Why Employer Branding on LinkedIn Matters More Than Ever for B2B with James Ellis

TRANSCRIPT

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, I'm going to say probably the most passionate person on LinkedIn about employer branding. Will you take that title, James?

James Ellis: I will. I actually had someone try and call me the GOAT. I'm like, no, I've met the GOATS. I am standing in the shoulders of giants. I am not the GOAT, but I will take most passionate. It's the extra prize at the end of, it's not the most attractive. They're not the most likely to succeed. It's like best personality. I will take that. I will totally take that.

Michelle J Raymond: I love it. Well, I'm awarding you that because I've been following your content for a long time and I wanted to share it with my audience because employer branding is such an important part of business and I think it matters more than ever for B2Bs, in 2023. Rough year financially around the world, it seems, but tell me, did you fall into employer branding?

Like I did for Company Pages. It wasn't something that I set out and went, I'm going to be the world's best on Company Pages, but that's where I've landed. And that's my place.[00:01:00] How did you land in employer branding?

James Ellis: Yeah, I'm an agnostic marketer from way back. Like I came out of the womb thinking, okay, market segments. That's a good idea. That's just, it's how my brain perceives things. And I, spent years in the wilderness doing every kind of marketing under the sun. B2B, B2C, pharma marketing, event marketing. I've done state government marketing. I would not recommend anybody get into that. If you're thinking about that, walk away, do not do it.

And I landed in employer brand recruitment marketing because I had jumped around all these jobs. And so I knew what the process of finding a job and what it felt like and what it looked like. And I took that idea of finding a job. The skills I had around digital marketing went, you know, if you glue these things together, you got a whole new job there, buddy.

And I went okay, I'll try that. And that was like my entry into this world of employer brand. At the time, it wasn't called that, but now everybody knows it as employer brand.

Michelle J Raymond: And it's just so critical. And for me, like I come at it obviously from a place of when I'm working with B2B businesses, managing Company Pages, giving [00:02:00] them Company Page strategies.

Quite often on LinkedIn, my peers who are LinkedIn trainers are all about just do this to sell or even worse, just add value. You're not allowed to sell, but so it kind of presses my buttons that they ignore the Company Page, which is one part of the place that you can do employer branding on LinkedIn.

We're going to dive into this, but for those people who aren't quite sure what it is, how do you define employer branding and more fool them for not following your content? I will send them in the show notes over to make sure that they ring the bell so that they stay up to date with the latest in employer branding. But how do you define it these days?

James Ellis: So I, the joke was for a long time, if you asked any 10 employer branders how to define employer brand, you'd come up with 12 answers. It was just such a kind of like catch as catch can. No one understood it. But I think we've finally coalesced around this idea of an employer brand is what an individual thinks it's like to work at your company based on all available touch points and interactions.

So before the recruiter says, I want to talk to you about a job, [00:03:00] if they like your product, yay, good for employer brand. You're getting sued for someone for doing something wrong. Boo, bad for employer brand. They called your customer service and they didn't like it. Boo. Everything about a company and everything the company does impacts that employer brand.

Now what's interesting about employer brand, like all branding, it's inherently perspective. What I think of, let's say Adidas or Adidas, depending on where you're from and what you think of it might be different, but we're both right. And that's the thing. A brand lives in my head or your head or everybody else's head. And so consequently, employer brand is figuring out the process of influencing and shaping other people's perceptions about what it's like to work in your company.

And influence and perception shaping is a complicated, messy, sloppy, abstract, but also really tactical and focused kind of effort to get people to say, I understand what it's like to work there. It is not a game of how to make everybody work there. Because as any recruiters listening knows, please don't everybody [00:04:00] apply. Oh God, I don't have that kind of time in my life. I don't want everyone to apply.

And I think, since we're talking to mostly marketers here for my money, and no one's ever proven me wrong here. Employer brand is the only kind of marketing, where quality beats quantity. In every other kind of marketing, more leads, more shelf space, more share of wallet, more clicks, more impressions more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, all hail the altar of more.

That is what marketing is supposed to do, except there's this tiny little part of marketing called employer brand. We're like no, no, no, no, no. I want the best because I have this job and I can only put one person in it. If you're selling jet engines, you will sell as many as however many people want to cash that cheque, right? There's an infinite number of jets to be made. Happy to do it.

