Authenticity in Action - Elevating B2B Marketing on LinkedIn with Gina Balarin

Michelle J Raymond: [00:00:00] Welcome everybody to the LinkedIn for B2B Growth Show. I'm your host, Michelle J Raymond, and I am joined by another Aussie this week, Gina Balarin, welcome to the show.

Gina Balarin: It's my pleasure to be here, Michelle. I am so excited already. That intro just got me raring to go.

Michelle J Raymond: I know this is the thing I want people to get in the right frame of mind. And I'm going to premise the show today being on authenticity. It sounds like it's a word that's sprouted every second post that I see on LinkedIn.

And I have to confess that it presses my buttons and I'd noticed a couple of posts of yours we're kind of along the same lines. And so I wanted to get you on to, talk about authenticity in a way that's not just a buzzword, because I think it's overused.

Do you have a similar view just up front? What side of the fence are you sitting on, on that one?

Gina Balarin: It's interesting that you say it's overused because I think that it's not used enough in my opinion. And it's not that we're not using it enough. It's that I think people are either [00:01:00] not practicing what they preach or they use it as a thing that doesn't have meaning.

 And so as we talk about authenticity Today, we're going to have different opinions, which is what I love and respect about a lot of what you talk about is we see the world from different views, but I think fundamentally we're coming back to the same point.

Gina Balarin: And that point is if you are really authentic, if you do what you do. If someone can cut you down the middle and what falls out is more of you, how much do you need to talk about authenticity?

Why do you have to preach about it? And I suppose that's where we're both coming from. I see you nodding there. It sounds like it's a commonality we share.

Michelle J Raymond: I think that's it. It's a bit of a head scratcher for me, because for me, it's like not something you do. You just are. And so maybe it takes some practice and we will probably bounce off each other during this one.

And I think it might be a bit of fun for our listeners that, we don't agree. This is what I love about LinkedIn. This is what I love about having expert guests that [00:02:00] come on and challenge me and make me think about things different. That's the whole point of this podcast. So I can't wait to dive into this.

Marketing's an ever evolving landscape. You have been in this space for much longer than me. For me around LinkedIn, and in my business, it's only about coming into my fourth year now, but how do you define authenticity and its role in business?

Gina Balarin: Marketing has been part of my background for the last 20 years or so.

And what I can say is where authenticity works and lives in business now is vastly different to the role that authenticity played or rather didn't play when I started marketing 20 years ago.

Back in the day, marketing was about bamboozling people with elusive and exclusive words and use that big terminology deliberately.

Because effectively marketing was designed to entice people to think, Oh, I'm not smart enough. I need to know more. And therefore they go talk to a salesperson who can deliberately de obfuscate [00:03:00] the complex and ridiculous language that marketers were using at the time.

I did a TEDx talk a few years ago called Marketing in the Era of Authenticity. Now, the topic was actually not that it was Confessions of a Liar Marketing in the Era of Authenticity. And so when we talk about what's happening with marketing now, that TEDx talk was, Oh, I don't know, a good few years ago, but I could already sense the shift.

And that's the difference for me between unauthentic and authentic marketing. Authentic marketing is about helping people discover what it is that they really want. That makes them come alive, that helps them solve a problem in a way that is a no brainer for both parties.

Unauthentic marketing is about helping people buy more shit that they don't need. And that is the big problem. That's the crux of the message is if we are living finally in an era of authenticity now, seven years after I raised that subject initially, then I think [00:04:00] that should be wonderfully celebrated.

And there's two things to back up this argument. Number one, Authentic was actually the Merriam Webster dictionary word of the year in 2023. So yeah, maybe it was overused. They wouldn't have picked it as a word of the year if it weren't overused.

So I can understand your perspective on that. But the second element of that is authenticity in marketing is this beautiful circle, because if you make a promise to a customer and you say, I'm going to give you X and I'm going to solve problem Y and then somewhere during the customer journey, you actually break that promise.

You don't get a happy customer. Therefore, marketing is fundamentally unauthentic, but when you create a beautiful and serendipitous circle of marketing, what happens is you set the expectation, you meet the expectation, and then you can go back to the customer and say, Hey, did you like what we were trying to sell to you?

