Inside Influence: Empowering Employees as B2B Brand Advocates with Kerry-Ann Betton Stimpson

TRANSCRIPT

Michelle J Raymond: Welcome everybody to the Good for Business Show. I'm your host, Michelle J Raymond, and this week I am joined by my very last guest for the year, Kerry-Ann Stimpson, welcome to The Good for Business Show.

Kerry-Ann Betton Stimpson: Hi, Michelle. I'm so happy to not only be a guest, but your last guest for the year. Awesome. I didn't know that.

Michelle J Raymond: I know we're gonna finish on a high, because this is a conversation that I don't think that we have enough are employees influencers? Should we be paying other people? How does that all get untangled? And I know you are the expert in this space. I'm so glad and grateful that you were able to come on the show.

For people that haven't come across your content, who are you, what do you do, and who do you help?

Kerry-Ann Betton Stimpson: Great. So I'm Kerry-Ann Betton Stimpson. My day job is that I'm the CMO of JMMB Group, which is a financial services group of companies based in the Caribbean. So I'm actually joining you from Sunny Jamaica right now and that's my day job.

But my passion, of course is internal marketing, so I'm also the producer and host. I'm an indie podcaster of my very own podcast to the Internal marketing podcast. So that's me. So I really help to support conversations about empowering businesses, to know how they can better engage and empower their employees to be the voice and the advocates of the company brand. So that's me.

Michelle J Raymond: Absolutely, and this is the cool thing. I'm gonna be a guest on your podcast shortly. So what I'm gonna say to my listeners is go and look up the Internal marketing podcast. Make sure you subscribe. Hit the button so that you get notified when those episodes come out. So I'm looking forward to us continuing that conversation.

To dive into it today, let's start at the very beginning for people who haven't come across this concept. Let's set it up so that they understand. What are we looking at when we talk about how do we use employees as advocates versus paid influencers. Can you break it down from the beginning and step us through what that looks like?

Kerry-Ann Betton Stimpson: Sure. So influencer marketing, I think is a popular kind of nomenclature that most folks should be familiar with and what that is, is how do we pay influencers? Influencers typically are people, usually on social media who they have their own community of followers who basically in short do what they say, right?

And so what a lot of brands have been doing for many years now is that they engage these influencers, pay them some money, or in kind and really, it's about encouraging them to promote their products and services to their followers with the hope that their followers will buy or purchase, their services or goods from the company.

And it's a very popular way of doing marketing in both the B2B and the B2C space, right? Now, what has really come up recently is that when you talk about employees now, the question of authenticity comes into play because these are paid influencers, as I would've mentioned, so they're getting a cheque.

Consumers, while they may want to kind of jump on the train and do what their influencers tell them to do, there's a question of authenticity. What's part of the conversation when you ask, well, do these influencers really believe in the brands that they're promoting, or are they just doing it because they're getting paid to do it?

When you look at the employees now, the thinking is, is that employees, because they work with and for the company, their message, their voice and how they promote the brand is actually gonna be seen as far more authentic because they're on the inside. They know all the details of the good, the bad, the ugly.

And if as an employee, I have the power to step out and promote the brand to my own private network of friends, family, and other colleagues, then those people will faster believe my word when I promote the brand, then they probably would be believe a paid influencer again, because they're paid to do so.

And so that's a conversation that's happening. It's how are companies really seeing the value that's in there when it comes to, do we engage our employees or do we engage paid influencers? And I think the authenticity question or answer is at the part of that.

Michelle J Raymond: I've had a couple of conversations around subject matter expertise, thought leaders, influencers, and our common friend Ashley Faus and I did a big deep dive into that. And I often think that influencers get such a bad rap, and you are right, there's a level of distrust. I'm not sure that they really deserve as much distrust as what they get, because to manage a huge number of followings takes a lot of effort.

It may look like they do nothing on the surface, but there's a lot of work that goes into it. But I love the idea of empowering employees because I can see that there is so many benefits, not just for brand building, but also for the employees to feel valued, to feel noticed, to feel seen, uh, lots and lots of upside in making that happen within your team.

