Welcome to Human Marketing, a weekly podcast for B2B marketers, unpacking how brands can stay authentic, demonstrate authority, and build trust as AI floods or feeds with content. I'm Chris Nelson, founder of Human Video. We remotely produce podcasts and other video content and real humans and just the right amount of soul. Michelle, welcome to the Human Marketing Podcast.

Thank you for having me. I'm coming live all the way from down under, so this is an exciting conversation for me.

I was going to say, I think you win the prize for furthest away so far in the world of remote production. I'm based in Belfast, in Northern Ireland, so you're, I think, geographically on the other side of the planet, which is kind of awesome and I'm really grateful. What time is it with you now? Is it like eight o'clock or something?

It's 7:00 PM at night, but that wasn't a bad thing because my first client this morning was 5:00 AM so this is pretty reasonable hour. It doesn't happen all the time. I don't want to create this perception that Michelle J. Raymond gets up at 5:00 AM every day for a clients. I don't, I'm too busy having my ice bath, Chris. No, just joking.

Oh, it's brutal. I mean, yeah, I was kind of feeling bad enough that you were doing this late at night, but that's possibly even worse that you had an early start as well. But I really appreciate you joining me at this time and I'm really looking forward to the chat. Michelle, just to kind of get started, do you want to just give the listeners a brief who you are, what you do a little bit about your story might be leading up to that as well. I'd love to hear the Michelle Backstory.

Yeah, the Michelle Backstory goes back 10 years, but this isn't a long story, but my career was spent in B2B sales, so I was the account manager out on the road peddling wares for different types of manufacturing companies. Mostly I moved into a new industry, turned up at the job and they said to me, Michelle, here's your 80 customers. Here's the 10,000 ingredients that we sell. I was selling all the ingredients in skincare and haircare that you can't pronounce on the back of Oli your labels. And they said, go and sell. And I said, okay, that's fine, but they're spread around Australia, which is ginormous. How do you expect me to do this? And they said, we don't care, Michelle, that's your job. Go figure it out. And everybody, I had just got my job through LinkedIn. That's pretty much the only time I'd used it.
And I realised that there were some people there that were posting content. So I ran back to my boss and I said, do you mind if I put some stuff out here about our products on LinkedIn? And he said, Michelle, does it cost anything? I was like, I don't think so. And I came back and I was like, no, it's free. And he goes, okay, I don't care. Just go and sell. And I was like, okay, here we go. So I started to create some content, but I realised, Chris, if you just create content but you don't have a community or an audience, you're talking to yourself. So that wasn't helping me with my sell more stuff cause so I went back and went, okay, what am I going to do? I'm going to build a community. And so I built the world's most amazing community around the beauty industry. No one was doing it back then. Fast forward to March, 2020 that year that we all kind of like to forget that COVID year. Well that's when I quit my job and I decided that I was going to go and help people learn how to sell on LinkedIn. And so I've been doing that ever since. And I love, when I work with clients, they're in the B2B space predominantly, and they come to me and they say, Michelle, we know we should be on LinkedIn and I take care of everything else that goes after that.

Amazing. I love that. I didn't realise that it was kind of a COVID coinciding start. Yeah, I mean I'm always really interested in COVID stories as it were for me. I was a commercial filmmaker making my living, flying around the world, making films and everything stopped. And it was pretty brutal to be honest with you. And I did different things, but it actually was the thing that it was kind of the catalyst for getting into the world of remote video production, what we're doing right now. And I've ended up making a career out of that. I was forced into, I guess getting good at doing it this way and it actually has ended up being a wonderful thing for me, helping people all around the world. So that's fabulous. One of the things obviously that you kind of do to promote your business in a big way is also podcasting.
I'd love it, as we said before started this probably people dive into the LinkedIn world, we will get it absolutely to the LinkedIn Gold. But I'd love to just, one of the things we do is help businesses produce podcasts, so video podcasts specifically and all the great things that come from that. I'd love to just, you have social media for B2B Growth podcast, which I've listened to quite a lot of over the time. I'd love to just hear a little bit about that journey for you, how you feel about podcasting. I'm assuming you enjoy, I'm hoping you enjoy it or it'll be a really unpleasant process. The amount of it that you get to do and just the benefits I think for your business and how you integrate that into your LinkedIn content as well, if we could.

