Charli Hunt: Sarah Clay, thank you so so much for being on B2B My Guest. We're so excited to have you. Please introduce yourself.
Sarah Clay: Hey, hey, I'm Sarah Clay, which is my cheesy intro, which works 'cause people remember me. I'm a LinkedIn trainer and employee advocacy expert. I've been working in the social media space for, I don't know, quite a long time, So I've specialized in LinkedIn and in employee advocacy because they are the B2B places to be, to be.
Charli Hunt: I think LinkedIn's got a new campaign, haven't they? I've seen it on Reddit where they're saying LinkedIn is the place to B2B and I love it.
Sarah Clay: It's great. It really is brilliant. It's just simple and memorable as well.
Charli Hunt: Yeah, exactly. So Sarah, you deal with one part of LinkedIn that we don't see that often, which is the company pages. So how can people get the most out of their company pages on LinkedIn?
Sarah Clay: Ooh, lots of, lots of ways. So company pages have had quite a bad rap over the years they don't get great engagement. And I quite like that to be honest. There are other social media channels, Facebook, for example, where company pages kind of have the same rights, if you like, as personal profiles, and it's very easy for a personal profile to get bashed about by a company page, literally. And on LinkedIn, this can't happen because of the way that the algorithm has structured it. And I actually think it's a good thing. Because individuals don't have the huge budgets that company pages do. So I, I do think it's right that company pages get less engagement. There are lots of ways that you can increase the engagement and visibility of your company page. The first thing is to set it up and fill in all the bits. And it's a very easy process actually to do that. Once you open a company page, LinkedIn talks you through all the bits, and it's a case of just filling in as much as you can, because the more keywords you've got in there and the more information about you as a company, the more people will
a, come to see it because it'll come up in their searches, and B, they're going to stay there longer. And when somebody stays longer on your company page, two things actually begin to happen. One is that the algorithm will read that what we call dwell time and the algorithm will see the page as a page that's getting traction, that's getting long visits rather than just quick hits and also lots of hits. And we're not a hundred percent sure, but we're pretty sure that when this happens, then the content that's published on the company page gets more reach. It gets pushed out to more people, and also they're going to come up higher in those searches. But really, the main thing that happens is that people get to know the company better. And that's what we want. So, in order to build the trust, which we all need before we buy from anybody or anything, you know, the company page or whatever it is, we need that trust. And before that trust is built, we need to get to know the company. So the more information you've got on your company page, the more people will get to know you, like you and trust you as a company. And that is for me, base level step one and I see companies who are paying a fortune in ads who are probably paying quite a lot in content as well maybe have an external agency or an internal social media manager
Charli Hunt: and
Sarah Clay: their company pages just looks a bit shabby and a bit closed. I always say it's, it's a shop window and if the shop looks closed or a bit kind of unkempt when people land on it, they're not going to stay. So get the company page fully optimized, looking amazing before you do anything. That's step one. And then posting great content, posting content that's relevant to your audience. And what I see a lot of companies doing is posting, this is what we do. This is what we do. This is what we do. It's a bit boring, to be honest. Pretty much people know what you do. And if they want that deep information, they can go to the website. For me, a company page needs to be personalized and humanized. So talking about the employees on there, talking about the problems that the company solves, rather than just bashing people over the head with the company message, really identifying what problems the company solves and talking about those in the content is going to really help the content resonate with the right audience. So content is a really important part of it. I would say that is step two. And then step three is the employee advocacy piece. And this is where you're empowering your employees to take that information from the company page and start creating their own personal profiles and their own thought leadership, but using the company as their kind of umbrella, if you like, and taking that content and getting it spread
all over LinkedIn and I use, um, an analogy of, I, I talk a lot about real life and how LinkedIn is like, is real life. And I actually say that LinkedIn isn't, um, social media, it's networking. So let's say you've got two employees, just two. And you've got the company page. It's like sending two people out networking every week instead of one. And so you can actually double the efforts because you've got two people. Now scale that up to a bigger company of 10, 20, 50, a hundred, a thousand. Just think of the impact that that can have all across LinkedIn. So those are the three steps. Get your page sorted, get your content sorted and get your employees empowered to want to go out and talk about the company on their personal profiles.
