How to Curate Content That Prospects / Candidates Actually Trust - Ep 210

Welcome back to the podcast. In today's episode, I'd like to take an audience question. And this was submitted to me over the weekend. And I decided rather than just to reply to one person, to make a podcast episode out of it as well.

And what happens is when people subscribe to my VIP email list, I have a system set up. I use a site called Kajabi, and Kajabi will send them a welcome message the day after they sign up. Now they get an email right away from me saying, Welcome to my VIP email list, and here's what you can come to expect. It also gives you a couple of resources, but then the next day it sends them a message and it says, Hi Dana, did you see the email I sent yesterday?

I just wanted to follow up and make sure you got your welcome email. Sometimes it goes a spam, et cetera. And then I say, also, I have a quick question for you. If you could get just one thing from signing up for my VIP email list, what would it be?

Just hit reply to this email real quick to let me know. Now I have to tell you, I was inspired to do this on my email list from someone else. And I wish I could give credit to the source. I can't remember.

It was somebody who was talking about improving your email and your communications process. And I thought this is brilliant. And I do have to say that not every person replies back to this message, but the people that do will always get a response from me. So quick little side plug for you.

If you're not already on my VAP email list and you want to test this process out, go to mellormarketing.com slash subscribe and then just enter your email and name and all that good stuff. And then test it out. Send me a message and say, hey, I listened on the podcast.

Is it really you? Like you'll see it's me. I don't have an admin or a VA or gosh, AI using responses to my emails. You actually get a response to me.

So I decided to, like I said, instead of just respond to this one person, I decided to respond and do this in the form of a podcast. And I might even do a blog post on this as well. And my response to this individual was good to know. And I'll see if I can pull out a podcast or blog post or two to help you with this.

And top of mind, when I think about this question, the one thing I'd like most out of this VIP list is how to curate valuable content that builds trust for prospects and candidates. That's the person's question. Top of mind, what comes to me is the way that we build trust for people is by demonstrating that we are real. And I think also it's by building social proof.

So at a very high level, that's how we do it. And I think in this day and age of AI and automated responses and bots and all that other, like we when you can be a real person responding to a real person, I think it can definitely differentiate you. And that does definitely help with that trust building factor. So here's one of my techniques.

I'm going to give you a few. I'm also going to do a quick scan of my podcast past episodes, and I'll do a lookup of my blogs on my website. I'm going to do a lookup of my LinkedIn as well. I'm actually doing this live as I'm doing the recording.

I'm not overly scripted. I'm more of a natural language type of person. So I'm going to give a couple of those answers in here, but I'm going to start with building trust for prospects, and then I'll talk about building trust for candidates as well. Maybe you're looking to grow your business and add team members.

So building trust for prospects, the very first thing is exactly what I'm doing right now. When you get questions from your audience, instead of just responding to that one person, respond and create content out of it. You can do what I'm doing right now, publish the answer in a podcast. Or if you don't have a podcast yet, you can just do this in the form of a social media post.

You could even do it in video. I'm thinking of my friend Annette Richmond right now, as I'm mentioning that. And she does a lot of video marketing. And she's actually got a boot camp coming up.

Check her out if you're interested in leaning into video a little bit more. But she'll do a lot of things on video where I'll do things typically in LinkedIn posts. And I'm leaning more towards doing responses on YouTube as well because now my channel's monetized. And I'm only making about a hundred bucks a month, but it's a hundred dollars more than I'm paying LinkedIn.

In fact, actually $100 more than LinkedIn is paying me, I should say, because in fact I am paying LinkedIn every month and I use a premium subscription there. Now, I usually tell my clients it doesn't make sense to upgrade to pay for premium unless you have an optimized profile, you understand and you're using good invitation and DM strategy, and you're posting regularly and you're engaging with your audience and you're using LinkedIn for business development. And I always tell them LinkedIn Premium doesn't mean a better version, it just means you get access to additional features.

So if you're not using those features, cancel your premium and don't pay for it. But all that said, LinkedIn has different levels. There's premium career, premium business, sales navigator, LinkedIn Recruiter, and they're actually coming out with a new service right now as well called Business All in One. I've tried every level that they currently make available with the exception of Business All-in-One.