Yeah, for sure. So I need to confess straight up that I don't listen to podcasts. I can think of nothing worse than trying to learn by listening. I hated school classrooms for exactly this reason. So sorry to all of the podcast listeners out there. So it becomes an even weirder thing that I actually do two podcasts and love guesting, and I do that pretty regularly as well. So I have the LinkedIn branding show and social media for B2B growth. And so for somebody that doesn't listen to them, why do I invest so much of my time and energy into that particular style of content, into that style of content? And the funny thing was, a friend of mine, Michelle Gryphon, who I do the LinkedIn branding show with, came to me a few years back and she said to me, Michelle, to build your personal brand, you need a podcast.
And I was like, do I really? Because she's all about personal branding and I was talking about company pages and company branding and I was like, this branding stuff, I don't really get it. And everyone wanted to be a thought leader. And she goes, no, no, you've got to do it. So I did what I always do, figured out how to do the tech side of things and worked out what tools I should use and what microphone I should buy and all that kind of stuff. Never gave a thought to maybe I should listen to a few podcasts or figure out who the podcast is for or have some kind of strategy. Newsflash always have a podcast strategy upfront. It's much easier in the long run. I can give you the handy tip. So I got going and I am up to about 185 episodes of the social media for B2B Growth podcast.
It took me about 18 months to realise, oh my God, when people listen to podcasts and they're loyal to your podcast, they are super loyal. They're not switching out, they're showing up week after week, episode after episode. They're doing posts on LinkedIn telling people if they enjoyed it, they're reaching out behind the scenes. And I've got to say they make the best clients that I love working with because they know exactly what I'm like, they know what to expect, they're on board with my values and my style. And realistically, the only question that they normally have is how can we make this happen? And so it's really easy and as the salesperson in me goes, this is crazy. I get to reach people all over the world. I work with people globally and I don't even know that they're out there. And it's such a weird thing podcasting for me because there's no likes, there's no comments, there's not even a name realistically of who's out there listening. So if you are listening to this podcast, please reach out to Chris and I and let us know that you listened because I don't know about you, Chris, but I find it bizarre that I feel like half of the time I'm like, hello, is anybody out there?

A hundred percent. It's like this one way friendship, isn't it? You don't know they're there. But then in other situations, I've heard it so many times when people maybe finally reach out when they're interested in your services, they feel like they know you so well, they've already listened to you for ours and ours and ours, they've really got to know you. They've really got to like you. And maybe they meet you at an event in real life and something and they're like, oh, Michelle. And you're like, dunno who you are. But they've been on this journey with you. I really love that you picked up on the fact that they make the best clients as well because that's the thing, the hard work is done. They've bought into your way of doing things. They've listened to your content for so long that the ease the sale is done at that point. I hear it so many times from our clients, people are just arriving as inbound leads going, I totally get it. I'm fully on board. How do we get started? And in terms of the output of and the repurposing potential of podcasts, tell me just a little bit about I guess how you go about that and what the benefits are for you across thinking from a LinkedIn content point of view maybe specifically as well.

Yeah, so the thing that I learned a few years back was all of my amazing effort that went into creating short form LinkedIn posts disappeared down the drain 48 hours later, never to be seen again unless somebody really used the search bar. But on LinkedIn, most people just scroll to find information and I was like, I'm putting all of this effort into things and it's just disappearing. So I looked at other platforms like YouTube and podcasting to look for places where my content would have a longer shelf life. That was one piece of the puzzle. The other piece of the puzzle was when I first recorded all of my podcast episodes, they were guest episodes that I would have somebody else come and join me and I recorded them via Streamy yard and I was streaming them at the same time to LinkedIn that I recorded them.
So then I had this video content I could repurpose. I had the conversation I could repurpose into the audio. And from there, obviously fast forward, I'm much more evolved now and I realised, hang on, this thing's brilliant. I have got content coming out of everywhere. I now use my transcript for my podcast episodes to create a newsletter that I do on LinkedIn every week that goes out to 10,000 subscribers. I can use the video version, I can use the audio version. I know I'm preaching to the choir to your audience, but honestly there's myself and my partner in our business and she hates all things social media. And she's like, why did you create this business? I'm like, I love it. But for someone that's had no experience with the tools that are available now, she can help me edit the podcast. She can do all the clips, she posts them with the tools that we use to schedule things.
I'm now showing up in YouTube shorts, even TikTok gets a little bit over it. Now I'm not trying to be an expert on those other platforms, but I do want to squeeze every last bit out of my content that I create because I put so much effort into the thoughts that go into it and it is very much strategy driven now and practical tips for people to implement. So I want more people to hear about it. I want more people to learn and I can't find a more efficient way to do this. If there was, I'd go for it. But you can't go from short posts to long as easily. It's too much hard work, but from long to short, shut up and take my money as they say on one of our ads here.