So I really appreciate you setting us up for that, because I read the 2022 LinkedIn Edelman report has just come out yesterday. So the downloaded report of all their research, and essentially what they're looking at is in the coming, let's say year, maybe two years, that there's economic downturn predicted around the world.

How big or how long that lasts is up for debate, but chances are that that's gonna happen. And what they're saying is, if the businesses and the buyers out there are now gonna be discerning, where do I spend my money? Who do I wanna give my money to? If it's discretionary spending, I don't really need your product, then they're gonna be cutting back. So it's all about keeping top of mind for brands.

 And I think having your employees activated, as you said, and leveraging their networks is such a great way to do it. Now, how does the employee's personal brand, if we build that up, actually help build the business brand?

Kerry-Ann Betton Stimpson: So if you wanna answer that question, the first place you can go to is a marketer's favourite place, which is word of mouth.

I mean, word of mouth is the best marketing that you could probably have and get. And again, when you're talking about the best word of mouth, I know normally as marketers we tend to jump on this side of customer word of mouth because hey, if our customers are saying great things about us, that's awesome.

And it is awesome because they're the customer. But again, when we go back to looking at our employees, our employees, like our customers, are people. They have their own private networks of friends, family, community members. They're parts of religious organisations, places of worship, social clubs, and again, those networks of people, trust them.

And so the question then becomes, well, if we have these people who are already part of the fold as our employees and they have their own networks, how do we engage and empower them to share the great word about our brand to those networks.

Now the thing is, you mentioned personal brand, that's the key, it's personal. Because I know there's a debate about whether do we have employees kind of do cut and paste content on their personal social media accounts? What we're really encouraging is for companies to really see their employees as individuals with their own personal brands. And what you really should be doing is engaging them in kind of like an unspoken partnership to say, Hey, if you love us and you love working with us, then feel free to share that great story with your community, whether it be online or in person as well. So that's what we mean. It's really about companies empowering and leveraging the personal brands up their employees in a way that's not very intrusive.

Michelle J Raymond: Often the first comeback to that is that employers will come back and say, but if I build them up, Kerry-Ann, someone will go and headhunt my staff. They'll poach them. That's the number one thing that I get the pushback when I'm doing workshops with businesses. It's always the fear. Now I have my own opinions on what I say to that, but I'd love to hear what your thoughts are.

Kerry-Ann Betton Stimpson: So two things. I mean, at the end of the day, if the employee's gonna be poached, they're gonna be poached because they're on social media anyway. So whether they're talking about your brand or not, they're putting themselves out there. Their great work and experience is out there for everybody to see. And so they're gonna get poached anyway.

But the second thing I would say, Michelle, is that great people beget great people, right? In the sense that even if you have people who leave, what you would've already started to do is again, having a great engaged and empowered team of employees who is putting the brand out there. You're actually also building a great employer brand as a wonderful spinoff to that. And so even if you do lose great people, what has happened is with your great employer brand, I anticipate that you're not gonna have much trouble attracting great people as well, because other folks are gonna look on and say, Hey, that looks like a great place to work. They get to use their personal brands. It's not a kind of a, crunch down kind of a culture and you're gonna attract great people as well. In my view, there's really nothing to be concerned about too much.

Michelle J Raymond: Look, and we share that view as well. And I often think that, when we look at it, and I look at my own personal work history for a lot of time, yes, I may have changed roles, but I stayed within the industry.

Now, some of those business roles that I left, I didn't leave because I got headhunted. I left for other reasons that were going on in the business that I wasn't appreciated or maybe some other things happened. That's why I left. It wasn't that I had a great profile on LinkedIn that I built. It wasn't about the community that I'd built on LinkedIn. It wasn't the profile that I had. It was literally things in the background that had nothing to do with it.

So I think the bigger fear that business owners should have is what happens if you are invisible? What happens if your business is invisible? What happens if your employees are visible? I'll tell you what happens, you create a void that your competitors will fill, and if your competitors fill it and they start building a B2B community, In my personal opinion, you have very little chance of catching up. If you give someone one year or two years headstart, they will invite your whole industry. They will become the go-to truth source and you'll always be playing catch up and you know, there's no amount of money sometimes that can fix that problem.