And they go, yes, we did. And effectively that, that creates a beautiful cycle. And that is a cycle of trust. And that is a cycle of authenticity. And that is when marketing is done right.

Michelle J Raymond: I love it. I looked up the [00:05:00] definition just before this to see if I could get any more insight into what it meant. And there wasn't really that much more to go for.

It just said genuine or real similar words. Wasn't too much more besides that. And I think for me, it's when you tell people you must be authentic and maybe it is because they're not being it themselves. Starting to hear when I, scroll the feed and listen to, the conversations that are taking place on LinkedIn, there's a lot of people are starting to call out stuff.

And maybe this is some of the social media trends where I think marketing got really clever, especially in the B2C space. And I was talking to someone the other day and I loved it. I said, Oh, why did you move into B2B? And he said I got sick of emotionally manipulating people over in B2C.

And so I wanted to come to B2B and I had to laugh. Is that kind of what's going on now? Is that people are looking for something different? Is that where the world of social is moving to?

Gina Balarin: If we talk about what's happening with authenticity [00:06:00] and marketing and with the role that social plays, the first place we have to look at is TikTok. Now, despite America's attempt to say, get out of here. Cause you're not owned by the Americans. It has taken the world by storm and it will continue to do so.

What's happening on LinkedIn is a different story because LinkedIn's algorithms make it very hard for people to have an authentic relationship with their audience. It's actually quite bizarre. I don't understand what's going on with their world. LinkedIn used to be an incredibly authentic platform.

But the difference for me is That when people are themselves and they are comfortable being themselves, authenticity shines through. And I think maybe that is where we have a similar, but different or opposing view on this.

It's one thing to talk about authenticity and not be authentic. It's another thing to show yourself in all your imperfections and go, this is me. This is who I am. But it's also a question of [00:07:00] showing how much of yourself do you show? And there is a risk that on social media, you either overshow or undershow yourself.

Why is authenticity more crucial now than ever? Because there is, there's just so much fakeness in the world. And I think that the reason that Authentic was the word of the year, was because we had so much fakeness coming through from AI.

Artificial intelligence is creating a whole entire world that is indistinguishable from truth to a large number of people, but it's also because there are icons in the pop world in TikTok, as I talked about where people are a hundred percent themselves, no makeup, no lighting, no fancy hair, no nothing. You just see the real them.

And I think social media has given us the opportunity to be the best and the worst of ourselves. And it means that if we are truly authentic we got to do what Taylor Swift tells us to do, which is say, it's me.

Hi, I'm the problem. It's me. And I think Taylor Swift had a lot to do with Authentic being the word of the [00:08:00] year last year.

Michelle J Raymond: I love that you managed to get that in. I said, I would give you bonus points if you got that quote into this podcast episode. So that is a gold star to you.

And I think the rise of AI what I see is people wanting to embrace it. And then some people, it's like everything in life, people use it for good and evil. And to use your example, sometimes where people come across as, the layers are stripped back, as you said, maybe it's, there's no makeup.

Maybe it looks really casual. You do a recording in the car. Like I tried that on one of my posts yesterday, but for some of these people, I guess we're understanding the magic behind some of their reach and engagement is things like engagement pods.

Now they've been around forever and a day and we know that's where people pay for other people to like and comment on their posts or they buy followers like that's been rife.

But I think now what's happened is people are starting to go, hang on a minute, you say this, but you do this. And that's where the disconnect is. And I think for [00:09:00] me maybe it's because I come originally from a family policeman. I'm pretty black and white with rules.

And so I'm like, no, you're breaking the rules. The user agreement says this. So I understand that I'm guided by some of these, principles, even though I think. Is that a part of who I am?

But the reason that it, probably infuriates me so much is not because of that. In all honesty, it is because when people come onto the platform and especially LinkedIn, and it's hard to get reach, and these are genuine people giving it a go, and they're subject matter experts that have some really cool stuff to say, and they can't get seen or heard.