I love that. I love that. Yes, that is what I said to my potential customers as well. I mean a hundred percent. It is this amazing content engine and all of the things you mentioned are the other things that we either do for our customers or recommend that they do. In terms of the written side of things as well, you're having these amazing original thought conversations often with third parties who are, there's the wonderful advantage of borrowing audiences and all of those great things happening in the cross promotion, which is really mutually beneficial. But then as you say, blog posts and newsletters is a massive one. And even just articles and your LinkedIn content, we have a lot of customers come to us and they're stuck or they're drowning in the content creation process from scratch. It's like every day is like, what are we going to do next?
Or for helping maybe leadership with their content. But just like the podcast kind of solves all of that, it almost gives you too much. I find it's like, oh, well, we're going to squeeze in the output of all of this great stuff and it's a wonderful problem to have and it just feels like a wonderful way to do it. And I feel like B2B is kind of on this great journey of catching up with the sort of consumer world which has been doing this for a longer time, which is often the case with most of the things B2B does. But it's great and we're totally here for it and just I wanted to chat to you about it because you've great example, 180 odd episodes in there is an amazing achievement. The stats of people getting to that are so little. What is the average B2B podcast? It's like gets to episode eight or something like that before it flops.

I can definitely see how that would happen because it is hard work and those numbers when you first start, oh, I got 10 downloads. Okay, wow, if I'm ever on LinkedIn, I get thousands of impressions. Why would I pick one over the other? And it wasn't until later on that I realised the power of those 10 and that they were going to come back week after week after week, and I didn't have to rely on an algorithm. And with the LinkedIn branding show, I do that with Michelle Gryphon, who's my co-host, and we literally took our episodes and turned it into the LinkedIn branding book, which had links back to the podcast originally in the first version. And it was a way to keep us having the discussions, figure out what our talking points were that we were going to use in the book. It was nice to have the stories to come back.
There's so many different ways that you can use this content and this format that my biggest lesson that I would have to say is I always thought I needed a guest to shine the spotlight on me. And it's actually the other way round. It was only last year that I decided to take the plunge and start doing episodes by myself. Best thing that I ever did, scariest thing that I ever did. But for those of you who are considering, do I need guests or not? For me personally, I wish I'd started by myself earlier. You don't need those guests. They don't help your podcast grow. I mean, Chris, you can shoot me down if you disagree, but I've had so many big name guests with hundreds of thousands of followers and I loved the conversation personally and I got relationship building out of it with these people and that has a value. But did they help me promote or grow my podcast? I don't think so. My audience was coming back from me each time. So for those of you who would genuinely want to be thought leaders in the B2B space, go by yourself back yourself. Honestly, it's awful In the beginning, you'll criticise yourself until all day, all night. But once you get over that and realise the power, honestly, it's just such a gift that you can give to people.

That's amazing and slightly awkward, Michelle, that you're my guest on this podcast currently. And that's the advice.

I know I get that. But I'm also, I love guesting, right? Because I love having conversations with other people. So I get that completely contradicts what I've just said. And this is where I say building the relationships and having the conversations. That's powerful. But don't rely on it or think you need it to grow the actual podcast. That's the thing that I learned. I still have guests from time to time. I miss talking to people. I go crazy talking to myself all the time.

I wonder, is the ideal a blend maybe waited to doing it in your own or as you say, I mean selfishly, I love this. I love all the conversations that I've been having. I'm super excited about all the possibilities of conversations in the future. There's probably other reasons for that. Maybe because running the business on my own currently, and it's just like this wonderful way to have the conversations and have bounce ideas off folks and learn from other people as well. But I'm hoping that the audience really appreciates that as well. But yeah, and actually what I've seen is some people start on their own and then sometimes the opposite is they progress into having guests. But I went straight in with guests and I'm also open to the whole thing just evolving over time, which is probably sounds like what happened with you. I think it's really important that it reacts to its audience and maybe keeping it fresh as well in terms of it changing a bit as well. I really like that

If I didn't have guests in the beginning, I would've been one of those statistics that did eight episodes. I cannot be trusted to do it for myself. I need an accountability partner. And having those guests booked in was my accountability. So there is nothing wrong or bad with having guests. In fact, I've had some of the most brilliant conversations with some of the best B2B marketers around the world, and I don't want to name drop, but when I think about it, it was a moment where there was special moments for me just as much. And I think sometimes when you're creating as much content as what I do, so if you think about it, I've got a couple of newsletters, couple of podcasts, YouTube channel, LinkedIn, multiple company pages, my personal content, I do it for my clients. When you add all of that up, you have to be selfish at some point and do things that you love and you enjoy.
And I didn't do that very well a while back. I was just doing it. It had to be done and it became a chore. And I believe especially with podcasting, people can hear that and feel that on the other side. And I remember listening to, I think it was Jay Klaus's podcast, one of the very few episodes of podcasts that I've ever listened to. And episode you hit podcasts episode. Episode with Yeah, I know. And I was at the gym, stuck on the bike. The only time I listened to them when I'm stuck and I can't move. And it was Miss Excel who is some magical big creator over on TikTok. I'd never heard of her. I dunno why I clicked on that episode. But as she was saying, and it really resonated with me that what you say and how you say it and that energy that you deliver it with, people feel that.
And there's a level of kind of responsibility. So I didn't want to add to the noise, especially now in the world of ai, there is a lot of noise and you can feel it. And this is what people are complaining about, not we've got these great tools, but because it feels like no one's there, they're hollow words. And so this is what I'm trying to say to people is that be responsible for what you put out there and don't just tick and flick because your audience will literally switch channels and that's not on them, that's on you. And yeah, that's another lesson that I've learned along the way. But in the beginning I couldn't have care less to be honest. I was just, I've got the text sorted.