Charli Hunt: I love that. And what do you do if you feel your employees don't really want to use LinkedIn, how can you persuade them to do it?
Sarah Clay: Ah, okay. Yeah. So this is, this is something I see quite a lot. So I will usually go into a company via the marketing department or the CEO, depending on the company, and I'll run, I'll start running training initially. And there will always be people in that room or on that screen if I'm on zoom who don't want to do it. It's about explaining to people the value for themselves. So yes, of course, it's value for the company, which in turn has value for each of the employees. We can all appreciate that and understand that. And I do talk about that. But it's about the individual progress that people could make by doing this and by being active on LinkedIn.
Lots of doors can open with LinkedIn, which people may never realize you can get invited onto podcasts. Here we are. You know what I mean? I've seen employees be invited to write for publications and all of these kinds of things. And as I say, be invited onto podcasts, be invited onto LinkedIn lives and audio rooms. And all of these things start to build the personal brand of each of the employees. And with that, they grow as people. And it's incredible what can happen. And also the people that you can meet when you're, as I say, sort of bumbling around on LinkedIn, you can meet the most incredible people, just by talking to other people on LinkedIn. And as I say, it's this networking piece. So that's where I would always start. Still, you're always going to get resistance with some people and that's fine. And what I do is divide the employees into two sections. I have the champions who are a small group of people who really want to embrace the advocacy. They're really on board. They get it. They want to do it. They're good communicators and let's champion those people and really help them with their profiles with this whole process. And then you'll have some people who want to dip their toe in a bit, but they're not really sure. And they're certainly not prepared to create fresh content, for example. So I call those the supporters. So if they're out there liking the posts on the company page, liking the posts on their colleagues' personal profiles, that's great because it all helps. It absolutely all helps. And I would praise anybody in any organization for any effort that they can contribute. You will also get always a group of people who want absolutely nothing to do with this whatsoever, and that's fine. What you don't want, and when I first started training people how to use LinkedIn, I came across a client, I had a client, and she was being told to share the posts from the company page to her personal profile, and she didn't want to do it. She just felt really uneasy about doing it. And we dug into why, and it turns out she wasn't really happy in her role anyway.
And she left shortly after. But that kind of aside, if somebody, however happy they are in their role, if they're not into going on to LinkedIn and sharing content, et cetera, et cetera, then we have to respect that the company has to respect that because you don't want people doing it begrudgingly. And you certainly don't want to make somebody unhappy in their role. Listening to people, encouraging them and trying to help them push themselves slightly out of their comfort zone, yes, but also bearing in mind this isn't for everybody and that has to be appreciated and respected.
Charli Hunt: Brilliant. And let's say you have a small business, so it's maybe you or you and someone else and your business, Would you prioritize the company page or your own page, or would you just try to give them equal weighting?
Sarah Clay: Good question. So a couple of years ago, I might've said, don't worry about the company page, have one set up. Even if it is just you and you're starting out, you're brand new in your business. Set up a company page because it just looks a little bit more professional. And what happens is that once you link your personal profile to your company page, the logo pulls through and it sits underneath your banner. And it just looks really professional to have that there. If you do not have the time, the energy, the space, to put content on the company page, especially when you're starting out in a new business and you're all over the place and you don't know what's going on. It's the most thing you can do to actually get your job done.
Let alone do your LinkedIn posts. Put a holding post featured post at the top pinned post and say I'm not posting on here yet please come to my personal profile. And people might go to the company page, see that and go, Oh, okay, I won't waste my time. I'll just stick with this person's personal profile.
That's fine. What I would say, if you do have time, is to try and post some things on the company page and you can use the same posts, similar posts, reposting from the page to the profile. Because what happens is you will get more eyes on your content and on your posts if you have the two. It does help with, with the algorithm. It does help with, with your brand awareness. So if you've got the resources to even just, as I say, repost post back and forth, then do that.
Charli Hunt: And would you create any different types of content between the company page and your personal page? Or do you think it's all, it's all similar?
