discovery oriented. So unless is less who you follow and more what we think you'll like regardless of who you follow. Because people always complain that, um, who you follow seems to have nothing to do with it. It has like a little bit to do with it. But you know, you really wish it was more to do with, I think than it is because, um, it's not that big of an effect. It's much more, um, you'll see much more stuff based on what you have dwelled on and saved than what who you follow. Um, so if you dwell on and save productivity carousels, you're going to see a crap ton more of those regardless of who you follow, you know, uh, so you really have to vote with your mental attention span very, very judiciously if you want to see better stuff or, you know, use a tool like away or something. But like, if you're just using LinkedIn, you have to make sure you don't leave the page open on stuff you don't want to see more of because you will see more of it, which is kind of annoying.

Speaker B: It's a really interesting point. I want to come back to Aware on one point, but before we do, there was one thing that again, you said in that post and I think you said, clearly people are making up for the loss of reach by posting more. Are there some other things that you're saying that people are doing to, uh, either offline behaviors that they're doing maybe that you don't see traditionally in the newsfeed or things that they're doing in terms of really trying to uplevel the type of content they're creating. Maybe they're moving more into video based creative versus just text based post. Are you seeing anything like that that people are doing that is ending up in a positive result?

Speaker A: In a positive result? Um, there's a lot of increased reach. Yeah, there's, there's tons of negative things. So I see a lot of, um, LinkedIn behavior being treated like a kid's soccer game where you know how everyone just goes after the ball at once and then the ball goes somewhere else and then everyone goes after that. And that happened with short form video for a while. Everyone was like, oh my God, short form video. These impressions are nuts. I got 4 million on a single post and then they just kind of cut it and they changed the definition of what an impression was for that. And then, you know, the ball went somewhere else and I was like, where's the ball going? Um, so. Yes. What explains the, the things visible on the surface? Um, a lot of it is that like ground game, those offline things? Um, when somebody who doesn't particularly write very well posts something and people love it, it's often not because of how it was written or like the hook had, you know, was like somehow expertly better. It was because people just like that guy and he's helped them out a bunch of times. You know, Darren McKee's a fine writer, but he's not the best copyright in the world. He's just helped a bunch of people out. You know, uh, if you have served a ton of customers and they all sort of know you, you can kind of not say anything. But like, if your post is reasonably good, you'll m. Be like, oh, I know that person. So there's more brand familiarity with whoever it is. I think people miss that because of the, the just emulsification plus him. Uh, of LinkedIn. Uh, you have this idea circulating that if you just dial in your content matrix just so, just precisely and your hook is just a little bit better and somehow it's all perfect and you post every day and it's all perfect and you do 20 comments done. Doesn't matter if they're crappy AI comments. You got the 20 comments done every hour. Then somehow, like, if your CTA is strong enough, people will buy from you. It's like, well, not necessarily. And you've missed the whole relationship building part of this because what are people doing? They're subconsciously, without really thinking about it, deciding whether to stop scrolling and do anything with their thumb on your post. And a big part of that subconscious decision will be do I know and or like you. Regardless of how this particular post is written. Um, sure is a skill I often help teach it on. What can you do to introduce your stuff to people who don't know you? That's a whole, that's whole brand marketing thing. That's very valid and I like doing it. I've done it for a while. Um, but if you miss the rest of the stuff, I would say things that former or current salespeople understand intuitively. Then you get lost in this like, over marketerized version of it that like, you're doing all the right things and yet it's not working and you wonder why. And then I ask, how many people did you meet last week for, you know, supportive conversations, uh, to help each other out? And you're like, none. I've done that in. I don't. I've never done that. Okay, well, there you go, you know. And what do I do in those conversations? I can't tell you, like, exactly. Here are a bunch of examples of what I've done offline to help people. But it's not all about that. The, the online results cannot purely be traced back to online inputs.

Speaker B: I, uh, like that point. And I think that, you know, the big thing that people underestimate is that there's this, there's this behavior by certain people out there that are either new to this or just want to get into it quickly, that it's just about churning out as much content as possible and um, getting it out of the masses, right? And just kind of basically putting it on autopilot and there's this whole entire thing. It's a social community, right? So I mean if you kind of just take a step back and think about it, I mean ultimately what you want to be doing is engaging with the people that are engaging with your posts or engaging with people on their posts and not just saying I agree and that sounds great, but you know, maybe going deeper, starting a conversation about something, challenging an idea, asking a question, uh, or maybe someone's asking a question in their post and you're presenting a potential solution or something maybe they haven't thought about, right? And you're just free flowing, giving uh, great value to someone based on your perspective and your experience or to your point, you know, getting in the DMs and saying, hey, you know, like really liked what you said there, like what do you think about this or whatever it may be. It doesn't have to be a sales pitch or anything like that. You can just purely say like I'm interested in what you're talking about and I want to talk about it a little bit more. I think those are the types of activities that have to happen to your point. Otherwise you just caught up in this nightmare of well, I scheduled out a hundred posts and used a bunch of chatgpt to do it. And like that's great but uh, you're not, you kind of become detached from the content. You know, you need to still be very much in, in it, doing it, looking at it, seeing what people are saying, seeing what their reactions are, um, and all those things. So it's a tough balance.