I have this one job and I can only put one person in it, so I better put the best person in. So consequently, I don't want a million people to apply. I want two people to apply, but I want them both to be just amazing at what they do.

That is what makes employer brand just maddening and fascinating and exciting all at once.

Michelle J Raymond: I have never [00:05:00] thought about it that way, to be honest, is it's literally finite. There is one position and you want it to go to the best person that's going to stay there for as long as possible and be good at what they do.

I've never really thought about it from that perspective, but it totally makes sense. But why does employer branding exist? What are the benefits that we're going to get out of investing in this space, making this happen in the business? Reviewing all the touch points. This isn't just LinkedIn. Like you said, it's customer experience. It's like complaints. It's socials. It's everywhere. Why invest in it? What's the upside?

James Ellis: So there's two kinds of questions. It's like, where is it coming from? Why is it important? And then what's the upside? So the, where is it coming from? Is this function of the world of work is I don't think I have to tell anybody is radically changing.

It's not just about remote work. It's not just about work from home. It's about what we expect from our star players. It used to be jobs were literally defined in such a way that you could put anybody in that slot. Train them on, press that button, pull that lever, do this thing. They could do the job and they would just [00:06:00] go do the job for 25 years and collect their gold watch at the end of it, right?

That's what HR was all about is defining these very rigid sense of what's a job? Right now, so many jobs are hiring people who the company doesn't quite understand what that person will do. It's not just ChatGPT Prompt Engineers, which is like the sexiest title ever. But honestly, every time I interview for employer brand job, I know twice as much about employer branding is everybody else in the room. So they don't know how to interview me.

So that's the problem. Businesses are hiring these skill sets which are brand new or cutting edge or they're trying to expand in a place they don't quite know. So it's very hard to say, okay, let's build this rigid sense of what this job is. So consequently, you're trying to hire a human. I know this is crazy.

It's a whole person. It's not just the sack of skills filled shoes, right? It's a person. It's a human being, which means they have motivations. They have traits, they have ways they like to work. And as companies start to realise, Okay, I have two people who could deliver [00:07:00] milk, but they're doing it differently.

I get to choose which aligns to what my company is all about, which helps my company grow. Do I want the delivery person who says it's five o'clock I'm out and they're gone, or do they want the person who says it's five o'clock I'm going to go back and clean my truck. Those are not the same person and you get to choose when it comes to that.

And I think businesses are starting to realise there's so much value by hiring the right person, not just for a sack of skills, but for the whole totality of people. And because of that, businesses are starting to realise the compact, the conversation, the contract between employee labour and management is shifting.

It's not just because I mean, long is the day, where the gold watch was really a thing. No one has a, especially in this country in America. What's a retirement? What is that? It's this sense of look, we need you for a while and you're going to help us get to this next stage.

And honestly, the way we're going to get to this next stage, we don't know. We need you to tell us how to get there, which means we need to now be aligned to bigger ideas. Sure. Mission is part of it. [00:08:00] Culture is part of it. Values are part of it. Work style is part of it. Inherent intrinsic motivations is part of it. And that is what you're seeing described on most good career sites.

The mission, the purpose, the culture, the values, what you care about, who's your hiring manager, what they reward, how they reward. That is what a great candidate wants to know. Because ultimately businesses thrive when they hire the right people and they tend to die when they don't. And that is what employer brand is.

It creates a lot more information on both sides of the table so that ultimately you're hiring, not just a cog, not just a commodity, but a perfect match between person, company, and role, because that's all you really want.

Michelle J Raymond: I was just talking yesterday about how I am a little bit jealous about like Gen Z and millennials that are going into careers now that aren't stuck in places that don't align with their values, that they're so quick to get in, get what they want out of it and move on.

And, I remember, you know, cast my mind back to when [00:09:00] I started 20 odd years ago and it was one of those things. I remember I wanted to leave a job. I hated it, but it was one of those things, I remember my mum saying to me. Michelle, you've only been there 12 months and there was like some magic number.

I feel like it was like four years. If you look at my career, I did four year blocks, even though it was never, I'm going to say conscious choice. I think there was just, that's what I'd been brought up with. And so even when I've been in positions where I've been hiring people, when you know, some of these people walk in and they basically want your job before they've started and they want to know what you stand for.