Because the noise that's coming from automated posts from AI, engagement pods, influencers, buying followers and likes and comments, all that kind of stuff drowns them out. And I think that's why this is pressing my button so much this early in the year, we're only a few weeks in but I want people to have a fair go on LinkedIn and maybe that's an Australian thing.

We [00:10:00] love to give people a fair go, but this is why for me, trying to explain to people, you can say all you like, it's not about the vanity metrics of lots of likes and lots of comments, but that's all well and good when I'm getting likes and comments.

The new person on the platform that's not is going, I can't get anyone to listen to me, is this mic even on? And this is the thing that I want to have this conversation just so we start to see there is space for everybody on LinkedIn. We might have a billion people on the platform. There's 8 billion people on the face of the planet, but there's only one you. And I think that's what I want people to embrace is that there is only one of them.

Gina, one of the, mix ups that often happens when I have conversations around authenticity with people is that there becomes a little bit of confusion around being authentic and sharing stuff that maybe they deem as a bit more personal content. Can you help us make the distinction [00:11:00] between being authentic and just sharing personal stuff?

Gina Balarin: I'm actually going to go into feminism to be able to help us understand the difference between the two. There was a phrase originally, back in the day, and then again, revised in the 1960s, that the personal is political.

And I think that now, the personal is professional. If you are working for an organization, they expect you to behave and dress a certain way. Once upon a time, lawyers only wore suits, and even salespeople only wore suits to the office. You couldn't be a saleswoman without high heels that were so high you could barely walk in them.

But that time has changed. It's shifted. And to be honest, COVID shifted things significantly because everyone can work from home in their socks and slippers and in Australia, Ugg boots, right? No one needs to know that you've got your uggs on underneath your desk.

But the reason this has something to do with feminism is because when the personal becomes part of an initiative that you're [00:12:00] trying to achieve, something that you're working towards, something meaningful. Then you cannot differentiate the human from the way that the human portrays themselves.

Now, don't get me wrong. Of course, people are going to make an effort in a professional context. I have put on a nice dress and some jewelry for us to have the conversation today. I don't go as far as putting on makeup, although it would be great if there was a filter that made me look like I was already made up, because we know that happens a lot.

But that doesn't mean that I am going to go out of my way deliberately to fake myself. And you could argue that makeup is faking it anyway, and I'm not in that professional camp. I'm not going to have that argument.

But what I will say is that when you are yourself and your values shine through. It becomes much easier to believe the messages that you're giving, but there's a boundary like everything, right? When Twitter first came out, people didn't join it because they said, I'm so sick of people showing photos of the food. I really don't care what you had for dinner last night.

Now there is a risk and it comes back every single year. Oh, LinkedIn is too much [00:13:00] like Facebook. No, it's not. LinkedIn is about people sharing messages that resonate. Some people find ways of hacking the system. Some people share nothing but selfies, because they know that the algorithm seems to prioritize selfies.

But when you think about it, it's not just the algorithm, it's a human need. We like to see people. We like to see faces. We resonate and connect emotionally with the emotions on other people's faces. So no wonder selfies work quite well. Because it's not actually just about what the bots are telling us.

It's about what the human reactions and emotional responses are to the stuff that we see in front of us. So to go back to your question, what's the difference between being personal and being authentic? It's a continuum. You can be a hundred percent authentic and talk about nothing, but work, if that's what drives you.

You can be a hundred percent authentic and talk about nothing but yourself. I don't think you'd really engage your audience that much, but we only have to look at the Kardashians to find out how [00:14:00] that worked out. But there is, in an ideal world, a sweet spot where who you are overlaps with the message that you're trying to share.

And that is the art I think of making the personal professional. It is about being able to say I have this business interest and here is how my business interest is relevant in my personal life. Or I've had this personal experience and here's how this personal experience resonates with the professional element of my life.

So if there's a message I could leave for any of the audience members here, who want to do better on LinkedIn, it is this weave those stories together. Talk about what makes you human. Talk about what you think, what you feel, how you behave, what you've learned. But always make sure that it has some relevance to your audience. And that relevance should be connected somehow to the nature of your business. Then the personal and the professional are in synchronicity. They are aligned. They are authentic.