Speaker A: But yeah, I mean the brand of a company or a person is what you have done lately. And then sure, you can market it by talking about what you have done, but if you haven't done anything notable, then your brand marketing is just fluff, right? I mean you could, if you haven't done anything, you can create a character, a mascot, a color palette and you know, pull pranks and put them on video and you can do all sorts of stuff but you haven't done anything lately, then doesn't matter. And so that's why people who've done a lot and say little, you know, and our bad writers get tons of attention because of what they have done. Um, and ah, that's something I saw way too much with SaaS. Companies who haven't done much but want to do brand marketing, they're like, no, I can play this game too. It looks easy. You just do this, this and this. You know, never mind that we haven't released a valuable feature and we haven't fixed those bugs. We haven't closed a bunch of customers like all those things. Right, so like, you haven't done business, but you want to play the brand marketing game because Shortcut. Shortcuts. But we all know how that ends.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, usually not in a good direction. But, um, want to move to something? You and I have chatted about this before. I think I know where you stand. But there's clearly been an immense amount of contention with the, uh, comment to get access to content game on, uh, on LinkedIn, which, which for everyone. I mean, it was of course was stolen by Instagram and Facebook and has been a thing for many, many years. And so anyway, now it's caught on over the last, it seems like, I don't know, year or so. And uh, there's some people that are very, uh, very against it and do not like it and think it's a really poor form of bad gated content. Even saying gated content's better than what we're doing. And the usual reasons are because sometimes they're not getting the content that they actually said they wanted, uh, or there's long delays around it, or when they do get it, a lot of times it's not meeting what they think is valuable based upon whatever the headline of the hook was to get you into it. And so clearly we know, all of us, or anyone who's been a creator or anyone who's seen this type of thing, we all know this is purely a tactic to drive up engagement. That's what it's for. Drives up engagement. Because if LinkedIn interprets and sees more comments on a post, well, then they're going to get it into more people's hands. Which is why a lot of times when you scroll in the news feed, the stuff that's gone the most viral is usually playing some game like that in a lot of cases. But I'm curious, I mean, clearly, you know, at some point maybe LinkedIn will get smart and, you know, potentially demote, uh, some of these things. But what's your stance on it? I mean, is this an effective way, uh, a good tactic that you think can work if done right, or do you stand on the side of this is really not something that is good for the brand long term? What's your, what's your thought?

Speaker A: I mean, I've done that twice in the last Year and a half myself. Yep. Both times. Not only did I hand deliver it to everyone who asked for it, but it was good to the point the asset itself was good to the point of it being like uh, you know, blood, sweat and tears to create it like took a lot of nights, a lot of many, many hours, a lot of custom research. Um, it was easy to digest and uh, zero percent AI written, uh, literally zero percent in both cases. And um, a lot of the comments I got, as you said on that post, were people saying like I have been burned so many times by saying whatever they wanted me to say on some lead magnet. And then people said 80 to 90% of the time they don't even get it. Which like boggles my mind because if you have ever been in sales, you know that the whole point of this is to queue up those conversations and connections like you want to open up the one on one and the over marketerizing of this I think has infected it. And now people think the point is to get engagement and to look big regardless of what happens. Uh, and then I just, after my post went up I did one the next day just to, just to see be like I'll buy it, see how this goes. And I requested someone's million uh dollar sales playbook. Imagine very well sold. This is like all the stuff you need to run a high power sales organization. And I was like that's, let's see. So it was three and three easy steps, right?

Speaker B: You know, just do 1, 2, 3 and here's how you do it.

