From Buzzwords to Clarity: Create Powerful Educational Content on LinkedIn with Kelsey Kloss

TRANSCRIPT

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

Kelsey Kloss: Hi, Michelle. Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here and chat with you.

Michelle J Raymond: Now I wanted you on the show because I wanted to pick your brain because you have a completely different background to what I do.

So you come from a journalism background and when we were first thinking about the episode, when I was going through doing my research, I was thinking, okay, we're going to talk about educational content. And then I thought maybe the listeners will think, Oh, it's a little bit boring. Maybe. snooze fest, but we're going to teach them some tips on why it doesn't need to be that way, right?

So for anyone that's out there, that's thinking educational content, maybe it's not for me, what would you say to them straight up so we can make sure that they listen to all your great tips?

Kelsey Kloss: It's just such a great way to build brand loyalty and really create a community around your brand, because if you can educate someone and be that thought leader and be the expert in your industry, [00:01:00] they're going to turn to you first when they're ready to make a purchasing decision. They're going to follow along with you and stay in touch with you because you have that valuable content.

And, across clients and across industries, we always see that by leading with educational content, that's what really moves the needle and builds those long term relationships. So there's so many reasons to take the time to create the educational content.

And, as a business owner or marketer, you learn a lot too by creating that content, seeing what your audience has questions about, what they respond to and it's just a great way to learn more about your company and your industry too.

Michelle J Raymond: I couldn't agree more and I've found over time what I've changed in my content is possibly the length of content that I do. So I don't want to dive into that too much right now, but I found once upon a time, it was always short and sharp and just get it done.

And now it's more, how can I expand on my thoughts? How can I share more with people? How can I, put across my knowledge in a way that [00:02:00] helps them?

Michelle J Raymond: What do you think makes educational content on LinkedIn actually effective? So not just putting it out there to make ourselves feel good, I'm all about how do we use content to grow your business?

What do you think makes it effective from your side of things?

Kelsey Kloss: So when thinking about this, I think about what in journalism we call the service. And a lot of times if you were writing an article or maybe a column for a magazine, your editor might come back and say, Hey, this is great, but can we add a piece of service to, to this, to, to benefit the reader?

And the purpose of that is to give them something of value. When you give someone something of value, they want to share it with their friends. So you get those shares that they want to save it and come back to it. So we hear a lot about how to do that. Less clear is how to actually create that serviceable content.

There's a few different things you can do. One is first of all, being realistic and somewhat simple with the tips that you give. I think that it can be tempting to be vague and to give these grand suggestions like, if you want [00:03:00] to target a different audience than do a big rebranding, but that's not something someone's going to go and do that day. That takes a lot of time.

Instead you can give one tip maybe that they can do that day. Also making sure that the advice is low cost or free. I typically say if something takes more than $20 for someone to do or more than, let's say, 20 minutes, 30 minutes to complete, it's not super serviceable advice because it needs to be within reach for your audience, and it needs to be something that they can really walk away with and think, okay, this is something that I can do now.

I don't have to wait until I save up the budget to do it 2 years from now, at least with most of the advice that you give. Making your advice highly specific. Making sure that the recommendations are vetted, whether that's you as the thought leader in your company or maybe an outside industry expert who can back up the tips and recommendations that you're giving and then making the content original to your company.

Being in your industry, you see so much. You come across challenges and overcome obstacles [00:04:00] and you learn a great deal from that. You can draw your own examples and use that for really effective LinkedIn content.

Michelle J Raymond: Oh, in the world of AI, I'm just sitting here going yes Kelsey, yes. Preach because there's two ways that this plays out. The one that I'm really anti AI is not because I'm anti AI in general, because I love it. I think the new technology is fascinating.

When I don't love it is when people don't back themselves, their confidence, their knowledge and share that with the world. That they hold it back because they don't think they're good enough and they're not sure because maybe someone else has said it all before when really they're brilliant. And it's just a matter of putting these small pieces out into the LinkedIn universe that it will really help other people.

And I think what you said there about making sure that you've done your research. If you're going to quote somebody else, and I think that's been one of the ChatGPT pushbacks is, where's this information coming from? Has it cited the [00:05:00] source? You know, I'm sure you as a journalist are sitting there rocking in the corner, sometimes going, you can't say that.