Michelle J Raymond: I love that you mentioned the continuum because I know [00:15:00] in all honesty that it is not black and white, you're authentic or not authentic.

And, confession time for me when I wind back the clock to when I first started my business. So I'd spent six or so years on LinkedIn being beforehands being Michelle, the person that was known worldwide as the person to go to for all things beauty. Ingredients that go into beauty products, chemicals industry, globally. And I owned that space.

And then I, fast forward, I decided I'm going to be a business owner. And I start showing up on LinkedIn as Michelle, the LinkedIn trainer that was going to go and teach people in that industry. Now, as Michelle, the LinkedIn trainer, going back to that beginning phase and starting to work out who is Michelle, the LinkedIn trainer?

I found that the first year, what I did a lot of the time is copy a lot of the ways that other LinkedIn trainers did things. Maybe not necessarily, consciously, but there was a definite holding pieces back of me. And I got to the end of that [00:16:00] first year and I was exhausted because I was like, you know what, if this is what I signed up for to be this, I feel like I'm choking.

And it was me that was smothering me. No one else is involved in this. Just me and my own head. And I went into the next year and I went, I'm going to be me. And the thing that was missing is that I actually, I care about people. I genuinely want other people to grow their businesses. And I didn't really talk about that in the first year.

I held that back because I didn't think you could be a LinkedIn trainer and also be someone that cared about people and genuinely wanted them to grow their business. Now I can laugh at that now, and I can see you nodding your head going, Oh, Michelle, but I know that there's probably other listeners out there that have their version of this, where maybe you're a little bit quirky.

Maybe you're not showing people that you're funny. Maybe there's like some other piece of you that we hold back. And I know that LinkedIn people have a lot of fears around it because you don't want to have it impact your work by your colleagues, [00:17:00] your boss, your competitors. There's all different kinds of factors that come into this.

So I, I appreciate where people go through, but even with my own journey. Now, it's I don't care. This is who I am. I care about you. And I'm not afraid to tell you, but I've had to grow into that. That's not definitely something that was a switch that just got flicked on and it was just game on. Here we go. And I love how it's happened.

But what strategies do you recommend to leaders in businesses that want to foster an environment where people who might be employees can actually share authentic content and have that support of leaders? How can they really make this happen?

Gina Balarin: The first thing to do is get out of your own way, if you care. And I would say the vast majority of people who do a job that they actually love, do care. Then you owe it to yourself. You owe it to your business. You owe it to your employees to let people see that you care.

And the big difference here is the word that four [00:18:00] letter word Fear. We have expectations, huge expectations piled on us by society, by our parents, by our peers, by our colleagues, by our own perceptions of what good is and what proper and correct is. Authenticity is sometimes scary for people because it means that they have to show the world who they truly are. And that means being incredibly vulnerable. And that is risky. If you think that who you are is not good enough. And it's particularly risky in a business context when you think that you have to be something in order to tick the boxes.

You might have to be the perfect employee, or you might have to toe the line. The unfortunate thing is that there are certain rules and boundaries and guidelines that are non negotiable that you have to toe in order to be a professional.

Swearing is one of those boundaries that we like to play with a little bit in Australia, right? But in some professional context, dropping an F bomb is a fireable offense. In other contexts, being yourself and [00:19:00] being quirky is encouraged.

The message I would leave here for leaders is if you are too afraid to be authentic and show that in front of your employees and your shareholders, how could you ever expect your employees to be brave enough to show up as themselves?

And that doesn't just mean showing up as yourself on social media. It means showing up as yourself in your business every single day. I think the best organizations have a culture of psychological safety, and that safety entitles people to be more of who they are. It entitles them to show their vulnerabilities.

I'll share a story, if I may? I worked in a FinTech organization as a consultant a few years ago and it was a bunch of some of the smartest and most bright and dedicated, diligent people I have ever met in my entire life. And for the first few weeks that I was there, we were all absolutely terrified. All of us.

We were worried we weren't good enough. We were worried we [00:20:00] weren't doing the job well enough. We were worried that other people were judging us. We were worried that blah, blah, blah, fill in the gaps. And a couple of weeks in we had a team session and I said look, can we start this by going around the room and saying, what are we afraid of?