Speaker A: Yeah. And it was, it was a six page, six steps, not three but you know, a few more. It was in Notion doc and then on each of the six pages was about 300 words of 100% ChatGPT generic, not even customized content. Um, clearly it was like you know, you set a timer, you can make that thing in four minutes if you tried to. My 35, 55 hours put in to each of the assets that I asked for a comment to get. Um, and just for kicks I also tried the opposite. So I tried releasing a very very good asset that handwritten like similar quality. Um, but I just posted it with no gate and it did fine but maybe like a sixth as well as asking for a comment to get it. So now we come to the point of like how do you price your value? And for an asset like that I price it at least a comment because I've learned that if I don't price it there, it doesn't deliver the value to me that uh, is merited for that. I very, very much like the idea of some sort of system. Whether it's algorithmic on LinkedIn's end or just a rating of like a button, like this guy didn't deliver something which obviously would be abused. But you'd have to figure out like, I don't know if they even have the bandwidth or the server side for this. But you know when someone commented on a post fitting type of comment to get X asset, um, you know what percent of people who commented received some sort of response in a DM or comment. Now I realize I'm saying, hey, LinkedIn, the minimum amount of bandwidth you devote to this activity, devote much more. But like in theory that would be how you'd measure it and you'd identify the non deliverers and be like, hey, you didn't do this, you don't get to do that. Again, like this tactic doesn't work for you. Um, we should petition LinkedIn.

Speaker B: I think it's a great idea to interrupt. You should petition LinkedIn to do that.

Speaker A: Yeah, that and have the sales navigator alerts be less than 14 hours delayed. But you know that. Um, so it's as with anything else, I mean anyone can pitch snake oil, um, and you've always, always been able to pitch snake oil because there's not been any real distinguishing factor until you get the product of uh, snake oil versus olive oil. And so this has been, it's the same thing as the struggle through the ages of people selling a bum bag of goods. We just have uh, more but not as much as we want, uh, ability to identify the non deliverers. So like town to town in the old west you couldn't really unless that guy came back. There's no way of saying like that guy, you know, screw that guy because he went to the next town. Uh, and the rating systems, Uber drivers, you can rate them, right? You can rate the non deliverers. So there's that. But there's no equivalent system for LinkedIn, there's no trust pilot for LinkedIn creators. I'm not saying that there should be one. I'm just saying that is, that is the core of the issue is you need to do your own like identification, talking to people offline, community building, ground game of just like relationships based on integrity and value to know who's who's who and who's what. Because a lot of people can get a bunch of engagement and LinkedIn has even said we're going to nuke that tactic. But why would you nuke a tactic? Doesn't totally make sense. You would just want to figure out who's abusing it. As with anything else. And it's just a game of the platforms trying to outgun the people abusing the platforms. It's the same thing in crypto and anti money laundering. You know,

Speaker B: uh, has LinkedIn actually said that regarding this?

Speaker A: They told it to Richard Vanderblam, but then they didn't do anything about it. Yeah, so they said we plan to. Well, you know, you plan like we're going to. They made some sort of forward looking statement to the effect of we're gonna, we're uh, gonna make that less effective. I don't notice any difference. Uh, personally, maybe, maybe a, some difference, but not, um, not a ton. And that's okay, just takes them a while. You got to get it right. Maybe it's just an iterative process. I get it. But like, um, when people are complaining about it, you gotta know, unfollow and just commit to owning what's in your feed and who you follow and who you trust. And there's just, there's never been a substitute for that as there is not now.

Speaker B: Uh, I agree. I think it's well said. I mean, ultimately, at the end of the day, if, if you're not overselling what the content's actually going to do in terms of delivery, in terms of value. And again, value. Subjective. Right. You know, what's valuable to you is not going to be the same amount of value to me. Right. Let's say that you're a LinkedIn ads pro. Right. And I write a nice basic kind of one on one LinkedIn ads thing. You might find a few parts interesting, but you're kind of like, yeah, I know this stuff. I mean, I've been doing it for 10 years and so there's always going to be some level of subjectivity and so it's always going to be impossible to please everyone. Right. But clearly whatever you're putting in that post, it should at least meet those criteria, at least in the way that you're describing it without making it too dramatic and to your point. I mean, if you give the asset to the person, then it really shouldn't be a big deal. And um, I don't know, I don't have a big issue with it. I think it's again, as long as you, as long as you follow through with your promise, right, Then ultimately you're building trust and credibility with the audience. Now, you know, it would be easier if life was fair to uh, you know, have that not be the case and just ungate the thing and just let it kind of go. But you also can look at it another way that hey, I put a lot of good work in this and I think it actually can help a lot of other people. And when people comment on it, that means that more other people like you can see it. And so, you know, there is a kind of altruistic way of thinking about it, that way of saying hey, you know, like it's not like I'm just trying to gain the algorithm here, it's like, hey, uh, ultimately it's a great piece of content, spend a lot of time on it. I think it'd be really valuable a lot of other people and I just want to make sure it gets the best chance of getting seen, you know, and helping out as many people as you can, as you can. So I think some of it just comes back to that at the end of the day. But I don't know, again I think it's one of these things where you should really ultimately use it. At least my perspective, I don't know if you agree, but you know, it's a, it's a thing you use every now and then. It is clearly not something that you just over index on. And so I think there's a time and a place for having, you know, the majority of your content certainly being ungated, unfiltered thoughts, your pov, helpful thoughts that you have from your experiences and what you're learning on a day to day basis. And then the occasional, hey, I put something together that's like really meaty. There's a lot of stuff here, spent a lot of time putting it together. If you want to take a look at it, let me know.