And I actually really love that now, companies have to show their brand values and not just show them that live them. And I had an episode with Melissa Packham recently on brand values and their importance. And it's not just a tick and flick social media posts because it's world pride month or, you name it, there's one every single day, it seems.

And then on the flip side, I've also had clients that come to me, like we were just discussing before the show that [00:10:00] they are in a world of pain and can't get anyone to work for them because in, pretty much any industry, I come from the beauty industry and, life sciences is related to that and it just became everybody's worked there.

We all came in, we tried and then we left and then they become voices out in that industry going, don't work there, don't work there. And they got into a world of pain because they couldn't fill these roles. And no matter what you post, what you talk about, your new CEO, it was like we're done, and I don't know, can you make a comeback from that?

James Ellis: You can, it's exceedingly hard. It's one of those things where you're asking someone, can you lose weight while still stuffing your gob full of chocolate cake? That's the question you've just asked me. If people are willing to make change, if the leadership is willing to say, okay, that we've learned some lessons.

Let's talk about what we stand for. Let's be more clear and credible about what we stand for. Let's prove it a little bit. And I think that's, to me, that's the big asterisk of what good companies are doing. They [00:11:00] prove these things. They say, it's very easy to say we stand for X, Y, and Z.

Showing me how you live it, showing me how you made a sacrifice for it. That is a rare bird. And the more you do that, the more I go, okay, I'm willing to believe that. I really, I get passionate about this because I believe I'm a little older than you, I'm 51 and I've had a lot of jobs, a lot of jobs.

And some of them were amazing and some of them were nightmares. And the problem is from the outside, they looked exactly the same. And that's not fair. There are few decisions people make in their lives more important than choosing a job, maybe buying a house from a financial standpoint, maybe that's as big as it is, but choosing a job changes your career trajectory. It sets the standard for how happy you can be, where you're growing, where you're going to be.

And we do it so blindly. If you go looking for a house and you see what a house site looks like and all the information, not opinions, not spin, not fluff and puffery, but hey, this is what this person paid in taxes the last five years. This is the school district. There's so much [00:12:00] information. And even then we still don't go buy. We go I would like to look at this house because I have four more visits before I'm ready to say yes, I want to do this.

Compare that to your average job posting, which is seven bullets of garbage. Just absolute garbage that says nothing, that means nothing that half the time it's stolen from some other job posting and half the time it's stolen from some other company. I don't know how you're describing your company with other people's words. Anyway, soapbox off.

There's so little information that's credible when you're searching for a job and it forces candidates to say, who do I know who works there? Who do I know who used to work there?

If you need to make a change, you start at the base, you start at the foundation and say, what is the process by which we reward our people? How do we praise them. What do we praise them for? What are our values were our culture? Now let's prove it. And then you can get to a point where you say, look, this is what we're all about.

There are plenty of companies who used to be one thing before and are now something more clearly articulated now. Sometimes they have to go through a crisis or some sort of dramatic [00:13:00] situation, but they don't have to. There's plenty of companies who can say, Look, we realised we had a problem.

So we got a new CEO, we made these changes and this is what was going on. And those old glass door reviews are still there, but now they're talking about it in terms of proof of how much they've changed in the past two years, say.

It's not a hidden, it's not a body you buried in the backyard. It is okay, that was our baseline and look how much better we're getting. And look at the trajectory, we're continuing to get better, which is a completely valid employer brand story on its own.

Michelle J Raymond: Nobody's perfect. And I feel like if you own it, you can move on. It's when they try and put icing on a mud cake that people are trying to go. No, don't look over here. Look over here. Smoke and mirrors is not the answer.

James Ellis: It's not about putting lipstick on a pig. It's about saying, have you tried the bacon? This is what's really good about this thing. It's not about whether it's attractive or not. It's how it tastes.

And I think most employer branders are so busy slapping lipstick on pigs and making pretty pictures and trying to, make this Potemkin village of what looks good. Let's get honest for a [00:14:00] second. Every positive thing about a job has a negative. Therefore, every light there is a shadow. For every Yin, there is a Yang.

If you tell me this is a company that gives you all the opportunity in the world and the freedom to make decisions, you're also describing a company that's chaotic, that's messy without a lot of process. And some people love that. And some people don't.