Kelsey Kloss: Absolutely. And you know, there's large publications. Some of them also even have AI filters to ensure that the content that they're receiving from experts isn't written by AI because they value your specific expertise like you mentioned. And a lot of times it is just a matter of being confident and secure in your own expertise.

Michelle J Raymond: It's so true. I had one of my clients who he loves new toys, new technology, doesn't matter what it is. And he came to me and he's like, I've got this new AI writer and he has 30 years experience in the cleaning industry. And he's amazing at commercial cleaning. No one knows more about the topic.

And he tested a post and I wrote back straight to him and said, what are you doing? Stop it. This isn't you. You've actually taken how I see you as this expert in your field and watered it down. And now you've just become a robot clone of what everybody else says, and that's not what makes you amazing. [00:06:00]

And so we threw the tool out the window, went back to what he's been doing, and it's just made such a difference because his tone of voice is quite, I'm going to call it gruff. Maybe that's a harsh word, but he calls it out. What he sees, he calls it out. He's no nonsense kind of person. And that was totally missing from what was there.

So I love what you shared about all those tips to make content effective. And I think this raises a really cool point about authenticity. I think that's the thing that really makes content strong,

Michelle J Raymond: but how can we build authenticity into content?

Kelsey Kloss: Absolutely. So, you know, Drawing again from your own experiences. Using your own expertise that you've developed over the years and also being confident that sometimes if your expertise is different from what others in your industry say, but you truly believe in it, then stick with it and don't feel the need to change or to write something different on LinkedIn just because that's what everyone else is writing.

And, getting really clear on your brand identity too. [00:07:00] You can't be authentic if you don't know who you are as a brand. So if you need help getting to the bottom of that, it can be helpful to ask yourself, why do I and my team do what we do, aside from the financial benefits, which is part of it.

But beyond that why do you do the work that you do? For one of our clients, it's shaping community through the power of bringing people together over food. For another client, it's contributing to the overall health of the population through, through wellness practices. So getting clear on that will really drive your content.

And if you can bring that authenticity to every post that you put out there and every educational tip that you give to your audience, that's really going to come through and increase that trust your audience has in you, because they'll know why you're giving the tips that you do. They're going to know it's coming from you and not from AI or not repurposed from a quick Google search.

It's from your personal experiences and that trust and resulting loyalty is really what's going to help [00:08:00] your company grow in the longterm.

Michelle J Raymond: One of the things that drives me bananas about Google searches is that if I have a specific question and I type that into Google and I go to the first website it brings up.

I find a blog that allegedly addresses it and I think, okay, that's one perspective. So I go to another website because I like to get, my research done and have multiple perspectives, but each of them basically are just carbon copies with a few words changed so that they're not officially plagiarised.

And I'm like, does nobody have their own perspective anymore. And it feels like all they did was went, Oh, our competitors websites got an article on this or our, SEO software told us that we need to write on this topic. And there's just nothing that makes it unique to that business. It's such a missed opportunity and I see it with content.

So I love the idea that you raised about, please people, if you don't agree with everything in your industry, it's okay to say so. Have a go, put it out there. I feel [00:09:00] like our content just becomes so beige and everyone's the same when it's completely the opposite of what we're trying to do, right?

We're trying to stand out. And so all we do is try and copy everyone else. It's counterintuitive. It just makes me laugh.

Kelsey Kloss: And with all of those identical ideas out there, to your point, if the words aren't copied, but the ideas are just think of how much you can stand out as a thought leader, if you deviate from that and you bring a new perspectives and soon people will be turning to you for the inspiration and leadership, so I think that is really important and can make such an impact.

Michelle J Raymond: There's so much opportunity out there for people to be what I call, their digital twin on LinkedIn. Now what's a digital twin? It's just my words for don't come onto LinkedIn and become a LinkedIn version of yourself. I want you to just be a digital twin is just whoever you are offline, just be that person on LinkedIn.

Because I find people get a bit caught up in, Oh, I've got to be professional. I've got to sound this, I've got to do this. And that authenticity just [00:10:00] fades away into the distance.