Speaker A: Right, exactly. I mean I was 10 months apart on each of mine. I don't even know if I'll get to another one within 10 months. Some people really abuse that tactic and they do it every few weeks and then I don't know how well it works. There's a lot of people who get, you know, a lot of noise and then privately they confide, I haven't made any money from LinkedIn, I've gotten one lead in the last four years. You know, like they'll say stuff like that and then it's like, oh yeah, comes out, you know, um, this was all for show.

Speaker B: Uh, let's go there. Actually that's a, that's a good segue. I was going to go somewhere else, but you mentioned something that was interesting. So ah, timeline to see, quote Unquote, results. And so I think there's probably more people that might listen to this that are not creating a whole lot of content because again, I think it is still a very small population, even though it seems like everyone's posting. Um, I haven't. I remember the latest numbers. I don't know if they're out as a survey or something maybe, you know, but I know at one point it was like 1 to 2 or 3% or something like that, of people are actually like weekly or daily posters on LinkedIn. So again, I think it's still, I'm sure, the minority, maybe that number's increased a bit over the last, you know, few years. But, um, but ultimately, you know, I'm just kind of curious what you think about, um, you know, all those people and trying to think about, you know, when we're actually going to see results from our content. And so we ultimately know that when we start posting, we're not necessarily expecting it to be some type of direct response motion.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: We know that there's going to be a timeline of building some credibility, putting ourselves out there, finding our words ourself, exactly what we want to say, how, uh, we want to present ourselves. So what expectations have you found in your experience, either personally or maybe just through others too, of, like, what that timeline looks like? I'm sure it's gonna be different for everyone, but what should people kind of set their expectations around?

Speaker A: Uh, it differs so much, and it's gonna differ 100% based on the quality of the rest of the business and the brand in general. Um, I used to answer this question, like, sometimes a few months, sometimes several months, sometimes a few weeks. But like, um, the variation is 100% execution of, um, not just the channel, but also the underlying business. If you have, uh, some examples, right, you have, um, tons of credibility built up over a long career in a particular field. You rarely post anything, and when you do, it's very nondescript. Suddenly you write something very well written, tour de force. Maybe a consultant wrote it for you, something like that. You're going to see results in literally an hour. Uh, because you just have people coming out of the woodwork like, uh, all you're just activating existing brand, um, doing well. Now if you did not have that existing brand, did the same thing, then nothing would happen. And nothing would happen for literally years, like indefinitely. Nothing would happen. You would never see results unless you had done something to deserve the brand that you then activate on LinkedIn. Um, so, okay, let's take a More typical example, your sort of average SaaS company who's like done some stuff right, you've served some customers, you have some actual good testimonials that aren't, you know, doctored and that uh, represent real good work. You've been hiring, you may have raised a little bit, maybe you just sort of have some background in the space, um, and you execute, uh, let's call it, you know, average quality. Um, you know, you're, you're that like several weeks to several months timeline is roughly accurate in terms of like something you can grab onto from. I got a lead or I started from LinkedIn or I built it into a channel, um, something like that. So it's like uh, it's all about who is seeing it, what they are, are seeing and how well what they're seeing correlates to what you offer, the strength of the offer. Generally, like all those things matter way more than the execution of your LinkedIn account. I would much rather have phenomenal brand doing a very average job of LinkedIn execution than poor brand doing a wonderful job of LinkedIn execution. Uh, the former will do much better. Um, so doing LinkedIn very well is ideally something you should only do if you are delivering and ready to deliver. Um, so if you're still figuring out for example your product market fit, I'd rather you post mediocrely once a week about the process of finding it, then I would encourage you to put out daily custom carousels, infographics and short form videos and like execute at that sort of high production level. I would reserve that for when you're confident that just like running an ad campaign, you don't want to hit the gas super, super hard until you're relatively confident that uh, who you're targeting with what message is going to resonate. Uh, and it is the same thing. So it's, it's. I would answer it in the same way that I would answer how long till an outbound campaign or an ad campaign would work. I don't know who you're reaching with, what message and how well does it correlate to your core value prop that you and your company are uniquely qualified to deliver on mouthful. But uh, for me it was um, like six weeks until I got our first, you know, 200K a year agency client from LinkedIn. How would you say, would you say