Yes, I love all of that. Thinking about the output of that, I guess the distribution of that, you've already mentioned YouTube and shorts and TikTok and that. Tell me just a little bit about YouTube's fascinating to me. You've done the work, you've made the podcast and in the opposite, so you mentioned that LinkedIn at the moment, it feels like was like a two week shelf life on LinkedIn because it keeps stirring up. We'll get to that as well. But YouTube, it's there forever and there's this wonderful search opportunity I think, is it still technically the second biggest search engine or now the biggest search engine in the world? I think that's an amazing thing from the evergreen nature of the content sitting there. How has YouTube worked for you in that distribution piece? You mentioned again, the fewer numbers, but I've heard it said one YouTube view from the right B2B buyer could be worth a hundred times more than just a consumer watch, I guess Steven.

Yeah, it's really interesting. So I have a love hate relationship with YouTube and right now we're on the love phase, so I just need to put that out there. So what happens for me is I'm human like everybody else. One part of me absolutely loves creating content to help other people. I do it in so many different ways and the reason I have a YouTube channel is I realise that that's a place where people go to learn. How do I do something is default in most people's brains. Go to YouTube, watch a video on that, and that's how a lot of people learn. So I realised as a content creator, if I wanted my message to land with as many people as possible, not everybody wanted to read long form articles and newsletters and books and things like that. I love to do. I'm a reader, that's why I have the podcast.
So people who like to listen, they learn in that way. And then obviously visual learners was the last frontier. So I started to create them and I enjoy them and they were resonating. And then I go through this moment where I compare myself to those million follower YouTube channels with their fancy editing and all the other stuff, and I go, I'm not like them. I don't do my videos like them. And I wasn't at the stage where I wanted to invest money to get somebody else with expertise to do it. I couldn't see the value of it. And so what would happen is I'd go, oh, stuff it, I'm going back over here. I'm going to go and do my newsletter or something like that, which is what I'd love. And so I'd been backwards and forwards a little bit over the last probably three years with that.
So I am up to about, I dunno, 4,000 followers. I would dump my podcasts, the video version over on YouTube and just think if someone lands there and I get something out of it, so be it. But I am not putting anything into it until about, I don't know, six months ago when I saw some YouTubers at Social Media Marketing World, I was speaking there, but I went and watched them and they were talking about titles and thumbnails and how important that was. And I thought, you're absolutely right. I've never put any effort into those two things because I hate doing that. And the DIY person in me who likes to figure everything stuff out, didn't want to admit that I wasn't good at it and I needed help until randomly, a young kid from Nigeria shows up in my LinkedIn feed and starts talking about boring thumbnails and he just landed at the right place.
He has like 250 followers and everything in me was screaming run the other way. But he had exactly what I needed. And so we partnered up and then now he creates my thumbnails and my titles and I don't have to do it. And he's brilliant. And now what do you know, the last three videos of my episodes or my podcast have blown up and by blown up I talk in real numbers. So typical podcast episode on YouTube, probably seen by 150 to 300 max and the 300 is probably on the high side. These ones are at 3000, 10,000 and 1500 for the new one. So they are just taking off. And I know it's because I got out of my own way and got myself an expert who's good at this stuff. So if you are out there and you are stuffing around over editing or whatever, look for people like Chris who can help you with this, they make it so easy and then you get a return on the investment for all of that hard work.
And the message that Ahad had for me in his content was basically there's no point making more content if no one's seeing the content that you're making. If they're not clicking on what you've already done, it's time for you to actually look at why aren't they clicking on it? Because I knew my content was good, I knew the message inside. It was just the packaging that it was wrapped in was all wrong and that's why people weren't choosing it. But lesson learned in that part. Sometimes Michelle, if you want to get better at things, you have to admit that you need help. And that's why experts exist out there. No different to how I help people with LinkedIn. That's what I do for other people so they don't have to feel frustrated figuring it out. So lots of lessons, but I am definitely in the love phase right now making lots more how-to videos in my own way, not in a YouTubers way. I hate that part where they make you watch 10 minutes to get to the part where you get the answer. I'm never going to do it that way. And I've just made my peace with maybe my watch time's not as high and maybe they are getting paid more money from YouTube's monetization than I am, but if I don't do it my way, I'm not going to do it at all. And that is a bigger problem than anything else.