I haven't done that one yet. And I've done monthly and I've done annually, you get a discount if you pay annually. But I have to say, I'm thrifty when it comes to paying for software and subscriptions. And if I'm not going to use the full version of it and I can get whatever I need with a lower level version, that's what I'm going to do.

And that's what I do with LinkedIn right now. So I pay for premium career, $39.99 a month. And I could certainly pay annual if I wanted, or but my point here is I'm paying LinkedIn to use their site every month, which I've always thought that individuals like myself, other marketing consultants and strategists who are helping people to use their platform more effectively that are supporting platform use, I feel like they should at least comp our subscription there, if not give us something, but they don't.

So we're just seen as one of their products, just like all of you are seen as one of their products. So anyway, I am paying LinkedIn $39.99 a month on YouTube. I have the free YouTube account.

I don't pay for premium YouTube Red or whatever they call it. And I've now achieved a level where I have enough subscriptions and channel views that I've monetized my content and I'm making $100 plus per month. Some months I don't make $100. The next month they give me a check for $180.

So it's fun. So I'm deciding to lean in more to doing videos on LinkedIn, on YouTube rather as well. And then I'll probably be sharing those YouTube video links on LinkedIn. Because if LinkedIn's not going to pay me for it, I might as well drive some viewership to my YouTube channel where I am getting paid for it, right?

So I'm helping myself and I'm helping you, my audience, by creating both this podcast and my YouTube channel. And this is a tip within a question. The question was how to curate valuable content that builds trust. But I want you to think about what I just did there.

I'm suggesting that you're using audience questions to create content, whether it's podcasts or blog posts or social media posts. And I'm also giving you a little bonus piece of advice, which is think about where you might be able to not just help your intended target audience, but even to grow your business as well. So a little side thing for you there. Okay, now let's talk about the other side of this, how to curate valuable content that builds trust for candidates.

I want you to think about this. If you're growing your business, you're regularly interviewing people, there comes that time in that interview where you say, What questions do you have for us? And there's probably some common questions that you're getting from candidates. So if I were a hiring manager and I wanted to create kind content that's going to help prospective candidates, I might do a blog with the top 10 questions asked during job interviews.

Or maybe on the Apply Now page on your website or the careers page, you put some FAQs in there as well. That's a really easy thing to do. You could also, if you're hiring right now, you could do a video. Here's a question that we've received from candidates in the past.

And I think you want to make it generic enough so that nobody feels like they're being singled out. But think about those really common questions that people get asked about joining your team and your business and the ones that can help, maybe if there's people that are on the fence about taking a job offer, which ones could help them as well. So that's the one thing you could do is just listen to your audience and answer questions, whether it's prospective clients or prospective candidates.

All right, now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna pause this video. I'm gonna look through podcast episodes, and then I'm going to look at some blogs as well, and then I'm gonna reference those in the next part of the recording. All right, so let me pause right now. All right, so I just spent a couple minutes going through my list of past podcasts as well as my blogs and pulled out a few that I'm gonna reference in here.

So, quick aside to for any podcasters, I highly recommend doing this. I've actually created a Google Sheets document with all of my podcast episodes listed in there. And as of today, May 11, 2026, I've published 209 episodes. So I've got a spreadsheet that basically contains the episode number, the date it was published, the date that it was originally recorded, the topic of the podcast itself, the podcast title, so to speak, the format, whether it was an interview, a solo show, if it was an interview, the guests, and then some other fields are in there as well, the guest LinkedIn URL and the YouTube link if I have that.

So this allows me to quickly go through the list to look at when I get questions like this about past podcast episodes or content that I've created. So I did a quick scan through the list, and I have a few episodes that I think really might be helpful in terms of this question how to curate valuable content that builds trust for prospects or for candidates. So I'm gonna give a couple past podcast episodes. The one is podcast number 191, and it's called AI Can't Answer, AI Can't Do This.