Sarah Clay: If it's just you, I would suggest that the more business type posts, post on both, but then perhaps some of the more personal posts, you might want to keep to your personal profile. That's not to say that you want your company page to be dry and dusty and just really full of purely business, purely, this is what we do all the time. It does need some humanization, I think is a word. But I would say with the personal profile, you can put the more personal stuff on there.
Charli Hunt: And a very small question I have for you actually is I know you wrote a post that sharing is just as important as commenting for employees to do. Is that still the case and what are the benefits of each one?
Sarah Clay: So you're talking about sharing posts from the company
Charli Hunt: Yes.
Sarah Clay: their personal profiles. Okay. Yeah. So they're all important actually. Let's talk about commenting on the company page posts, for example. So company posts, we've worked with this or we've done this, made this project or whatever it is. The important thing is that the employees then comment on that post, preferably within the first hour or so of it being posted. I've had objections to this, of course, was that why would we comment on our own post? This seems crazy. So I always say, picture yourself in a lecture hall and the lecturer is at the front and the lecture's finished and they say, has anybody got any questions? And nobody will ask the first question. And you're sitting there, you're thinking, Oh, I've really got this question, but I daren't ask it. And then somebody else asks a question, and then that opens the floodgates for everybody else to put their hands up and ask the question. And that's the point, as well as helping the algorithm see the post, get more traction. That's a really relevant point. Why is it important the employees should be commenting on those company page posts. The other thing that happens actually is the employees then start to have a conversation or they can do, and I've seen this happen in the comments, which is really nice because another advantage of employee advocacy is that it brings the company together.
It's really weird, especially when we're working remotely. And I didn't realize this was a thing until I saw it happening with my clients. And all of a sudden they're talking about LinkedIn, they're talking about their posts, they're talking about, Oh, you went climbing at the weekend. I go climbing. Can we go climbing together?
And all of these relationships start to build that may not have happened otherwise. So commenting on the company page posts, that's a really important thing to do. Reposting posts or sharing posts onto your personal profile from the company page is a really important strategy if people have time to do it, obviously.
But if they can, it's very, very quick and very easy. The reason it's important is because posts on your personal profile will get so much more reach than the posts on the company page. So even if somebody's got 200 followers, let's say, or even less, just think that's still increasing the reach and the potential engagement of that post.
So that's why it's important that employees do repost and share posts from the company page to their personal profiles.
Charli Hunt: Oh, I love that. I can see your book behind you. Is it full of amazing analogies like that? I love the lecture analogy.
Sarah Clay: So this is the draft, so it's why it's got a brown line
Charli Hunt: Ah.
Sarah Clay: This is the book! Yes, I'm very excited about my book. It doesn't have that one in, but it does have quite a lot in. And I do use a lot of analogies when I'm training, because I think it just helps people understand better. And I studied law at university and I sat through far too many, very, very dull lectures, I always swore that if ever I got into any form of teaching, I would not do that. Uh, and here I am. So yeah.
Charli Hunt: So, how did you go from law to LinkedIn training?
Sarah Clay: Oh, I went via somewhere else first. studied law because I am the only girl in the family of boys and I wanted to show my dad I was clever.
Charli Hunt: Amazing.
Sarah Clay: Turns out to be not very clever decision because I hated it, but there we go. It really wasn't for me at all. And I remember a conversation with my mom when I was probably about 11 or 12 and saying, Oh, I think I want to go into marketing.
Not really knowing what it was, but it looked quite fun. And she said, no, dear, do something more meaningful. And here I am. So law didn't really work out for me at all. And then I ended up working in the film industry, actually, which is what I did for most of my life, produced TV commercials, music videos, et cetera which was a fun time.
It has to be said hard, really hard work. But lots of fun as well. And then when I had my kids, I ended up working for the local estate agent running their marketing department. And they took me on and I said, but I don't know anything about marketing. And they said, Oh, you'll be fine. I said, okay. And I basically learned it from the ground up. And as part of that, I set these guys up on Twitter as it was called then, and Instagram and Facebook actually. And I said to them, guys, you know, you've got to be on social media. And this was a long time ago, way before social media was anything like it is now. And they kind of bought into it and they let me just go with it and run with it. And I realized the benefits of that, of social media. And I thought, this is incredible this whole social media thing, you can reach people all over the place. And then I. was headhunted by a film company to be their head of PR. Same thing. I've never done PR before. Oh, you'll be fine. So literally on day one, I'm Googling how to write a press release. And I managed to wing that as well. And they were an incredible company making beautiful, amazing, quite well known adverts and films.