And what are we worried about? And it completely transformed the culture of the organization. And what actually ended up happening is that our team not only bonded, but we realized that some of the areas we had weaknesses in, other people in the organization or in our team had strength that they wanted to share.

And so confession time for me, I was really bad at planning and spreadsheets scared the living heck out of me. But there was a girl right next to me who said I'm really bad at getting my message across, but I'm excellent planning and I love spreadsheets. Can we do a skill swap? If we hadn't been vulnerable about that, she would continue to communicate poorly and I would continue to abjure spreadsheets and none of us would have gotten any better.

[00:21:00] Vulnerability and authenticity are intimately intertwined. You can't be authentic without being brave enough to accept that not everyone in the world is going to like you. It's more important to be respected, than to be liked.

Michelle J Raymond: Wow. Boom. Mic drop right there. I think there's so much in that. I'm not even going to talk over that because I just want to, our listeners to take a moment and just think about that because the two do go hand in hand.

It's easy for me to sit here and go. Go and be authentic. Why aren't you being authentic? When I know full well that most people that reach out, that I work with them, when we're starting LinkedIn training or rewriting their profiles, they are petrified of LinkedIn. They might be active on Instagram.

Like I recently met someone. Absolutely active and confident and taking action, building communities over on Instagram. Comes to LinkedIn is paralyzed. And that is not uncommon. That is more common than not when I'm talking to people. So [00:22:00] I love that you've put those two there, but I think for those that do take that leap of faith and back themselves, there is a real opportunity.

And I love that you shared that leaders have to lead from the front. It is that simple. It is not a case of do as I say, not as I do. And that comes across whether you're posting thought leadership content. And I have this conversation with so many CEOs and business leaders. You can't just expect your team to do everything and sit back and you don't take those actions.

We're not in that era anymore. It's one in all in and leading by example is so important. But when it comes to business, I know there's often a bit of a trade going on or trying to find the right balancing act between how do you balance authenticity with maintaining a professional brand image on social media.

Now I know that there are companies out there that want to approve every personal post. I know that there are companies that are like, you cannot post [00:23:00] your own stuff. There are other ones where they're saying, just post our company stuff. You can't post your own thoughts. And I can see it from both sides, but I'd love to know what you think about this scenario and how we can, most importantly, find that right balance.

Gina Balarin: Let's go back to the concept of leaders and how they're showing up professionally and particularly on platforms like LinkedIn to answer that question.

There's a difference between leadership and thought leadership. But if you are a leader who has thoughts, you have the potential to be a thought leader. That requires bravery too. If you want to be able to stand out in a sea of sameness, you need to be prepared to stand up. And that means that you need to be prepared to allow the freedom, Within the right context, for your employees to do the same. Now I've been involved in social selling through a marketing perspective for many years.

Good old Jill Rowley, who was known as the LO queen many years ago. She created the phrase ABC Always Be Connecting. And that was the [00:24:00] foundation of really selling to people by giving them helpful, valuable advice.

A few years ago, I worked in an organization where we encouraged every single member of our team to write blog posts and post them.

And we did a trial where we tested and let people work through it. And it worked extraordinarily well, because what we did is we gave people a framework, we gave them advice and guidance, we made it competitive, so there was an element of gamification. And more importantly, we were able to give them a safe space to talk about stuff, but provide guardrails so that if they went completely off tangent, we were able to say to them, listen, sorry mate, love that post. Not really appropriate. We're not going to publish it.

It did put a lot of onus and responsibility on the marketing team, because it meant that we got involved in all the articles and it also meant that we approved them before they went live. But there is a different level between approving and encouraging and [00:25:00] micromanaging. This goes for social media and it goes for so much more in a business context.

Daniel Pink wrote a book called To Sell is Human. And in it he talked about three key elements, Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. I am a huge believer in the fact that employees work better when they have all of these elements.

Autonomy, can they work independently? Mastery, can they get better at what they're really passionate about doing? Become a master of it. And Purpose, do they know why the heck they're doing this stuff in the first place?