That is amazing, Michelle. I love the correlation between making the change and seeing the results. And I know the videos you're talking about, I saw them and the change, I was so intrigued to hear the story I guess about how that happened. And it's a really great lesson on the important a hundred percent. Everyone says thumbnails and YouTube and the titles and this whole SEO thing with tags and everything. But that is critical. And I love actually the story that it was somebody just popping up from Nigeria that helped you with that. I get a lot of those messages as well from all around the world. But I dunno, I'm the human marketing guy. I really dive into conversations with them. I've been really fortunate to travel to many of countries that those folks are coming from India and Bangladesh and other places and all over Africa. And I always a great story about the country they're from and have wonderful conversations with those folks and they are, they're often niching down on something really specific and they've got really good at something specific and they can help everyone around the world. It's totally worth having great chats with those folks.
The videos that did blow up recently were both, a number of them were about the recent LinkedIn algorithm changes, which I think is a lovely segue into LinkedIn. I dunno, feels like it's been a wild ride the past couple months, especially as someone who I started the company at the start of the year and I guess in the past couple of months I've really doubled down, especially the start of launching the podcast and that gave me content to really get going. I've been posting nearly every day and really just trying to do LinkedIn really well in a very human way. I have, again, I have amazing conversations and dms and videos back and forth to folks. I've met many wonderful people around the world and helped each other in lots of different ways. But our algorithm seems like Go home algorithm, you're drunk like, oh my goodness, all sorts of, especially the recent thing of just the impressions kind of dying, but then it lasting a lot longer.
My feed, I see stuff from two, three weeks ago. The way it has treated videos has been kind of weird. The changes in how it presents videos and all just this wild ride as well. I used to make videos going, oh here. Hey guys, here's how to optimise videos at the moment on LinkedIn and it's just like a week later it's all redundant. They're not doing it anymore. So if you can give me a little year deep in the world of this, give me a little overview of tell the world what's happening. Michelle help us.

LinkedIn's drunk, you said it. I think that's it. They've been on that Irish whiskey or something. Indeed,

Yes. It's a big LinkedIn office in Dublin.

We have definitely hit some turbulence over the last few months and the concern that I have is that for people that don't understand what's been happening, it is so rocky right now that they're like, get me out of here. I don't think that this is for me, that's the danger right now for LinkedIn. Now where are they coming from and what are they up to? And it's been kind of interesting. So the first thing you need to understand about LinkedIn as a platform is practically 65 to 70% of the platform is Gen Z and millennials. So every change that LinkedIn's doing right now is aimed at those people in the workforce in that age group, how they consume content, what they like and value and what will be most helpful to them. The overarching principle from LinkedIn is that their whole aim is to connect people with opportunities.
That's what they're trying to do. Now as a business owner, you and I might think, well those opportunities come when my post is seen by as many people as possible. I get that dopamine hit because the bigger the number the better I feel really good and I feel like it increases my chances of growing my business. And it's been like that since 22 years ago when it first started. We've been taught social media, the more impressions, the better. So we are all geared towards what can I do to get more. Then along comes LinkedIn just back in June and they say, no, we're going to change this game, but we're not going to tell anyone when we change the rules. We're just going to basically flick the switch and then overnight you're going to see posts from two to three weeks ago and that's going to become your new normal for a little while, but we're not going to explain why it happened.
So you are now going, what is wrong with this place? Where's all my current stuff? Why did I miss that event? Why is this showing me something and not the current posts that are going on around in my network? And so what LinkedIn came out and said in a business insider article, so this is from them, not from me. And essentially they said, look, we've changed the game. We no longer want you to get reach, which is the number of impressions. That's not our focus for you. We want your content to be shown to more relevant people, but IE that's code for less people is how that translates. So a better stronger audience, more targeted, but in the big reality of things, much fewer people and in most cases we're talking about a drop of 30, 40%. If I look at my own numbers, I'm not immune to this.
The big creators aren't immune to this. It's happened to everybody. The cynic in me also says, oh, is this a coincidence At the same time you are testing that we can now run ads to promote personal products, personal posts for some of us. For me, something like that is a bit of a question mark and sure, maybe I'm being cynical, but curious about the timing. But from the other side of it, I like the idea of it in general. If I'm not someone that's getting paid to make impressions go up, my clients are coming back to me going, Michelle, what have you done? And I'm like, yeah, no, I haven't done anything. It's the same good content targeted at the same audience, but this is what's going on on LinkedIn right now. And that is really difficult to explain. And I feel sorry for a lot of people who I'm lucky I was getting thousands of impressions before I always have done because I've been doing this for a long time, like 10 years.
I don't try and go viral. That's not my thing. I'm the consistent tortoise in the hare. I am definitely the tortoise in that story and that's my style for people that were just starting out and maybe getting, I've got clients that might get a hundred impressions who are now dropping down. They're basically invisible on the platform and that's where we've got a problem and I just hope that people can write it out. It will kind of average itself out video also that went through a crazy period. So end of last year you could post any video and end up with millions of impressions. And I'm talking millions and I had friends of mine that were getting it regularly. Fast forward to now, I don't think LinkedIn knows what to do with the video feed. They're promoting it. Again, there's lots of new ads to help you promote paid campaigns to promote video in different formats.
They want it to work, but I'm not sure or I haven't heard from people that I follow that anybody ever really embraced video on LinkedIn to that extent. We're happy to see little bits of it, but we don't come to LinkedIn to scroll a feed. You would go to YouTube shorts or reels or TikTok where there's the most powerful algorithm in the world that shows you the stuff that you didn't even know you wanted to see, but all of a sudden five hours disappears and that just didn't happen on LinkedIn. So lots of little changes, but yeah, that was kind of crazy.