And they had big, big clients that we'd all know and they weren't on social either. So now they took some convincing. So I got them onto social media platforms. And then I had a sort of an epiphany that actually, this is what I need. This is what I need to do. I need to do social media and set up my own agency and just do it for different clients.
So I left the film company. I did some training and set up Sarah Clay Social, and that was that.
Charli Hunt: What a cool story.
Sarah Clay: Yeah, at the time it didn't seem very cool. It just seemed logical and this is what I'm going to do, kind of
Charli Hunt: Yeah. Oh, I love that. What an interesting career
Sarah Clay: I think somebody said, well, you're obviously an early adopter. I was like, well, maybe, I don't know.
What I would say is that doing all those different things, having all of those different skills actually has helped make me who I am and what I am. And because I've been in these different industries, I understand how they work and what kind of people there are. So I have some lawyers as clients and I know they think very differently from my, let's say construction clients, and they, they speak differently. I'm aware I need to speak to them in a slightly different way and just understand them in a different way.
And I think having worked in different places and different industries, it's been a real benefit to me.
Charli Hunt: Yeah. Yeah. When you're young, it feels like you need a really logical career path, but actually it's way better to get lots of different things out of lots of different industries.
Sarah Clay: Yeah, definitely. I know. And I'm watching my kids as well. I'm wondering where they're going to end up and what they're doing. Yeah, it's interesting.
Charli Hunt: Yeah, it must be. So I guess you deal with people who are nervous to post on LinkedIn all the time. How do you encourage people who, they want to post on LinkedIn, they maybe don't think they're interesting enough, they don't think they have a story, or they don't think they have anything to say.
How do you encourage them to post on LinkedIn. So when I'm
Sarah Clay: working people, I don't know what it is, but I seem to be able to pull things out of them that they didn't know they had. And actually people have said that to me, literally said that. And I seem to work quite a lot with introverts, actually, and helping them get what's in here and, you know, in their heart and in their head and get that out on paper. I remember one training I did, an in person training in Birmingham with a company up there. And there was a lovely, one of the team, I think there were about 20 people I think in the room. And one of the girls, she was just lovely, they were all lovely actually. And she said, I can't, I can't press send, I can't do it. So I said, um, so do you want me to hold your hand? And she went, yeah, would you I did literally held her hand and she pressed send. Thank you. But I think using those analogies and also explaining to people that when you post on LinkedIn, hardly anybody sees it, which is a shock for people to hear because they think they're exposing themselves to the whole world, but actually so few of our followers see our posts, such a small percentage of our followers see our posts when they go out. Once they get traction and people start interacting with them, then yes, then potentially more people do see them. But if you're posting for the first or second time, whatever, um, and you've got quite a small audience, Not many people will see that post. And I think people find that quite comforting. I've just remembered my first ever LinkedIn post. It was a video, my second actually, it was a video which took me all day to film.
Literally all day. didn't know about editing then or anything. So it had to be one take. And I stood here, I stood the other side, I stood in the garden, I stood on the steps, and, you know, kept re recording this thing. I changed my outfit about 10 times, and it was only three minutes long or something stupid. Anyway, it's not stupid, it's something very short. And finally, I got something I was reasonably happy with, and I felt physically sick when I posted it. And now I really don't care. I just put it out there. But it's, it's a new skill, you know, and I work with really clever people, as I say, lawyers who carried on their training where I didn't, or accountants, owners of big businesses who are very, very clever. But for them, this is new. This is a whole new skill and it's helping them with that initial process. And I love watching them fly when they get that confidence and they get into the rhythm and they actually start doing it. It just makes my heart sing when I see that happen.
Charli Hunt: Yeah. It's, it's so lovely. And especially when someone starts showing that more personal side of themselves on LinkedIn. You see people who have posted for a year, like really serious things, just about what they do. And then suddenly they'll do a couple of personal ones and they'll see how well they do and how much people want to get to know them.