If you think about your social media context, are you able to give your employees the ability to have autonomy, mastery, and purpose?

If you are, and you provide guardrails that say, this is okay, this is not okay. And it can be as simple as if your mother would be shocked by it and you wouldn't want your grandmother to see it, don't publish it. It's not rocket science, but there is an element where people should be free to flex their muscles. And there are contexts in which they can't.

[00:26:00] If you work in a highly regulated industry, the chances are that someone's going to need to see that and approve it before it goes out into the world. But maybe this is just because I'm a bit of a maverick. I would rather err on the side of authenticity and err on the side of giving people the benefit of the doubt.

At the end of the day, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, which means if you give employees a reason to talk about things and you give them stuff to be excited about, and you tell them what they can do and how they can do it, you can be amazed and astounded at the extraordinary things they come up with.

I believe that the innovativeness of really good employees should never be hamstrung by unnecessary rules. Give people guidelines and then give them the flexibility to be amazing. Let them show you how cool they can really be. That makes all the difference in the world.

And I'll just add here, if you are a leader and you're worried about not being able to show up to that [00:27:00] high level, that caliber that you expect, get help.

You can ask people who can support you. You can get people to ghostwrite articles for you in your own voice. And some of them, the really good ones can actually delve right into your brain and discover things that you know, but you didn't know you knew. You can be a thought leader and not even realize you are a thought leader.

Get help to speak the way that you want to speak. Get help to be able to articulate that deep passion that is within you, because it's not just in some of us, to paraphrase Marianne Williamson, it's in all of us. And as we give our, as we let our own light shine, we automatically give other people permission to do the same.

Michelle J Raymond: That is brilliant. And if you're looking for an amazing writer that can help you with these kinds of things. I don't know. They happen to be a guest on this podcast episode of which the details will be in the show notes. So you can reach out and get help because there is a definite value in working with someone that is an expert in this field. And No that does not mean going to ChatGPT and thinking that you'll get the same result.[00:28:00]

I just have to throw that one in there, slight little jab, because there are people calling themselves ghostwriters at the moment and yeah, far from it. But I won't open up that can of worms cause we'll talk for at least another half a day around that.

But every show that I have Gina, I like to wrap things up with one last actionable tip for the audience.

Now, when it comes to being authentic, let's talk about, on socials or in marketing. What would you like to leave our listeners with today?

Gina Balarin: Trust your gut. Err on the side of bravery. And if in doubt, get someone you trust at work to give you a thumbs up. But if they give you a thumbs down, go up the chain and ask again.

Michelle J Raymond: That reminds me of a farewell card that I was given when I was about, I'm going to call it 23. So I'm 47 now. So a very long time ago and on my farewell card, the message from my boss at the time says, Michelle, you're going to come up against barriers in life, whatever you do, keep on pushing through them.

And I was [00:29:00] like, yes. It's probably been a really great piece of advice for me. And that's not just breaking rules for the sake of it, but that is really just pushing those boundaries for me to grow and for me to really believe in the things that I do. So Gina, we have covered so much cool stuff today.

I really appreciate you jumping into this conversation. I love that you and I don't necessarily see things the same way, but you have certainly given me some things to think about that I'll go away and think, yeah maybe that's something that I could throw in and start to think about things.

But I think the thing that stuck with me in this conversation is definitely about the continuum. And I'd like our listeners that might be on, the very beginning of this journey for some of you, it will just be putting yourself out there. For some of you, the thought of pressing the like button is something that you think is really overwhelming and a huge jump. Whatever that thing is that scares you to take action, to start being the real you on LinkedIn, if you [00:30:00] need any help, Gina and I are here to help and support and cheer you on.

That is why I do what I do. That is why I love having this podcast so we can encourage people to, yeah, take that leap of faith and back themselves.

So Gina, thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been amazing. We finally got to talk and let's not leave it too long to do it again.

Gina Balarin: I love it.

I'll leave your listeners with one thought. Courage, like a muscle is strengthened by use.

Michelle J Raymond: Love it. We shall leave it there.

Cheers, everyone.