Kelsey Kloss: Yes, it's so true. And, I think that can go for any social channel too, even when threads was at the forefront of conversation. There are all these tips around, Oh, this is the place where you can be really casual and laid back and funny, which is great, but not if that's not your brand.

If your brand is not playful, if it's not super casual, then you shouldn't change that based on if you're on threads or another platform or on LinkedIn. Maintaining that authenticity across platforms as well.

Michelle J Raymond: I find as soon as people try and be whatever version of themselves, insert something that they're not, all of a sudden it becomes hard work to create the content. It's a chore to spend time on the platform and slowly, but surely it goes from all guns blazing like posting multiple times a week, really active to, Oh, just drop back a little bit. So I skip a week to maybe I'll just do one post to, and then all of a sudden that whole routine goes out the window, they disappear back into the [00:11:00] grandstands of LinkedIn, just like 99% of the platform.

And I think it's just because they hate trying to be something that they're not. It's really that simple. So one of the ways that I like to share my content is quite often I will just share a story of what is going on for me like really genuinely. Sometimes even I want to pretend that I've got it all sorted just because I teach other people how to use LinkedIn or social selling and I'm also a Company Pages expert.

So I did a post a few days ago that said I gave up on company pages and people are like, Oh my God, Michelle, you sure you're allowed to say that? And I was like, but it's true. Like it is literally what happened because, I was defeated after a certain number of years of helping to promote and things dropped off. And then they're like, are you allowed to say that? And I was saying, yeah, I'm allowed to say that because that's what happened.

And I just want to create a space for people around me to have that as well and say, maybe I'm not okay. Maybe I'm really happy. Maybe I'm confused. Like I don't care what the thing [00:12:00] is. It's just, it's okay to be authentic out there.

Any other tips on authenticity that you want to add before I ask you about something else that presses my buttons.

Kelsey Kloss: Yes, of course. I think just to that point too, having those really honest conversations is what leads to the best content from there as well.

Because you're starting to have these transparent conversations with your audience and they're going to bring up pain points or obstacles that they've faced. And then you'll realise, Oh, this is a whole other area that I could create content around. So transparency is just wonderful for generating ideas.

And that was true in the journalism and magazine world as well. Sometimes the most uncomfortable questions about your own health or things going on in your life can make for the best articles because people crave that authenticity.

Michelle J Raymond: It's funny because we all think we're the only ones going through it.

And the truth is there's so many other people doing the same thing. And with that particular post, they're like, Oh yeah, I've questioned my niche every single day and so we're all going through it. And I just want to normalise that, which is why I love having [00:13:00] these conversations.

But I did mention there's something that presses my buttons and I think it's something that you can really help people with and it's buzzwords, Kelsey. Like they kill me when it comes to educational content,

Michelle J Raymond: But what are five ways that companies can create content that's actually helpful? Now you wrote a brilliant article about this and I'll make sure I link it into the show notes so people can read it because I know you could probably talk about this all day and we don't have that long, but can you let people know[00:18:00] what is the secret to making content helpful for companies?

Kelsey Kloss: So I'll walk through those five points and I touched on just briefly before and then also give five categories that you can start with if you're feeling stuck on where to begin.

Again, making sure the tips are realistic and simple. Following the advice, low cost or free. The advice is highly specific. Your recommendations are vetted and then the content is original to your company. So those are the five starting points to make sure that your content is actually helpful. And that article will go into more detail with each of those.

But then also thinking about categories of where to start if you think, okay, Where do I begin in terms of actually creating this now that I know those parameters. A few good categories include pricing and costs. So let's say just to give an example of writing as a PR agency, how much does PR really cost? This works really well for industries where pricing is a little more ambiguous and not as clear cut as a price tag on an item.

Solutions to common dilemmas. What do you do if journalists aren't responding to you and your pitches? That feels very natural answering the [00:19:00] questions that your audience has and giving them solutions that fall within those parameters that I mentioned.

Versus and comparisons. In house PR versus hiring a PR agency versus doing it yourself. Giving examples from your industry of how things can compare to each other. Pros cons that can create very helpful content. Reviews, as a thought leader, what are your experiences with a certain software in the PR space? Maybe it's using something like muck rack. Here's our review of that.