Speaker B: during that six weeks that you were pretty laser focused? Because I think you made a good point earlier that you know the content. Clearly there's content for engagement's sake. Right? And we all know what that content looks like. And then there's content that is actually driving business types of results. Right. Meaning that the content specific to the types of things that you could do. And it's not necessarily a sales pitch, it just means there's a clear dotted line back to whatever you're talking about to an ultimate service or product that is going to be there. But during that six weeks, was that a lot of your focus or would you say that you were a little bit all over the place in terms of the type of approach you had?

Speaker A: I was all over the place. I was posting generally about the topic, um, and I was posting about once a week back then.

Speaker B: Once a week?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So not much at all. Once a week over six weeks?

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean my first few years of LinkedIn, I posted 1.3 times a week on average. It's crazy. And all that needed to happen, um, was for someone who had a reasonably good impression of me and my ability to at that point help them lead a sales team, who saw that I was no longer full time employed and therefore available for consulting, um, and who happened to have a need for someone who he thought I, someone's shoes he thought I could fill. It was just that simple. It was like um, becoming aware that Alex is doing this, that he's available. Recalling that I liked my first impression of him us having a need. It wasn't necessarily, I mean what I said had to be like at least somewhat smart. But uh, you know, as long as what I said didn't damage his impression of me, it was that simple. It's just getting in front of people with either the same or ideally a bit better of an impression that they already had of you. And yeah, if it's new and you're doing this long process of reaching new people, building uh, affinity with them on a particular topic, then yes, there's, there's more of a process there. And yeah, weeks to months, sometimes, sometimes earlier, uh, is what that takes. But if you have this network, people you already know, it doesn't take much. Um, so remember that. I'd much rather you just start, put something reasonably good out there, um, and see what happens than to plan some elaborate campaign where you, you just have no idea. So you haven't tested.

Speaker B: I think that's, I mean it's interesting. Same, same, similar way I, I started. Although I'd say it was even more all over the place but potentially than you. I mean we were talking about all sorts of things and Einstein quotes and just, lots of, just random unfiltered thoughts from, uh, my head three or four years ago. Because really, I think for me at the time, it was more about getting the muscle going of just practicing writing and getting it out there and being comfortable with that, getting over any type of imposter syndrome and exactly what I wanted to say and all sorts of things. And then of course, over time it was like, okay, let's refine this a little bit. And so I think to your point about making a plan, I think sometimes these things and it's maybe not realistic for all companies. Clearly, if you're a CEO of a major company, there has to be probably some type of a plan before you start speaking, right? Because there's going to be potential financial impact by whatever you say. But if you're not in that situation, then a lot of times it just makes sense to get started instead of making some massive plan, massive strategy. Thinking about this in a very, um, sales led type of way, let's just start talking, communicating with people, interacting, just be yourself. And then over time you'll figure out, okay, cool, I want to start talking about these things. And these are kind of the categories of content, content I want to create more of. Uh, I've seen that these types of things, people have a lot of interest around and they have a clear data line back to my product. So I'm going to spend some more time thinking about how I can add value around those topics versus maybe others that maybe are more niche or people aren't as interested in. And so I think that that's, that's what it's about in the beginning. You know, it's just kind of getting, getting started.