No, thank you for that. I'm glad that you're feeling it too. And it's not that everyone is, and I've noticed even to your point of being more relevant and more focused, even when the impressions are down, I'm getting quite a lot of interaction, quite a lot of even seriously low impression numbers, but then 20% of them liked it or something. It's an amazing ratio. And in my I guess small world of that, I'm definitely seeing that and that I'm getting reactions from the right people, if you know what I mean, the people that I want to be reaching maybe, which is, yeah, it kind of really tallies with what I'm finding, but it just, yeah, it's so hard to know. And I guess in my specific world of video, it's been really interesting as well. You're absolutely right. They had the video feed in the app, which was a kind of TikTok style flick through.
And for a lot of people that's gone now, especially in Europe, it's certainly gone and there's other things are being served to the US market that I can't see. There's horizontal serving of videos and it, it's so disparate around the world and it's just really hard to keep up. But I'll do my best to keep trying to keep up and trying to serve it. And I agree completely that video is absolutely part of the LinkedIn content strategy. It is not the whole content strategy it never should be and that we recommend that to our clients as well. Absolutely. And I do that certainly in my content mix. Thinking just a little bit more about LinkedIn strategy, I guess I'd love to hear a little bit more about, this is a human marketing podcast, so thinking about social selling and especially maybe in, you mentioned it before, let's talk about AI a little bit.
My take is that there is, there's a real proliferation of AI content. There's a lot of kind of Lally created AI content. It's super obvious sometimes in text and I'm not just talking about m dashes and things like that. It just, it's quite formulaic and it just doesn't sound, I've often heard it recommended to write like you talk and just be a human on there, be yourself crucially. And a lot of people don't do that. Some people are becoming more and more open about the fact that they really use AI a lot in their content creation. And for me, from a visual point of view, then you see a lot of more AI imagery and the kind of full extent of that you mentioned before was AI avatars and actually replacing humans appearing your company, humans being replaced completely by artificial people, which is a kind of wild thing for me.
And it's almost like the whole premise of my company, Michelle is against that as it were. We were all about sitting down with real people, having really genuine conversations and creating super authentic content. So how do you feel, I guess, about how you seeing a world of AI creation, how do you recommend people do or don't embrace ai? And I should also preface of saying I use AI every day in running my business and doing lots of things. I'm not totally anti ai, I'm anti lazy content. And particularly maybe just totally replacing humans, especially sales facing brand humans. I think that's crazy. So yeah, how are you finding all that on how you recommending the use of AI or not in your clients?