So for business owners, I don't think you get a choice anymore. I think in 2023 we're just about to head into it. Sorry, it's no longer an option. It's time to start trusting your employees, start empowering them. And that's, a kind of 2023 that I'm excited to see the businesses that I work with start to embrace this. Digital's not going away. It's time to just accept it's not going away. You don't have to be scared, let's go.

But one of the things before businesses jump in the deep end, and you know, quite often it's like everyone's excited. We know we should be on LinkedIn.

Let's go. But there's a piece of the puzzle, which I think often gets stepped over. Let's talk about something, which may not be that exciting, but I think it's really critical, the importance of having a social media policy. In your experience, talk me through why it's important. Why do we need social media policies in place?

Kerry-Ann Betton Stimpson: Great question. Well, first of all, I'd love to define what a social media policy is cause I'm not sure that a lot of people are clear. So a social media policy is really those guidelines that companies can put in place to help to inform employees about what's on brand or certainly what's acceptable as they, as they are present in their own personal social media channels, right?

So it's not so much of guidelines, set of guidelines for the social media team that's managing the company account per se. It's really directed at your team of employees so that they understand what they can and cannot respectfully post online.

And the reality is, that's a whole other conversation because I've been eaten alive on LinkedIn by folks who say, you know, companies really can't police their employees social media presence. But the reality is, is that once you're an employee of a particular organisation, especially on LinkedIn you, you show where you work, you represent the brand whether you like it or not.

And so it's understandable that a company would want their employees to stay away from posting or, or making comments that are antisemitic, for example. So that's what the social media policy does. Now, depending on the company and the industry, I find some companies do it. Some companies don't. I mentioned when we were in the green room that I was at a financial conference the other day, bank and credit union marketing, and like 98% of the folks in the room already had a policy. But banks are highly regulated.

A lot of companies still don't. And to me that's a great place to start. When you talk about empowering your employees as influencers, it's having that policy in place and the policy, again, speaks to what they can and cannot do. But I also like to say, you know what? Also have the policy be a safe space of not only setting up the guardrails, but helping employees to know that, hey, we're okay with this, if we really are okay.

It's just that if you're gonna do this, recognise that we're serving clients. We are a member of the community. And so these are the guardrails that we ask you to stick within. So once you have that outlined in a great policy, it really helps to mitigate the risk that comes with empowering your employees to be building personal brands and sharing content online.

Michelle J Raymond: We've seen many examples on LinkedIn. The crying CEO, for example, is one that brings to mind that, you know, a post can really just set on fire and go viral and maybe never have intended to have that kind of reach. Typically you don't know what's gonna go crazy and what's not. And so I, I've seen things like that happen throughout my time that's been on LinkedIn where, it may not have been somebody's intention, but you never know what content will go viral and the reputational risk in cancel culture and words like that.

To me, undoing that I don't know that you can shut the gate after the horse has bolted, so to speak. Um, I am scared for some businesses. There is a fear factor, which I think the social media policy addresses part of that. But I think it also sets both people up to know what the expectations are, which is more important.

It's a two way team effort on LinkedIn and I think where businesses can potentially go wrong when it's like, thou shall do it my way and you will listen to me, and then that's how it's gonna be. And then employees are like, whoa, back off. This is my LinkedIn, it's my personal account. I'm sure that you've had that conversation and people have come after you, but you're right. The fact is people know where you work. You can't ignore it.

Kerry-Ann Betton Stimpson: It is what it is. Yeah.

Michelle J Raymond: Absolutely. So what kind of things does a good social media policy cover exactly? Is it, for instance, can I use my work phone to, check social media or is it, I can't post this kind of content? What kind of things make a good social media policy?

Kerry-Ann Betton Stimpson: So the things that go into making a good social media policy first of all is reminding team members what the brand is all about. What's our purpose? What are our values, our mission and our vision? Never take it for granted that because it's in some brand guidelines somewhere else that they're seeing that.