You want to tell me you've got a company where you support each other, that you make sure each person feels included and part of the larger process. You're also describing company that moves relatively slowly because everybody has to be in concert with each other. There's no right answer. There's no good company. All there is, you got me riled up here. All there is the lid that fits the pot. Is this the lid that fits your pot?

If so, bully for you. And if not, please keep looking. That is what employer brand is trying to create.

Michelle J Raymond: Now, I want to give you a moment to take a breath because I am going to press another one of your buttons next. Are you ready?

James Ellis: I have to be. What choice do I have?

Michelle J Raymond: There are the [00:15:00] naysayers out there that would say to you, James, that employer branding does not apply to small businesses and only applies to big business.

James Ellis: Who? Who said that? I want names.

Michelle J Raymond: I am going to move across the soapbox for you to stand on and tell people why, no matter what size your B2B is, why is employer branding important in 2023 and beyond? Are you ready? And you are the man that wrote the book on this. I will make sure that Employer Branding for Small Business, the book are in the show notes.

Why go down this path? Why is it for small businesses just as much as big businesses? Ready? Go.

James Ellis: So first off, yes, I think there is a lot of assumptions that employer brand is expensive, that it requires massive infrastructure, a massive tech stack head count to get it done and it can. It can be done that way.

And I think in a lot of ways, when you look [00:16:00] at how TA thinks about employer brand, they think of it as a recruiter accelerator or a recruiter enhancement. So if you've got 100 recruiters and you bring an employer brander who makes each recruiter 10 percent better, that makes perfect sense. If you've got two recruiters and that employer brander makes them 10 percent better. Buy another recruiter. Don't get an employer brander that makes no sense.

So there's a sense of scale where that kind of works with the math solves its own problem. However, that assumes there's only one kind or shape of employer brand. It requires a professional, perhaps like me. Who shows up, who lives in your office 24 seven, who manages all the things, or maybe you build a team and that's not how it has to be.

If you understand the employer brand is really more of a perspective on how to tell your story, understanding how you're different, being comfortable being different, not trying to attract everybody and their dog and their great aunt Tilly, but more being focused about who you really want to engage and why, any company can do it, and they can do it relatively inexpensively.

If you [00:17:00] are a plumbing company of 50 employees, and you can tell me clearly and concisely and with some proof points how you're different from the 100 person plumbing company from across town, you are doing employer branding. Now take whatever you just said, stick it on your truck and drive it around town. You're done. You have done what needs to be done.

And in a lot of ways, smaller companies, because they're not in Hong Kong and in Thailand and in this place and in Chicago and all these places, there's so much more homogenous in their kind of what they do. They're just plumbers. They're just lawyers. They're just whatever. That's what they focus on. They can be more clear about their brand and they can be more agile about how to communicate it.

If you have a 50 person development company where you just do software for salesforce or something. You all are there for probably the same reason. I don't have to say what does the HR representative think because they're in a whole different basket. Or what does the salesperson think? No, you're all developers. You all kind of care about similar things.[00:18:00] You can be incredibly clear about how you're different from other companies. And that's of value.

So if you remove employer brand from this architectural structural investment of a hundred thousand dollars, $200,000, whatever. You realise that every company can be doing employer branding, and so long as you're hiring, you need to tell a better story Why. Relying on recruiters who seem to just go on LinkedIn to say we're hiring does not work. You might as well have not said anything, and that's a separate soapbox. We won't get too far into that.

You have to understand the person. I'll put it this way. Think that every candidate you could hire. You're not hiring to do a job. You're hiring a volunteer. They have to choose to work for you. You can offer them a job, but they have to choose first. So if you're not giving them a compelling reason why they should choose you, they're never going to get the chance to let you in.

So you need to provide that answer. And that's really what at its heart employer brand is. Giving people a reason for [00:19:00] them to choose you.

Michelle J Raymond: Is this something that if you aren't proactive happens anyway, or, people are forming their opinions every day, all day about your business. And you can either actively try and, create something that they want to like, or you ignore this and they make up their own opinions and judgments based on their interactions with your business.

I feel like anything with branding from my opinion is there are ways that people will think about your business, whether you like it or not, whether you control it or not.

And this is a way that you can potentially control the narrative without being like, I'm not talking about being underhanded or contrived or, some of those dodgy kind of things that I'm sure people do, but I just feel like you can take this in your own hands and it's just as good for the people that work there as the people out in the world. There's only upside from this.