Speaker A: Right, that's true. Yeah. I mean, some people just get it, uh, when, when I was back in the day pitching LinkedIn, sort of coaching done for you and generally like, we'll do this for you services. Um, I could always tell someone who, um, saw the potential pot of gold at the end of the rainbow of like, oh, I see how well some people are doing. I want that too. Um, but at every turn, what it required of them, oh, you need to reflect on your core value proposition, maybe your narrative. Well, I don't think that's necessary. Well, okay, well, uh, we can go straight for you. I wouldn't want you. And then every turn, everything you need to do was like pulling teeth versus some people, they get to you and they're like, I know I want to do this. This is what, an organic, personal way for me to communicate with no ad spend directly to my market. I'm in. Just, uh, help me do it well. And those two types are often what you see. And it comes down to the core psychographics. Who's involved. It's, you know, are they somebody who has had other life experiences that lead them to believe naturally that this is going to do good stuff? They just have a generally positive impression this is going to do good stuff. They don't need specific, it's good to have metrics, but they don't, you know, demand specific timelines, how many leads? Because there's this underlying core belief that this is going to do good as long as we execute it well. Right. And then some people, I want to do it for the money. How do I do it without, but without changing my mind about anything? Like, well, you're going to suck at it pretty much. Um, it's like somebody who doesn't believe in SEO wants to try it for two months and just because they want to conclude that they're right about it sucking, you know, that you're gonna self sabotage your own initiative faster than you can blink? Uh, any marketing channel has this. Any combination of a channel and a CEO who doesn't like it has the same danger. Um, and there's no, there's no way around that without the underlying beliefs changing. That's not a, that's not a fast process.

Speaker B: Well, I think the same thing can be said. I mean, it's all about expectations, right? If you make a ebook, I mean, the problem with a lot of ebooks and guides is sometimes they don't deliver ultimately because the end goal with them was, well, I want leads. And so you've kind of gone into it already with a reasonable objective for the business. But unfortunately it leads you down paths in the way that you write and create the content to do things that unfortunately aren't as valuable as they might be. And so I think you first need to take a step back from the results and say, all right, yeah, I know leads and pipeline and revenue, those types of things are important as business long run. But ultimately, right now, all I care about is making really good content that ultimately people are going to like, they're going to read, that's going to theoretically, over time, give my brand a lot more trust and credibility around the thing that I'm talking about. And so if we can do that first, the rest of it will usually take care of itself. You're not even going to need a lot of CTAs. I mean, I don't know about you. I mean, rarely do I put any type of cta of like book a call with Omnilab today at the end of a post. I mean, usually it's just a little bit inappropriate given the type of, of, you know, medium, in my opinion. I think there's a time to place for CTAs, clearly, if it's something, you know, direct response related. But it's not like people are stupid, right? They know and they understand. They see you see your person, they go to your profile. If your profile is well organized, there's probably a link to your website there. There's probably a link up at the top in the headline. Uh, they can Google you, you know, just by looking at your, you know, the company name, uh, just by going to the URL bar. And so I think some of these things become, again, it kind of just is like this common misconception with, um, I want demos, all right, well, I need to run an ad campaign and tell everyone, do you want a demo? And it's like, not necessarily you could do that. And there are campaigns that run that way and too many, unfortunately. But you can also just purely say, like, hey, here's content, here's something valuable, here's messaging and core stuff we do around problems that you have. And ultimately again, a lot of those things will correct and solve themselves because no one wants to be pitched, you know, no one wants to be, um, have someone in their face trying to go after them hard. And so we all know that. And so just, uh, it's got to be a give, give type of approach before there's any ask.

Speaker A: But it does. That obvious point is, um, something that comes up a lot of just like, what kind of CTA should I put? I think it's pretty clear that you are here to sell something because it's what your whole thing is about. It's what sort of everyone's at some level doing. Exactly. I don't think you need to remind people, uh, you insult their intelligence and your own by putting too many CTAs all over the place. And then with the ebook thing, um, some companies put out stuff and you can tell it was a labor of love. And some companies you can tell it was not. And the, the difference is, it would take a long time to describe, but, um, you could. And it would be very annoying. But like, we all know when we see it, right? Was it a labor of love or not? Um, uh, and when it wasn't, people feel sort of had, uh, they feel like you're here to take from them. They feel used. I think, um, when you make your market feel used, they don't like you very much, and they don't really want to take the demo. And if they do, they're going to have their camera off, be eating lunch and just sort of like, take it but not care about it. Every step of the process thereafter will be more annoying. Uh, and because we have both been in sales, we can feel that. We can feel a prospect who is like, I do want to hear you out on some level, but also I kind of hate a lot about your brand and so I'm going to just give you hell through it. Like, oh, why isn't the sales cycle longer? Trace. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker B: I want to move to something before we, before we wrap up here. Um, we can't, uh, we can't avoid the topic of AI, clearly, and talk a little bit about that. And I think there's some cool stuff that you guys are doing in Aware as well, uh, to do this and make it easier. But, you know, I think that, you know, everyone generally, and at least this is my stance, and I'd be curious of yours, but I think clearly everyone is, you know, AI plus human. Right. And I think that's honestly not a new message. It's been something that's been going around since, you know, the Industrial Revolution. I mean, you know, back when farmers were getting replaced by robots. Right. And so there was certainly. There's always fear, right? Because if it moves very quickly, then, you know, people can lose their jobs and, you know, people aren't as needed as much. But as it relates to content, we're not talking about, you know, a mass exodus or of jobs right now just because of content creators per se, just yet. But where should AI really be used to help write content and where shouldn't it be used? Where's the, where's the balance, in your opinion, between this, of staying close enough to the content? So it's your voice, what you believe. Exercising the muscle of writing versus trying to be efficient and trying to get out content quicker because we're all busy people. There's lots of stuff we have on our plate. So, yeah, what's that balance look like for you?