 It's also useful for them to know where and how does the brand show up online? Help them to tune into that picture. But also it's good to start out with helping them to recognise our responsibility as team members as part of this company, our responsibility to the community. What commitments have we made to the community, in how we not only show up online, but just how we do business day to day. So set that up.

And then as I said earlier, it starts with creating that safe space. It's helping them to be very clear about how the company sees employees presence on social media, yes, they have a right to be there, but to the extent that what they post has an impact on the brand. That really needs to be brought front and centre so that they get it right.

And then straight up you can go into what is acceptable and unacceptable, or what is brand aligned or not brand aligned type content that you can post, you know, and feel free to make that list. I'm sorry, I don't really like list, but you don't want to leave things up to interpretation. So make sure that that list is as clear and as specific as possible.

And also you're gonna have to outline if there are any possible sanctions that are in place for folks who step outta those lines. Then again, make that clear. You want information to be out there crystal clear, but again, we don't want that document to come off like it's something that we are beating folks over the head about.

It's really about, look, we embrace this, we believe in this. We want you to be able to do this. Or recognise that as a brand, this is our commitment to our customers and our community. So this is how you can partner with us in ensuring that how we show up is consistent in that regard. And yeah, make sure it gets out there.

I would also recommend not just putting it in a book and saving it on some Intranet folder. I recommend training employees in it, maybe a nice little online course, with some questions and try and refresh that every single year so that it remains top of mind for folks and you catch the new employees who come in as well.

Michelle J Raymond: Yeah, I had an interesting experience recently. I did some training for a new client and we got the whole company of around 15 people were involved. And it wasn't until post the training that some issues came up with, some people had been trolling some of their content. So there was some negative feedback that at various levels, some was just a bit contrarian, some was actually quite aggressive and damaging to the brand.

And we actually recognised that in their space, what we needed to do was set those employees up with what happens if this happens to you? How do you handle it? What if this type of comment happens? What is the response? Who can respond? And that's something that we're actually planning together, and it's the first time I've had to think about that.

I generally think that LinkedIn's a safe space, but the company also has a responsibility to ensure that the employees are kept safe on the platform aswell.

Kerry-Ann Betton Stimpson: Wonderful. I love that.

Michelle J Raymond: Yeah. So it's one thing to kind of put them out front and centre, but as a business you also have to keep them safe. And having those tools and awareness to say, Hey, if this happens, based on, I'm talking about the company, then what do I do? And having some clear policies around it.

So I'm excited to dig into that with them. It's the first time that I've done it, I'm not gonna lie, it's the, first time that I've had a client that's actually come back and said, Hey, the training was great. We're out there being active, but here's what's happened.

And I'm glad that they're out there. I know this company will be successful in the long term because they're investing in their staff.

Kerry-Ann Betton Stimpson: Yeah.

Michelle J Raymond: And I can see that you've said it many times, throughout this podcast that when you both work together, that's where the success comes from. When one's going in one direction and one's going in the other, it's a push pull and it's never actually gonna work out like that.

So let's talk about empowering these employees to actually become brand advocates in a business setting like yours, what does that actually look like in the day to day?

Kerry-Ann Betton Stimpson: Wow. Great, great question. So the first thing is, I always like to tell folks, start by being able to identify and know who are your employees, who are comfortable putting themselves out there.

Because not every employee is, there are some employees who are not online at all. There are some who are, but they keep their accounts very private and hidden, and it's just close friends and family members and that's fine and there's some people who have public accounts and they're out there. So it's, first of all, good to know who is out there, and it's also good to know who are those people who want to be a part of this process, who want to be part of your employee influencer group, your employee advocacy group.

Once you've identified them, make sure that an open and frank conversation starts out with. What's in it for both of us? What's in it for the company? What's in it for the employees? Are we aligned? Are we on the same page? And it starts there because once you find folks and you recognise you're all part of a common purpose, it really helps to set you up for success from the get go.

The next thing is, is that I always believe that training is a great opportunity. Again, I find a lot of employees happen online or they're eager to get out there, but they don't have a clue how LinkedIn works. They don't have a clue how to set up a good profile. They don't know the tenants of great content creation and you know how do they want to show up online? Training is wonderful. I know we've been doing it in our company, we've done it where you bring in a personal branding expert who comes in and gives a great training. Starting from, again, what do you stand for as your personal brand? How do you wanna show up? Who are you speaking to, the kind of content you wanna create.