I can't see a downside to putting time into this. For me, I love working with smaller businesses because for all those reasons you said. Agile, own it, stop worrying about their [00:20:00] first thing is they're always, Oh, this person's bigger than us. Okay. Yeah. So what?

James Ellis: You can compete against Google and Meta. Everybody can compete and trust me, they know it. They know it just as well. And I think there's a lot of people who do employer branding. They take a revealing the brand approach, which I'm not averse to. I think it is a school of thought more than anything else.

I liken it this way. Out in Miami, they're having, I don't know if you know anything about reefs where you are, huh?

Michelle J Raymond: Uh Yeah.

James Ellis: I had wondered. No, in Miami, they're trying to grow reefs. And what they do is they build these cement blocks. In fact, they've actually used buses. They clean the buses out and they sink them in and that becomes the thing that all the little microscopic organisms and fish glue themselves to, and over time that creates coral, which attracts more fish, and you fly wheel it out.

I think employer brand happens in a similar way. There's a whole lot of raw material in what you do every single day, just by the sheer action of being and buying and selling and doing, you create this brand. But you can shape what parts you want to grow what you want to be known for.

Volvo for [00:21:00] a very long time was known as the safe car. Did that mean they weren't reliable? No. Did that mean they weren't attractive? It's eye of the beholder. Did that mean they weren't cost effective? No, but it means all they did was talk about safety because that was the way in which they differentiated themselves. They made an intentional, conscious choice.

So when you're talking about your jobs, Yeah, people are nice. Yeah, you offer some benefits. Yeah, you're supportive. Is that the thing that makes you different? Then talk about that. If everybody else talks about that, you got to find the thing that makes you different. What's the thing you're going to plant to slowly grow?

Because if you decide you're the autonomy company, the innovation company, the status company, what have you. You attract people who want that. And when you attract people who want that, guess what? You just became more of that because you have more people who want that, who are driven by that. And that means the stories you tell about that are more true, which in turn attracts more people who then you create some more and it gets bigger and it's just an avalanche, right?

So to me, [00:22:00] a brand is a system. It's a process over time because I think you talked about this idea of it's controlling the narrative. I think ultimately all you can do is influence the narrative. I can't tell you that Adidas is like that or that Hilton is like this.

I can only suggest some ideas. You're going to use your own perspective to say what is true and what is not. And your perspective is your own. Your way of looking at that is your own. So all I can do is influence it, but that's usually enough.

Michelle J Raymond: Really interesting. And I was just watching a Michael Jordan, you know, Netflix story, movie, whatever it was.

And it was exactly that, the Converse versus Nike versus Adidas, as I would say it. But it's one of those things that you just go at the end of the day, they are three shoes. They have the same job to do. And it was really interesting about how he was so anti one. And obviously we know how the Nike story turned out. So we don't need to spoiler alert on that one, but it was just really interesting to think about.

But James, like who in the [00:23:00] business owns employer branding, like which team is this best suited to?

James Ellis: You want to start a fight amongst employer branders. This is the question you ask, where should employer brand live? And I am in this weird spot where I don't care. I think it has less to do with where should it live like some sort of inherently platonic ideal of where it lives. I don't think it's like that.

I think because I'm a duct tape kind of guy, I say if you've got an employer brander who thinks and has been a marketer before, you have to stick them in TA. And if you have an employer brander who is coming from recruiting, you have to stick them in marketing. And the reason is this, your employer brand is shaped by every single thing your company does from product selection and feature selection and customer service and leadership did this and policy development and comms and PR and it's every part of the company.

Ultimately good employer branding needs to speak about and for, every part of the company. But of course, your employer brander has zero power. They can't tell customer service to do this. They can't tell the feature development team to do that. They [00:24:00] have zero power. All they can do is influence. And the only way they can influence is by having a relationship with all those teams and all those functions.

So if you have someone who thinks in marketing, don't put them in marketing because it's wasting the opportunity to give them kind of a visa into recruiting because now they're going to be in the recruiting meetings. They got to listen to recruiters. They hear the recruiting challenges, but they think in marketing.

So they have two passports suddenly, right? They can be bi country, right? That's a step up into saying, Okay. What is the product team do? And what is the legal team do? And so if you say it always has to be one, I feel like you're missing an opportunity to take advantage of the person you're putting in the role, but that's just me.