And it's just so lovely to see.
Sarah Clay: Yeah, it really is. Yeah, it is.
Charli Hunt: Yeah. And one of the problems I had with LinkedIn when I first started using it about four years ago was you see people who are in pods or who've been doing it for 10 years or whatever. And you compare yourself to those people. How do you encourage people to focus on the right metrics and what are the right metrics?
Sarah Clay: Oh, good, good one. Good one. I always encourage people to have a competitive attitude, but they're only competing with themselves. Nobody else because we're all playing a different game here. And we're playing it in a very different way and we've joined at different times. And we're all there for different reasons as well. So somebody may be there because they want a big audience for whatever reason, maybe they're offering products, low cost products to lots of people, or maybe they've got you know, they only need two or three people to sell to. So the reasons why we're there are important.
And I always try to find those out first in order to work out the strategy going forward. So by identifying what the purpose is helps look at which metrics are important and what we're drilling into here. So follower numbers, yeah, it's great. It looks great. You know, I've got 17, 000 something followers. I mean, it looks pretty cool. Obviously there are people who have got a lot more than me. But are they the right followers? Are they the people who really want to look at your content, read your content? Are they potential clients? Are they potential collaborators? Are they people who can help you in any other way? You know, get you as a guest on a podcast or help refer you to somebody else because it's not all just about the end client. So follower numbers. Yes, they're important, but more important is the quality of those followers. The most important metric, and I think this is clear, whatever, whoever you are, is profile viewers. A profile viewer has taken an active decision to come and look at your profile, for whatever reason, however they've got there. Maybe you've posted something, and they think this is an interesting post. I want to know more about this person. Maybe somebody said, Oh, you should check so and so out on LinkedIn. Maybe you've commented on somebody else's post and they've liked your comment and they've clicked through to your profile.
So they've taken action. They really want to know who you are. And for me, whatever your KPIs are, that's the most important. I'm a very strong believer in looking at your metrics every day. Quick look. So I have, I don't know if you've seen this bonkers film I made a couple of years ago, on the wall behind me, the cupboard behind me here in my office, I have a piece of paper, an A4 piece of paper, which is my chart. every day I put the kettle on when I come to the office and I write down the four or five main metrics because I do a newsletter as well. And I watch them as they go up or down and up and down. And if I see them all going down a bit like that over a couple of two or three days, I think I need to take action here.
I need to do something. Or if I see suddenly there's a spike going up, I'll just look at the post that I've written. Look at what I've been doing over the previous few days and think, Okay, well, that works. I need to do more of that. And I think that level of simplicity is important for people because yes they can take a deep dive into their metrics and use different apps and what have you. But really having a simple view of it is what's going to keep driving you forward.
Charli Hunt: Yeah, I really like that and let's say you've been posting on linkedin for a while. You've not made any sales. How do you turn that around so you're making sales from LinkedIn rather than just worrying about engagement
Sarah Clay: Great. Yes. Great question. So we talk a lot about brand awareness on LinkedIn, which is the initial KPI that you'll be measuring because it's very unlikely you'll get sales straight away. LinkedIn is a long game. It is about the brand awareness piece rather than the hard sales. However once you're there on LinkedIn and you're outreaching, which I'll talk to you about in a second, and you're connecting with the right people, then people will get to see who you are and hopefully they will come to you and say, Oh, actually, I'd quite like to buy your services. And this is how I use LinkedIn. And this is how a lot of people I know use LinkedIn. So it's getting the people to come to you. And what happens when somebody makes an inquiry by the services page, by the company page, by the personal profile, they're already warm. So you don't actually have to sell to them. There's no selling involved as such. They want to know what you do. And it's just a chemistry call and finding out, can we work together? How much does it cost? Which program, et cetera, et cetera.
And for me, that's what I love about LinkedIn because that does happen. It definitely happens. If that doesn't start to happen at all and you're not getting any inquiries, then it's about looking at your content, looking at the comments that you're putting on other people's posts, looking at your followers.