Speaker A: As someone who's had a professional writing practice for a very long time, I can feel the difference between I'm writing this because it's worth saying again, just because I know repetition is helpful, but I've typed these words in different ways so many times that I'm just kind of going through the motions versus M when I am, uh, writing to develop and clarify my own Thoughts. Those are two very different activities. The type of writing to develop and clarify your own thoughts is extremely important. It's very enriching, rewarding. And trying to have AI help you with it is the wrong thing entirely. It misses the point, um, for at least the drafting of content. If you're asking AI to help you think through a topic, well then great, that's a different activity. Um, but as far as AI writing the publishable content for you, um, don't do it in cases where your intent is to think better. A lot of people don't know that often writing is to think better. They just see it as like, only to publish and there's something missing there. And, um, for those people, I would just encourage you to get more into writing and the thought process development of what it's for anyway. Like the professional writing practice of those who are just doing it to kind of reflect and get smarter and, um, be better and just in the, in the way that education makes you ideally better, smarter and, you know, more reflective as a person, if it's done in the right way. So again, contrast that with, uh, what I would call content creation, um, which is to take, you know, a core thesis or message or question or something and just sort of make it digestible by other people. That's a fine use case for AI if it's very well implemented and you can meet certain tests. Like, um, does the writing sound like what you would write or what you aspire to write if you were a better writer? We can debate that all day. Um, do you stand behind the output regardless of how it was created? Does it represent your. Not, um, just your point of view, but your tone? If it's in a medium, it's going under your name, it should be trackable back to you. And in that way, um, uh, and then is it actually, is it actually more efficient than you writing it? There's a lot of people who use AI to write comments that are much slower per AI comment than I am with no AI, because I can do it in 20 seconds. And they're sitting there clicking the generate button three times and mulling it over. And they've spent two minutes with AI. I'm like, you've, you've lost the thread when you've done that. Because they're, um. If the purpose was to make you more efficient, now you're just tinkering. I love tinkering as much as the next guy. But if, if you get lost in tinkering to the point where you're just like, you're becoming one of those people and there are many of these these days where they have this like inner desperation to use uh, LLMs and AI and just sort of like to avoid feeling left behind. And so they, into the wee hours of the night they're configuring and talking with ChatGPT and getting lost and like it's becoming a friend of theirs. This is the same kind of underlying urge where when that initial GPT3 product that was like supposed to be your friend came out replica and people started like developing intimate relationships with it, it's the same underlying issue that I think you need to watch for and avoid. So if you're becoming like getting lost in it um, through some um, technological intimacy, then you've lost the thread. And this is very common just people who are just like AI is so amazing. This is not just the next big thing. I'm just enamored with it. And yet when I look at the business workflow, you spent two minutes writing a comment, somehow you've gotten off the trail. Get back on the trail, use it when you would otherwise just take longer and maybe you're a little bit more tired than usual. You want to address the same topic you've already addressed. You don't really feel like typing as much. Great. The aware fine tuned AI that's literally fine tuned on your past up to 200 posts. It's a great way of getting a good draft that you can then tweak if you are just needing like a low, lower effort and lower intensity way of getting that same post up and are not, you're not using it as ah, clarifying your own thoughts and developing your, your internal uh, narrative. That's a mouthful. But uh, it's a very different mentality. That's um, why we waited so long to produce a AI text generation feature at all is because we're just inundated with crap out there and like God, we don't want to blend in with this stuff where it's just click button, make post feel good about yourself for a moment and then burn out when you realize it doesn't work because it's generic and doesn't represent you and all those other things. So long story but um, that's our kind of like I think well reflected take on AI for generating text in B2B marketing.