There is no right answer. And to me the subject is crazy making to me because ultimately it doesn't matter. Just find a way to make your company more different. Show off what makes it interesting and special and unique and exciting and a great place for someone to work and define who that someone might be.

That is where the work should be done. And I think [00:25:00] talking about where it should live is. It's rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It's it's not serving anyone, but it's a fun fight to have. And I do watch employer branders have it.

Michelle J Raymond: I'm sure it's no different to, where does creating LinkedIn content or the Company Page, where does that align to?

Is it the marketing team? Is it the sales team? Is it the HR team? So I feel your pain getting pulled in all of those different directions. And there isn't a one size fits all. People always ask me exactly the same question and I'm like, I can't really answer that. What's going on in your business?

James Ellis: Who's really good at writing interesting copy. Congratulations. You now own LinkedIn.

Michelle J Raymond: Yeah. Who actually is passionate about it would also be helpful. I would imagine these days, we've talked about employer branding can be in so many different places, but as you know, LinkedIn is my thing and the people that listen to this show, it's their thing as well.

Employer branding on LinkedIn, can you share maybe three tips for best practices about at the bare minimum, what should companies be doing on LinkedIn to move [00:26:00] towards, people learning more about their employer brands?

James Ellis: Okay. So three ideas here. The first is your LinkedIn is so not your career site. It's amazing. It's wonderful. Anybody who's been through a career site reorg or redesign, it's like giving birth to elephants. It's just so painful. There's so many people in the room. They all have opinions. None of them are particularly good. All of them outrank you. So you have to listen to them. And it's just a nightmare of compromise.

And it's just brutal. Anybody who's been through it or led it, like the last thing they ever want to do is update their career site. Cause like I just survived that war. Why would I go headlong back into the battlefield? No, thank you. And that's why most career sites are like three years old because no one wants to touch that thing.

 I say your career site is what you want to be. And that's who your company thinks it is. It's a bit of a tent pole. Your LinkedIn is the beating pulse of what your company cares about today. Not only did you write it yesterday, it was probably also written by a 27 year old social media kid and not run [00:27:00] by 4000 people.

If you're lucky, legal saw it before it went out the door. So it's got a raw feel to it. It's got a lot more opportunity to say something of meaning and the companies who try and take that. Well, We have to Align with what it says in the career set. I'm like, Oh my God, no, you are missing the opportunity.

You're like saying I've got ski boots and ballerina slippers and they should feel about this. No, they're different things. Use them differently. Sorry. I get off on a tangent. Two, your story is not your topic. Your topic is not your story. So here's what I'm trying to say, if you're a company that cares about innovation or status or support or values, whatever the thing it is you care about, you don't go out on LinkedIn and say we care about innovation. We care about innovation.

 If I said innovation to you. No, I'll say it this way. If I said happy to you 4000 times, how happy would you be at the end of that process? You cannot shout that into existence. What you can do is take the stories that are already happening and realign them to tell the story you want to be.

You won an [00:28:00] award? Congratulations. Don't just say, Hey, we won an award. We're so proud. Say why you won the award. Connect it to that brand sensation, that thing you want to be known for. If you do a day in life video, talk about how it connects to the brand. Hey, your CFO is going to speak at blah, blah, blah conference. Talk about how it connects.

You can twist and realign every topic, which you can't change, to the story that you care about. And I see so many companies given on a silver platter. Here's an interesting thing to talk about. They just say, cool. We won an award. You might as well have just shut up. I'm sorry. You might as well have saved the keystrokes kind of labour. Just not said anything because nobody cares about that. Hey, you want an award. So what? Tell me why that matters. Tell me how that illustrates or proves or whatever the story you want to tell. So it's not the career site. Story, not topic.

The third one is this Incredibly tactical. You write this article, you got this award, or you're published [00:29:00] someplace, and invariably, hey, take a look at what our CFO said on this thing, link. I call these hallway posts. There's no actual information. You're just walking down the hallway to the thing you want them to do.

Go click this link, go read this article, go watch this video, whatever that is. Just look at your data and tell me exactly how many people are walking all the way through the hallway to the other side. Like nobody, like maybe 2% if you're lucky. And 2% that means 98% of people, you had them. They were right there. You paid for their attention and you said, I don't want to talk to you.