Are you hanging out in the right room at the party? Another analogy which I do use a lot. Because you can hang out on LinkedIn with your friends, with the people that you know. And that's great, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with doing that. But there comes a time when you've got to go into the other room at the party and say hello to some new people and start introducing yourself to new people.
And that's where a lot of people fail. Because they think, oh, well, I'm posting all this great content, and I'm commenting on five posts a day and still nobody's coming and then looking at whose posts they're commenting on and it's the same and they're all hanging out in the same groups, the same circles, you've got to get out there and start talking to new people.
So using that search bar at the top of LinkedIn, scrolling through your home feed for longer to find different posts using the bell icon and going to your notifications and just using different strategies rather than just continuing to walk down that same path or hang out in that same room, you should get off that path, go somewhere else, and then you hopefully will start to get those inquiries coming in.
Brilliant. And I think it's one thing I've learned from LinkedIn is I think a lot of people join it thinking that they want to be Stephen Bartlett and create a following, right? But actually, the value from LinkedIn comes from creating a community, not a following. And you've been amazing at creating a community.
Are there any tips you'd give for people who are looking to build that community?
Interesting you say that because I haven't really had a strategy as such to do that. All I've done is be me. And that's all I've done. I love talking to people. I love meeting new people. And I talk about my LinkedIn activity, if you like, I'm kind of wandering around LinkedIn and bumping into people and saying hi, in a slightly more targeted approach than that, but that's kind of what I do.
And. For me, if somebody is gracious and kind enough to comment on my post, I will reply and it's not about the algorithm, which obviously that is going to help the algorithm, but that's not why I do it. It's because that's the polite thing to do. And with regards to commenting on other people's posts, I know this is a podcast.
So this, this is a visual joke, I'm afraid, but you wouldn't. If you're in a room with somebody and you're chatting, you're in a circle as a networking event, and somebody said something, you wouldn't just Stick your thumb up, would you? You'd say, That's interesting. I like what you said there. And you may start a conversation.
And that's what we're doing on LinkedIn. We're just having conversations with people. And I have seen conversations convert into huge, huge business opportunities. Incredible business opportunities for people. And I think And that's what, that's what we do in real life. And I always say, you wouldn't walk into a networking meeting and say, you know, Hi, buy my stuff.
It's, Hi, how are you? What's your name? Who are you? Oh, I do this. Oh, how was your journey here? Um, have you got kids? Are you married? All of those sort of soft conversations, chats that people have. It's not about just going, buy, buy, buy my stuff. And that's kind of how it's happened.
But having your community is important, definitely. Yeah, I don't know. I think it's just chatting to people. I totally agree on the replying to comments. But I did a post, uh, last week, I think, on how I really find it annoying when people never reply to anyone's comments on their post. And I got about 400 comments on the post.
So then I, and because it was about replying to comments, I had to reply to every single one. It's so hard to keep up with. It really is. Can you leave us with a one top tip for LinkedIn? Oh, yeah. Don't be frightened. Don't, don't be. Okay. It's kind of to treat it like a real life situation. So if you see a post and you think it's an interesting post that somebody's written, whether you know the person or not, just imagine yourself standing there in a networking situation.
And you're standing there in a circle with eight people. And what is written in that post is somebody in that circle saying whatever's written there. And just think to yourself, what would I say in this situation? See it as a real life situation.
Don't be frightened. Don't be frightened of LinkedIn. It really isn't a scary place at all. And icky things occasionally happen, You can deal with that, definitely, because the icky things happen in real life as well. People say unkind things in real life, of course they do.
And if you can handle that in real life, you can handle it on LinkedIn. And on LinkedIn, you have a delete button and you have a block button. Brilliant. Sarah, thank you so much for being on B2B My Guest. Where can people find you and if they love this episode, how can they join your community or book LinkedIn training with you?
Ah, well, find me on LinkedIn. That's the best place. I do have YouTube as well. Um, send me a DM on LinkedIn and I always say to people the best place to start if you're thinking about working with anybody is to have a meeting, whether it's online or in person. And I always encourage people to do that.
So send me a DM and let's chat. Perfect.
Charli Hunt: Sarah, thank you so much for being on B2B My Guest. It was great to chat to you.