My name's Michelle and I use ai. I feel like I need to confess it and just tell people I'm not someone that's anti yet. Okay, here's my perspective on this. The tools are there to help us and use them and I use them, I love them. There are some things that I've been able to do that I would not have been able to do without this technology around. One of the things that scares me the most about it is the fact that people are almost leaning towards that in place of themselves. IE, they're inadequate. They don't measure up. They need to be more professional, more this, more that they're not enough and that's why they're using these tools to replace their voice that in their mind, nobody wants to listen to what they have to say. That breaks my heart. That is the thing that I am out to stop if I could have as many conversations as it takes to really empower people to get over their own personal fears.
When we wrote the LinkedIn branding book, the first section is absolutely devoted to the roughly 28 fears that we could come up with that most people go through when they're about to create content. Has it all been said before? What if people judge me? What if I'm not smart enough? English is my second language. What if I lose my job because this post isn't insert whatever. People come up with so many different reasons. It doesn't matter if they're starting out, doesn't matter if they're at the top of their game. I work with some of the most amazing consultants around the world when I ask them, why aren't you putting your voice out there and talking? They've written books and they've done all this. There's this kind of perception when you come to LinkedIn, you become a LinkedIn version of yourself. And I had someone in training the other day say to me, Michelle, I need to tell you I don't like LinkedIn.
It's where people show up and make out the best version of themselves and Aggrandize and all this other stuff and I hate it. I think it's the least trustworthy platform where people just make up this brilliant version of themselves. I was like, wow, that's not my experience. And we got into where that had come from because I've built an amazing community and that's what drives me. So I think if you are using the tools to support you, to help you get going, I'm all for it. That's what they're there for. But if you just use them at the bare minimum, you end up with an average result that reflects back on you, you become average. So I think that a self written in your own voice post or piece of content, whether it's a video or any kind of content, if you do that, that will always resonate higher than any perfectly put together post that Chatt, BT or any of the other tools help you with I use after I've created something and then say, can you help me refine it for the most part, or taking transcripts and turning them into newsletters.
It's amazing for taking my existing words and putting it into other formats. I love it for that. But yeah, my biggest concern is absolutely people thinking that they're not good enough or worthy enough of sharing their own voice. And I always say to my clients, show up. We want to create your digital twin on LinkedIn, so not a LinkedIn version of yourself. Why do I say this, Chris? Because I've been a LinkedIn version of myself when I became a business owner and I'd been creating LinkedIn content for six years. It was just something fun I did on the side in my sales job. As I shared earlier, there was no pay, no KPIs, no anything. I was just doing it for fun and living the dream and it didn't matter if I stopped or started away, we went. But as a business owner who had no idea about how to set up a business, it was never my plan.
It was something that kind of happened and I set this business up and then I looked around and went, okay, what are all the other LinkedIn trainers that have been doing this for a long time? How do they show up on the platform? And I found some really cool ones and a lot of them are my friends now, but I looked at them and a lot of the content was like how tos? And it sounded like a help desk. And I was like, okay, that's what I'm going to create. I'm going to create my version of the how tos. And I did that and I lasted maybe six weeks and went, if this is what owning your own business is that I have to feel like this. I have to button myself up and not say things or hold things back or have zero personality.
My only job is to be the help desk, then I'm out of here. This is not for me because I was holding back things like I actually care about people. I am a complete empath that really feels things for other people and wants to help and have a genuine impact. I didn't tell anyone about that. I would go if you this with your company page and that with your company page and oh my god, if I look back, look, you go through this and you learn and you've got to start wherever you're comfortable. But yeah, when I look back I was like, oh my god, I just have to show up as me. That's what resonates with people doing things in my own way. And you can see I had the same journey with YouTube. I've had the same journey with my podcast as well.
I'm lucky that a friend of mine, Neil Lio, who does my podcast coaching and helps me out of those ruts, I nearly threw it away mid last year for other reasons. And so I know what it's like to feel like you don't belong or you're not doing it the right way or other people are better than you. That's my thing. When I think comparisonitis kicks in and I go, oh, Chris is better at video editing than me, so I should just not do any video. That's how my brain goes and I know that it happens for other people as well, and I just want to normalise that in this conversation.

I love all of that, Michelle, thank you. And it's a real reinforcement for me and confirmation that creating, just turning up as yourself and creating content that is a hundred percent authentic and from you and all parts of you is really important and really valuable. So thank you for that. That's really, really great. One thing that gets missed a bit, I guess, and obviously LinkedIn favours personal profiles. The company page is something you talk about a lot and help people with a lot. And it does feel like, I think particularly now it feels like this forgotten part of companies or of brands being on LinkedIn doesn't get the love that it deserves and maybe a bad press. How do you advise people to when they're putting all their effort into turning up as themselves as especially maybe for people where a lot of companies are founder led now, and in terms of founder led branding and it's very much putting the humans in front as they should. How do you advise people to, I guess, humanise their brand more on company pages and just help company pages win a bit as well so that they're not just as forgotten and left behind?