And then finally, the best X, Y and Z. That content is often very popular and does very well. And of course, again, make sure that it's authentic. But in your opinion, what's the best software for doing what you do?

What is the best products for getting something done, that is helpful for your audience. If you start with those categories and draw your own genuine experiences to create the answers, you're going to find that you have a lot to work with.

Michelle J Raymond: The word genuine you just used, I think, is the distinguishing point.

I had Ashley Faus on the show a couple of weeks ago and we were talking about thought [00:20:00] leadership and could you use AI and ghostwriters to create thought leadership? And I often find with companies, they want to outsource to other people to write articles for them. And she was saying, look they're ghost writers, not ghost thinkers, and you have to have your own original and genuine thoughts first that someone else can turn into something.

And I think this is how Google ends up with so many blogs, turning up saying exactly the same thing is it's like, Oh, can you just write me an article on the five best, smartphones to buy in 2023.

And then all people do is jump onto Google and go, Oh these people said this, you know, And there's nothing about it that's genuine. I think that's why I'm always drawn to creators on LinkedIn and companies, it doesn't matter which one it is, that just call it out how it is. It's just, it's okay to be a little bit different.

Kelsey Kloss: Exactly. It's so true. And again, that's what grows your company, is having those genuine conversations and those authentic conversations and being unafraid to have a different opinion. And it's just [00:21:00] so much more exciting when something new is brought to the table. It gets really boring reading those same articles over and over.

Michelle J Raymond: You can see it when it's almost like a copy paste of somebody else's post. And these days there's people that are using the term curating content, which to me is just plagiarism. Like it is running rife from a lot of these automation tools have suggested viral posts, which are just posts, which have been copied from other people's content elsewhere.

Change one word, pretend it's your own. Not into it. Just putting that out there. That is something that presses my buttons. Like, why are you doing it? Why do you want to go viral? Why do you want to be known for that when it's not even your own work? And guess what? We all know it's not your own work.

Kelsey Kloss: Yeah, it's really, trusting the intelligence of your audience too, because you'll see those comments that say, Hey, this is someone else's. You just changed one thing. They know. And it's just not the best way to go about doing it.

Michelle J Raymond: Oh, I couldn't agree more on this, but there is an easy way that we can [00:22:00] immediately become, more genuine and authentic and relatable is the words that I would use based on our conversation. We've got the antidote to, this and it's storytelling.

Michelle J Raymond: How can we incorporate storytelling into educational content? Because in my mind, Kelsey, this is the thing, you can't fake that. You can't make up these stories. What are your thoughts on this?

Kelsey Kloss: Exactly. I know it's sometimes you don't often think about those two coming together, but when they do, it's incredibly effective. There's some really interesting stats around this, actually, that pairing a story with a product can increase its perceived value by up to 2,706%. That's a pretty big number. And that's according to a study by journalist Robert Walker and writer John Glenn. And what has been found, and this is according to research reported by the Harvard Business Review. The human brain is really wired to respond to storytelling, and those engaging narratives can actually trigger the release of oxytocin.

And in particular, we found that character [00:23:00] driven narratives seem to be really effective. So how do you do that, when you're giving educational content to your audience? You infuse your own characters into the story. So there's two ways you can do that.

One is by using the case study of how your educational content has applied to maybe your client, yourself. Research that you've pulled and credited properly. Just as an example of this, we recently created a report on how to align your PR, social media and brand partnership efforts to grow your company.

And in doing so, we Included a case study from a client in which this had incredible results. She saw a 210% I believe, increase from just one aligned campaign, increase in sales, and that was a fantastic story to tell using her as the character and the hero who had the great outcome at the end of the story.

If you don't have that, but you still have educational content to share, you can write your own anecdotes. So if you're [00:24:00] describing a sample customer journey, create a story around how someone named Jill comes across the company because it was mentioned in the media. And then she goes on Instagram or LinkedIn and she searches for it.

And as she finds the page and follows along and then realises that it's educational content is really great. So starts sharing that content with her coworkers, and then decides to purchase something. So you can really get into the details of who this character is based on maybe a target persona, target customer and show an example and write it yourself.