And then what we do is we create a kind of a group, a network, again with all of us in there. We actually, we have like a WhatsApp chat group. you can use Slack maybe whatever works for your company, but you're always in contact. You're cheering each other on, you're sharing content generation opportunities.

 You're, you're really creating excitement again around what is something that's mutually beneficial. And so for me, that's a great way to do it. It's knowing who's out there who wants to build their personal brands, and providing them with the tools and keeping that connection going so that the tools and the changes and the updated information that they need to be able to grow their brands online, I think is a great formula to follow.

Michelle J Raymond: I love that you raise the point of you can't force people again. There's not enough times that you and I can reinforce this point and I think calling for volunteers is a really easy, good place to start so that you actually know what am I working with. Trying to force people like, I can't say it enough times today, it will never work. It will feel uncomfortable. It will be an energy drain, a resource drain. And ultimately I think it's like that whole rotten apple is gonna make everything else around it also go rotten. So for me it's like work with a small group. It doesn't have to be a big group. Start off small, embed your processes, and then get better over time.

And I think when other people see the success and what's coming out of it, then they might, you might pique their curiosity. It might be, hmm, what are they doing over there? I wanna be a part of that. And you'll start to see that snowball effect kick in. And I think, like you said, you can't just say, okay, you are an advocate, off you go. You are on your own now, you know, again, training.

Too many people, I think assume because it's easy to create a post so anyone can type a few sentences, maybe put a picture like it, it's not that hard. But that's not the same as becoming an employee advocate or an employee influencer. It's more than just a few sentences and a post. So setting some people up, even with their own brands, like you said. I love that you guys have that conversation so that people know what do you wanna be known for? What do you wanna stand for? What tone of voice are you gonna use? Things that, when I set my business up and I just wrote the LinkedIn branding book about my journey, when I set my business up, I knew nothing about this Kerry-Ann. You would've laughed like I was a salesperson. I spent 20 years in sales going, those marketing people who cares? They just make the website look pretty. Or, you know, like those kind of things. And I know you're gonna roll your eyes. It's okay. I've, I've seen the light. I've come full circle.

But when I look back, I cringe, but I also realize how much I've had to learn. And I'm in the best learning position. I've got all experts around the world like yourself that help me on a daily basis to grow. But I think for normal employees that aren't immersed in this day after day, you've got zero chance. So set them up for success. You know, this is another message that's gonna come through.

Let's say we've got someone that puts their hand up, they volunteer, they say, yep, Kerry-Ann, I wanna be part of this program. What kind of incentives do you work? Now I've asked Danielle Guzman, who also, you know, we've had a few conversations about the employee advocacy space.

Now I've asked for hers. I wanna see what you would say to this as well, and then I'll, I'll let you know what she said.

Kerry-Ann Betton Stimpson: Okay. Well, I have two that kind of come to mind because from my experience, they work. So the first thing is, it's bragging rights. I'm sorry. For some people that really works, right. So what I've found is for those employees who love generating great content, what we tend to do is if there's an opportunity, we showcase their content on the company page, right?

So they're maybe an employee. So we're in financial services, banking, and investments. But let's say we have an employee who has a travel blog on the side, because that's her passion. We will showcase her and her travel blog and her great tips about how to travel on a budget in the company page and it gets a lot of engagement. And what that does is for other employees looking on, it's like, Hey, you got a little fomo, fair of missing out. I wanna be a part of that too. So that kind of bragging kind of stuff that we really put our employee advocates front and center and give them their flowers, as it were.

But the second incentive that works is that, we actually find a way to give tangible rewards as well. Like right now we have a program called the Online Brand Ambassador of the Week, right? So every week we highlight an employee who has been doing a great job of showing up online, whether that be content, they create, some people kind of show up and represent our brand, maybe in an online live stream like what I'm doing.