What? What? Why? And so all you have to do is say, Hey, our CFO did this amazing thing about blah, blah, blah, blah. Topic is now story. Tie it to the story. If you want to read more, here's the link. That way, even if I don't go all the way through the hallway to the door, I still gleaned What your company cares about because it's what you talked about. Missing the opportunity to re [00:30:00] embed and reinforce and validate your brand story is the biggest wasted opportunity. And I see it all the time on LinkedIn.

Everybody just says, here's the link. Here you go. Watch this video. Here you go. Oh, you're being given gifts and you're just throwing them away. Makes me crazy.

Michelle J Raymond: I think that probably is the thing that presses my buttons and I think it's driven by people that get given the wrong KPIs. Like the KPI is website visits as opposed to the KPIs deliver value to your audience in a way and where they are and what they want.

And you know, so I, I feel for people that are responsible for this kind of thing that are measured by the wrong things, therefore driving the wrong behaviours. And I see it all the time, when the KPI is get more followers. Why? What are you going to do with them? Nothing. Yeah. Okay. You've got the most. There is no trophy on LinkedIn.

If there was, I would have won it. Although I have to have a shout out to Sue Griffey, who did make me my very first LinkedIn trophy. And I do hold it here because I'm a big fan of winning. [00:31:00] But James, like we've covered so much ground here, which I really appreciate.

I have myself learned a lot about this particular, passion of yours. One last tip that you would like to leave my audience with that are listening in today.

When it comes to employer branding, what's the thing that they have to get in place up front before they launch this thing, that's going to set them up for success.

James Ellis: They have to be willing and have the guts or the courage to not look and sound like everybody else. So much of employer branding has been boiled down to the, what I refer to as the pretty pictures, pretty words department. Hey, go make an Instagram channel with some pretty pictures.

What am I to do with that? I said pretty pictures. I think I completed that thought, right? Who cares, right? Who cares? Who cares if your job posting is attractive? If it doesn't say anything, who cares? And I've been in too many rooms where leadership goes, they're getting a bind and they don't know which way to go and they turn to one another and they [00:32:00] say, what does Google do?

Hey, guess what? Unless you're Google, who cares? You gotta be you. You gotta be willing to be you to know what you stand for, to know what you care about, to know what you reward, to know how you're different. If you're not willing to do that, don't bother getting into employer branding because you'll be lumped in with all the other companies making pretty pictures that do nothing. That make clickbait titles that go nowhere.

Paying for their ChatGPT bills because that's all that's going to generate that content and it's going to be meaningless and it's going to sound like every single thing and it's going to lead to employer blanding, and that is painful. Don't do it.

Michelle J Raymond: I am sitting here just, you know, just going yes, yes, yes. Because we come at things from a slightly different perspective, but this is exactly the same conversation I have with clients, whether it's their Company Page, whether it's the personal brands, whether it's the CEOs, LinkedIn profile.

The last thing you want to do is lose your actual advantage, which is being [00:33:00] different to everybody else. The second we try and become like, I call it like the stock image, you know, where you've got one of every colour standing around a boardroom table, looking at one laptop screen with the pose. Throw that out the window.

Like Dare to be different, I think is probably, exactly. It's just really, do you do that every day? No, you don't. And for me, the difference is. Show people behind the curtain, stop polishing things to within an inch of its life, show us the real stuff. That's what works on LinkedIn.

That's what works when people say to me, Oh, what kind of content should I put on my Company Page? People want to see what actually happens that I can't find from your website. I can't find from the typical social posts on Company Pages, which are just stock standard images, over branded. Look like ads, smell like ads, may as well be ads because everyone's scrolls.

And so for me I fully connect with what you shared today and I just want to say, thank you so much for your passion on this topic because[00:34:00] I'm a big fan of this right now. I'm dying to find more people in my feed that actually care about stuff that they tell people and that you live and breathe this stuff, and I'll make sure that people get the links to buy your books and I'll be jumping on that line as well, so I can learn more.

So James Ellis, thank you so much for sharing why employer branding on LinkedIn matters more than ever for B2Bs. I think you nailed it. So thank you so much.

James Ellis: Thanks, Michelle. Thanks for having me. This has been an absolute blast.

Michelle J Raymond: Cheers.