Answer Your LinkedIn questions fully and accurately. Now, my area of expertise is LinkedIn. You could insert your area of expertise for the word LinkedIn in there as well. And I think that's really important because nowadays there's a lot of use of AI, and I use AI just about every day too.

My favorite tool is Gemini, but I know that there's some things that Gemini cannot do. And I also always question whether Gemini is 100% accurate. So I did this blog inspired by a client who kept sending me questions and he said, This is what I found. And I said, Where did you find this?

And he said, AI. And I said, that's incorrect because AI is often pulling dated information about LinkedIn. So there's something to be said for the human factor that people trust people often over AI and bots and stuff like that. So I did a podcast episode about that, and you could certainly do the same as well.

Another one is podcast episode 184. I'm kind of going in reverse order here because I have my podcast spreadsheet with the most current episode at the top. Um podcast episode 184. It's called How Speaking Can Help You Showcase Your Business and Expertise.

And this was with Lorianne Mirabito, who's actually a public speaking coach. But I was thinking about this in terms of how do you curate valuable content that builds trust, you know, by speaking at events, right? And by speaking, whether it's it to a closed corporate audience or at a conference, an event, a chamber of commerce, something like that, speaking helps to showcase your expertise. And one of my favorite parts of speaking is when I get done with my talk and I ask the audience, are there any questions?

I have yet to have a circumstance where somebody asks me a question where I don't have an answer. Even if I don't have the answer, I know where to look and I will jot down their name and I'll get back to them in a response. So that's a really great way of curating content is just speaking at events. Another episode 182 of my podcast.

It's called This Week's LinkedIn Questions: How to Get a Bigger Slice of the LinkedIn Pi. So I brought a part of my brand tagline in there. And in this instance, I decided to just collect the questions that I had received over the past week and do a podcast about them. So again, what I'm doing here today, but if you want to see that in practice, listen to podcast number 182.

By the way, I'm going to put all the links in the show notes here for those podcast episodes in case you want to look them up quickly. All right, another one, podcast episode 163, tips for posting on your LinkedIn company page. Now, you might be thinking of only posting through your LinkedIn profile, but your company page can actually reach people that aren't connected to you. And the great thing is when people visit your company page and they scroll and look through your posts, you're not competing with other posts from the homepage.

They're just your posts one after another. So this is a really great way of curating that really valuable content. And I like to mix up both questions and videos and free resources along with calls to action to do business with me on your company page. So that can be a really great technique.

Again, that is podcast episode number 163. All right, couple more in here. Podcast number 132. This was one of several, which I called Trifecta Talks.

And I partnered with Michelle G Michelle B. Griffin and Michelle J. Raymond. All three of us specialize in LinkedIn.

And we used to get together once per quarter and just answer questions about branding and marketing and B2B marketing through LinkedIn and just helping our audiences. So by the three of us putting our heads together by collaborating, we were really creating great reach for all three of us. And that helped our customers and prospects as well. So that might be an idea.

Find other people who do work similar to you and compare ideas, but do it together on video or just on audio and then publish a podcast or publish content out of it. It can be a really great way of marketing each other and helping to expand reach for each of you individually and collectively. All right, another episode number 118. This was an interview with Rachel Linteigen, and she offered SEO tips for entrepreneurs.

So I was on the phone with a client the other day, and he has just launched a new website, and he said, How do I get it to come up in Google searches? And I said, Well, you need some SEO help. And I gave him names for a few individuals to help him with that. So in this episode, Rachel offers us some SEO tips for your website.

So if you don't have somebody helping you with your website, you could certainly listen to this, or you could give this podcast episode to your SEO person to make sure that they've incorporated those tips. Now that episode was recorded back in 2024, but I do know that SEO principles, there's still shelf value to what was shared two years ago. But there's also even people like Rachel are now starting to cover AI and SEO and AIO, I think is the term they're using there as well.

But there's still, just like in marketing, there are foundational principles that you need to be incorporating in on your website. And that will help you to reach both prospects as well as candidates. Okay, last one I'm going to reference here. Um I can certainly keep going.

You can see my podcast. I have a lot of episodes that answer these questions. This is how to use FAQs as content featuring a question. And I actually gave the specific example, featuring a question about a lost LinkedIn page admin access.