And we would say, Hey, Kerry-Ann is the online brand ambassador for the week, and she gets an Amazon gift certificate and an email goes out to the entire company with her picture and you know, we make a big deal of it. Because at the end of the day, people like to feel rewarded. And again, it's a WIFM what's in it, what are they getting out of it, and the company's benefiting and they see the company giving back from what it would've received.

So I found those two kind of work. So I'm eager to hear what Danielle had to say.

Michelle J Raymond: Look, the good news is you're both on the same page, which I knew would be the answer. You may speak about it slightly differently, but ultimately I think the key point is, one acknowledgement on some level doesn't always need to be a tangible gift.

It can also just be someone high up the food chain that says, Hey, I noticed what you did. I appreciate you. Thank you. Like getting notice that you've gone outside of your 'It's not my job to do it' and you're doing something above and beyond actually works.

 I love the idea. Of course, I love company pages and I love highlighting employees because I know personally it doesn't matter whose page I manage or which, company I work with, employee posts outperform any other kind of content, hands down.

Now, you can't use it every day because there's other pieces of the brand puzzle that we need to put together, but ultimately it will always work because we wanna feel connected to, you know, the brand and the employees. It's both of them.

So I love how you have that kind of, Gamification and that, hey, you are the star. I'm gonna put the spotlight on you because I'm gonna confess. I love winning. I love to get trophies. It's my inner child from, playing so much sport when I was younger and just the accolades. I would be that person in your business that would be like crazy trying to win, so that I could get that moment in the spotlight. So no surprises given the career that I have, right? It's kinda, kinda ended up how it was meant to.

As we wrap the show up, I said to you before the show that I'm gonna ask you for your one last tip, when it comes to employees as advocates, employee influencers, what's your tip? If someone wants to get this program started, what would you say to them?

Kerry-Ann Betton Stimpson: Wow. Well, if I could sum everything up, I would say always remember front of mind that your employees and not engaging your employees and not empowering them to be advocates for the brand online, consider it kind of like your blind spot. Always be aware of your blind spot, right? And the first thing is to recognise that and then go out, seek out those people who want to use their voice, who have been using their voices online, and start the conversation, what's the win-win scenario that we can put in place where they get to build their personal brands and how can the company benefit from that?

And yeah, I would just say start there. Reach out, see who's out there, who's interested, and let's get started. Let's have some fun, engage and win-win all around.

Michelle J Raymond: I can't argue with the, let's get started and have some fun because this doesn't have to feel like extra work. This can actually be, when it's done well, an opportunity that actually is exciting.

Like, let's make it fun for people. Yes. Uh, you know, it doesn't have to be a drag. And I think when you take away the force, like you said, look for volunteers, work out what's in it for them, deliver on your half of the bargain as a business owner, and then reward them and acknowledge them. Then it sets people up for success.

Both parties win, and ultimately in business as a salesperson, I'm always looking for opportunities for growth, and this is the fastest way that I think that a business can do that and attract the right fit opportunities which the sales team's gonna love you all for it.

So, Kerry-Ann Betton Stimpson, I appreciate you giving up your time. I am excited that we can speak on literally opposite sides of the world. This is again, one of my favorite things about LinkedIn is the fact that I can talk to you and I just feel like we are friends and I appreciate everything you do on the platform. I'm gonna ask my audience, once again, go and look up the Internal Marketing podcast.

Make sure you subscribe, go back and have a look at some of the previous episodes because I've listened to them myself. There's been some great guests and I highly encourage people to learn more about internal marketing cause no one does it better than you, so I appreciate.

Kerry-Ann Betton Stimpson: Thank you. I appreciate you too, Michelle, so humble, so honored to be here.

Thank you for all you do, your generosity on LinkedIn with all you share. I've gotten your book already, guys, if you haven't gotten it, get Michelle's latest book. , and congratulations and wishing you all the best for a great holiday season.

Michelle J Raymond: Thank you kindly. And on that note to all my listeners, thank you for everybody that supported me throughout the year for the Good For Business Show.

Coming back next year, we're gonna refine a few things. We're going to level up focus and really just get more focus on how we can deliver more tools, more strategies for you to grow your business in 2023. So thanks so much, Kerry-Ann and that's us for today. Cheers.