Speaker B: Well, I hadn't thought about the uh, the point you made. I like it by the way, I think it's great. But you know, saying the same thing and then writing to clarify thoughts, I mean I Think I think that's a good distinction. The way to think about it, I mean, the only things that I would add to that is that, you know, I think, you know, certainly for me, you know, when I'm using, whether it be what I Claude or ChatGPT or some combination. We've got some AI based workflows too, we built internally, um, at Omni. But ultimately it kind of comes down to what do I generally want to communicate in this message. And so usually I'll draft out a very rough version of what I generally want to say and then I'll try to get that refined by AI to expand on a little bit, maybe shift some words around, et cetera. Or I might say, hey, um, what are some perspectives and mangles I'm not considering here? What are some things that might be interesting to consider as examples on this? And that just helps kind of bring some ideas forward that like, oh yeah, it's a good idea, I hadn't thought about that. Or hey, you know that, that is an interesting take. Um, you know, I've got a take on that myself and then I might write a couple words in, I think things like that. But I think that what people are tired of is like the, you know, let's define demand gen, or let's define legion versus demand gen, or let's, you know, let's recycle something that like, we're just all kind of sick of to a degree. I think what everyone really wants is they just want unique insights with real data on what actually is happening. They want real stories of stuff that either worked or didn't work. And uh, they want examples. You know, it's like, um, hey, uh, you should do brand marketing. You should uh, it's really important to increase mental availability. It's really important to do all these things. Okay, Those are all good things to say. And in theory I, uh, you know, I agree with all those. But show me an example of someone doing it well. Show me an example of how they do it and break it down in a template. Show me the steps it takes to create something that's great in terms of an ad or a good SEO page or a good blog or a good post or whatever it may be. I think if you can get to those types of things, that's where the value really comes out. I think so little content. There's probably a 1%ers of content that I see out there that are truly using and it doesn't have to be every single piece. Um, but there's uh, not enough Content out there where it's truly using something unique, um, you know, in terms of insights. And again, like there's Hockey Stack labs, there's Dream Data's lab side of it. Uh, there could be just experiments you've run. Um, there's a freaking. The guy's name, uh, right now, but he's been releasing all these really interesting experiments in terms of a B testing right now. And I think it's just interesting stuff. Right. Versus he could just talk about AB testing as a practice which, you know, most people generally know the mechanics of it at a high level. And then they're saying like, hey, this pricing page worked better than this one. This is why. This is what I learned from it. Oh, wow, that's interesting. Maybe there's a learning from that.

Speaker A: So, yeah, the, I think the underlying, all of this, I think comes back to how we are hardwired and we can't upgrade that hardware. Um, and we're, we're hardwired for skepticism in this context. Anytime we're, we're being marketed to, we're skeptical. That's the natural inclination of defense. And when you say something like you should do brand marketing, the skepticism, uh, subconsciously is. Anyone can say that. So I don't, I don't, I don't think anything good about you because you said that. Because anyone can say that if you explain, however, um, examples like you were saying about how to do it well, that where it was done. Well, not anyone can say that. And so something has actually been learned and taught and, uh, values have been exchanged. Um, I talked about this recently too with the analogy I think about for selling and sales in general is like, are you going to take my sheep? And if you come with a generic message that doesn't prove you know the topic, then people think you're just here to take their sheep. You're here in, in the town saying words that are designed to lower their guard and has the opposite effect. Your guard goes back up and they're like, nope, you're going to take my sheep. Uh, go away from my flock. You get out of town. Bye. Um, and one way to get around that with just words is, um, to speak speak specifically, you have to prove, show, not tell, that you can do it.

Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. Yeah, exactly. I think you said it well. I think it's a good closing line. Um, I know I kept you right up until the, the top of the hour here, man, but love having you on and chatting a little bit. If people want to find you or uh, learn more about Aware or anything related to that. What can they do? Where do they go?

Speaker A: LinkedIn's a great place. I think if you type in Alex Boyd and LinkedIn, I should come up first, depending on who you're connected to. But, um, that's the best place for me to direct traffic on whatever they're working on.

Speaker B: Love it, man. Love it. Well, thanks for jumping on for a bit and we'll, we'll, uh, have to do this again here shortly.

Speaker A: Thank you, RB Guy.

Speaker B: We'll see you. All right, well, thanks for listening to another episode of the Demand podcast again. I'm Jonathan Bland, the co founder of Omnilab. I'll also have with me Jason Steele, who's the other co founder of Omnilab on this podcast as well. Uh, we're a DemandGen agency for C2 Series B SaaS startups. Um, if you like this episode, uh, or you're looking for some help with DemandGen, please feel free to reach out to us on LinkedIn over a DM. Or you can go just directly to our website. It's omnilive consulting.com. otherwise, uh, we look forward to seeing you on the next episode where we'll be talking about all things Demand Engine. Until then, thanks. Bye. Bye.