So in this case, the name of the podcast included the problem that the person was trying to solve. So think about that as well if you're doing podcasts. Don't just say answers to LinkedIn questions, but give the specific question as a part of that podcast episode. All right.

Okay, so shifting gears. Now I went on my website in my blog section there. And I've got blog content on LinkedIn. I've got blog content on my website as well.

My goal is always to bring people back to my website. So I decided to look at blogs that I've published on my webcast, on my website, rather. Now you're going to notice that some of these blogs are very similar to my podcasts. Sometimes I publish both at the same time.

And here's one. This is called AI Can't Do This. Answer Your LinkedIn questions fully and accurately. And again, it's pulling the content from the podcast.

Now I use the script and I also use Gemini. So what I like to do is pull out the podcast episode and then re-repackage it as a blog in there as well. And basically it's just taking the content that I said in the podcast and putting it into words. So that's a really great idea to do that.

And you can check out that blog if you'd like to read it. All right, another blog I created. This was back in July of 2025, reminding people what you do is good marketing. And it's funny because we think like we don't want to bother people.

I hear this so often from people. I don't want to bother people. They know what I do already. They actually probably don't.

They probably know a little bit categorically, but I think it's really helpful for you to periodically remind them. So in this blog, I talk about the audiences I serve, how I help those audience members, and I give some links on doing business with me. And as I'm reading through this, I'm just realizing this blog has an outdated discovery call link. I actually used to use Calendly and I swapped over to TidyCal, and I've got to update that blog.

So thank you for asking that question, which brought this to my attention. All right, another one is a blog. This was from July of 2024, although I do update this fairly regularly. It's called Amazing Virtual Marketing Masterclasses to Supercharge Your Business.

So this is a really interesting, this is a two-layered response about curating content because what I do is I create master classes inside my marketing with Miller membership and learning community based on questions from my members who are often self-employed, small business owners, sometimes agency owners that don't have a marketer on staff and that want to learn marketing from me. So what I do is I've created these marketing masterclasses inside the community, and I teach them techniques.

So I'm just going to give you a few examples of some of the masterclasses. Let's see, one is called brand guidelines and brand colors, and I brought in an outside expert for that one. Another one, how to think like a marketer. Let's see what else.

Marketing plan basics for non-marketers, a small business marketing audit, testimonials and online reviews, Trello Tour and Tips. So basically, some of the software that I'm using, sometimes my members would ask me about that as well. So anytime I publish a new masterclass, I update it to the blog, which helps me to reach people like you who might be looking to learn from me. And it also kind of selfishly for me, it provides an easy place for me to look up those masterclasses that I've done in the past.

So that's a really great technique. And check out that blog as well. All right, let's see. I think I've got two more.

I wrote a blog a few years back. It's called Blog on LinkedIn, why bother? And I explain the value of reaching audience members where they can be found, demonstrating your subject matter expertise through your LinkedIn profile and activities, extending your marketing and brand message, et cetera. So check that out.

I think that's a really great way of curating content is just by writing. If you enjoy writing, blog on LinkedIn, right? And then finally, I have a blog that's called Wanna Grow Your Business, Ask Your Clients for Testimonials. So in this case, the person that asked me the question about how to curate valuable content that builds trust for prospects and candidates, I'm going to reach back out to that person after this podcast and companion blog are published.

I'm going to provide links to both of them. And I'll say, if you found this helpful, could you do me a favor? Could you give me a LinkedIn recommendation? If you don't ask, the answer is always no.

And satisfied customers and happy clients are always more than happy to give those testimonials to you. And then you can use those testimonials for marketing purposes. Creating social proof is a really great way. And it's a technique that I've been using over the years to grow my business.

All right, my friends, so that's it. Today's question again was how to curate valuable content that builds trust for prospects and candidates. And regardless, if you're trying to reach new customers or grow your teams, you could use these techniques interchangeably. I do hope that you found it helpful.

And I want to encourage you if you have any questions for me, you can email me at Brenda at Mellermarketing.com and be sure to look at the links in the show notes as well. Thank you for listening and have a great day.