And of course show that it is something that you're just creating out of an example, but that's a really great way to paint a picture as well.

Michelle J Raymond: It just takes it again from just being one dimensional you know, and I think it's almost like, without the stories and adding in these other layers, it's almost like people want you to trust what they're saying without really earning that trust is how it comes across to me is it's just, here it is, dump it on you and [00:25:00] you figure it out.

Whereas I think if you take people on that journey, like you said, and share how possible examples relate back to their life. You can see yourself in that. And then for me, it becomes. Oh, okay, I am that person on that same journey and I am trying to solve that same problem. And I am trying to get to that same result.

And for me, it's just been the difference that I've tried to do with some of my content. I'd say I'm still reasonably new at a lot of this side of things in changing up some of my how to educational content to make sure it incorporates some of these other pieces.

Now, I mentioned I come from the beauty industry. So if you look on the back of your shampoo bottles or your skincare or whatever, you see all of those hard to pronounce, names on the back with all the ingredients. Now, if you share about an ingredient and you say, look, this is this natural ingredient, blah, blah, blah, with the name and all the science. You lose people really quickly.

Kelsey Kloss: Right.

Michelle J Raymond: There's a listener that's listening to this podcast that does a brilliant [00:26:00] job in saying actually this natural ingredient is sourced from indigenous women on a farm. And here's the location they've been doing this for generations. This is the process that our internal team. You follow the journey of the ingredient from start to finish.

And all of a sudden it goes from just being another product sitting on a shelf to something that you're like, Oh, okay. I want to be a part of this. This aligns with my values. Cause I think values are an important part of, this educational content as well to bring that across. But again, it just takes it from, if you've got two identical ingredients, which one are you going to pick the one where you can envisage the whole process or the one that's like, oh, here it is, buy my stuff. You've got a couple of options.

Kelsey Kloss: And to your point too, those details go so far. Just adding in a little bit of detail to the story that you're telling. It actually reminds me of when I wrote an article for a magazine once, and we were giving an anecdote, like when you're sitting, eating ice cream on a Saturday night, whatever it might be.

And my editor crossed out the [00:27:00] word ice cream and she put Rocky Road in its place. And she said, the more specific you are, the more engaging your content is. So by adding that little detail, it went from imagining a big bowl of ice cream to imagining exactly what it looked like and tasted like.

Michelle J Raymond: And my brain went to, why not chocolate? But I'm hooked, like straight away I'm hooked into rocky road. That's a really specific choice, and so I want to know more, even if I didn't intentionally think, Oh, okay. Do I really care about a bowl of ice cream? No, I don't but all of a sudden I want to know more of the story, like straight away. It's so powerful.

Now, every podcast episode, when I have fabulous guests like yourself that come on and share all of this amazing information that will help people create much better content to grow their business on LinkedIn.

Michelle J Raymond: I always ask, do you have one last tip that you would like to leave the listeners that you think will make a big difference in their educational content?

Kelsey Kloss: Ooh, that is a great question. I would say always keep [00:28:00] your audiences needs and interests front of mind and know that even though you're doing this for your company, think about it the way a journalist would. In journalism, there is a saying that your only boss is the audience and everything that you do should benefit them.

But if you really lead with that belief that you truly want to help your audience and you care about them taking something valuable away from your educational content, that's going to shine through because then you're not just creating it to create it and it's big and, helpful, but not super specific and super helpful. Lead with that, and you're going to see the benefits and the results.

Michelle J Raymond: That is an excellent place for us to wrap up this conversation. Another great tip. These are my favourite parts that I look forward to listening to every show because I just think when in that moment, when your brain could go anywhere, it picks the one piece of gold out, which I think that if people take note of that, I think that is such a huge difference.

You are not creating content for you. You're [00:29:00] creating it for the people you're in service of.

So Kelsey, thank you so much for making time available to come on the show. We really appreciate it and thanks for all of the information that you shared to help people grow their businesses.

Kelsey Kloss: Of course. Thanks for having me. This was great.

Michelle J Raymond: No worries. Cheers.