Yeah, and the ironic part about this latest LinkedIn algorithm changes, I don't think any company pages would've even noticed because it's been that bad for them for the last three years. So I've been talking about all things company pages for five years. I get to fly around the world and stand on stages and talk about why they're so helpful. And I'm not going to lie. There are some days when I'm like, oh my god, why did I pick this? Honestly, Michelle, what were you thinking? Because this is hard. And for people out there that are going, there are waste of time. I hear you. And if you are a solopreneur or a consultant and that style of business, I would never advise anyone to invest all of their time and energy into growing a company page. I think having one is important for everybody having some kind of content to go over.
So it looks like you're still alive and your business is still there, but you are mostly going to focus on your personal content and your profile because you will get a better return on that effort that you're putting in. So if we park that and just say, okay, solopreneurs and consultants and small businesses just want you to sit on the sidelines just for the next couple of minutes. If you're a bigger business than that or you plan to be a bigger business in the future, maybe right now you're not there, but one day your plan is to have employees or bring somebody else, or maybe the goal way down the track is to sell your business to somebody else. You are thinking about how can I grow this to exit? Then you must start growing your company page now because it will take time and you can actually use your company brand to build up your personal brand.
In the meantime, I refer to that as the power of two and the LinkedIn branding book goes into this in a lot of detail, but put simply it's that one plus one equals three by helping them build together. So you can use the company page to put the person on a pedestal and you can use the person to amplify the voice of the page and vice versa. You build both brands faster than if you were to cut one side off or the other. So I'm a cake and eat it kind of person or a Tim Tam and kind of eat it kind of person as people know me for. I've got listeners out there that don't know what a Tim Tam is. It is a chocolate biscuit. If you're from the uk, there's penguin biscuits, which are, I have done the test, they are inferior.
I am here to absolutely tell you they're not as good, but I digress from the more important conversation. But ultimately you can use your company brand to build up your personal brand and do it faster because no one looks and says, oh look, there's only one employee. No one cares. They just go, is that content helpful or is what that brand saying going to help me get closer towards my goals? And so if you are a small business, jump back into this conversation. How you can do this is take your best posts that you're doing personally and just hit repost as your company page and also make sure that your company page likes every one of your posts. And then that way people start to see you as not just a solopreneur or a one man show. You can then be seen as a legitimate business that has a brand. And when you are working globally, that can be really important because people are, okay, Chris, I really like you and I'm having these conversations and I like your content, but are you a real business? That's what I'm worried about when I'm about to hand over the cash to someone overseas. And sure it's been normalised a lot more since COVID, but before that it's like we would never have dreamed of working with people on the other side of the world. And now I think I've worked with 24 different countries. It blows my mind.

Yeah, no, that's fabulous. About sort of liking content as coming. I've had loads of fun with the sort of alter ego of being human video commenting. You can have great fun with that, but people call it out, but I don't mind. I think it's fabulous. But also I'm conscious that even if it's not organically appearing in people's feeds, when any company starts to put a bit of spend but advertising in any way, even if it's thought leadership stuff, still the brand, the company still appears there and certainly from other ads it's coming from the company and I know I click on the company, I go to see what there is there. I certainly sometimes go to see who the people are, but that's maybe one of the moments where it's really important that there's something there I think, and it is maybe connected with the human brand as well. The same face maybe appears a bit, and that's kind of always my take on it, but I really appreciate that advice, I guess, of reposting stuff. And that's kind of maybe how the human brand could appear there more. Is that fair?

Yeah, absolutely. And create content on the page from time to time that puts you up on a pedestal as employee of the month. We make that joke, Chris,

Boy, the month

Out month Chris is, oh man, we fight over it between Lil and I, we fight every month. Who's getting it? Just think about how can you highlight the cool stuff that's going on in the business, but one reason that people should think about this and why having that ticking over on the company page is important. Say you are negotiating with a B2B company and often it's not just one person that's making the decision, so they get your business name, they go straight to Google, they type in your business name to go and find out a little bit more. Again, why does this person want to work with Chris? They will go there. Your business name will come up first and your website's typically up there, the LinkedIn company page, because LinkedIn, so trusted will normally come in the top few results on that first page.
So if I'm doing my research, I'm going to the website. Yep, everything's amazing. Of course there's nothing anyone ever says bad about themselves on their website. Go to the company page, come across the LinkedIn. That's where we do professional stalking. What's the impression I get when I land on your company page? Is it the red carpet gets rolled out or is it a ghost town? And that's the opportunity that you've got to create a great first impression that is lasting with those brands. And maybe the difference between if they're considering between two different companies, yours has got stuff ticking over, someone else doesn't. It just creates a seed of doubt when there's stuff missing. Are you big enough? Can you handle it? Are you a real business? And in a digital world, when you break that trust or have that seed of doubt, it's really hard to get it back.
So if reposting some content is the way to negate that and just make sure all the fields are filled in and it looks legit, then it's not going to take up hours and hours of your time. But it could just be one of those factors that makes the difference between you and somebody else. And I'm not prepared to take that chance. Obviously for much bigger companies, we have different conversations. There's a whole other different strategy, but assuming a lot of people that are listening to this podcast are in those smaller businesses, aren't running ads, don't have huge teams to rely on, don't think that your company page can't help you grow your personal brands and your employee brands because it absolutely can.

I love that. It's a great place to come into land. Michelle, thank you so much. Obviously you're all over LinkedIn, but how do people find you best on LinkedIn? And is there any other, obviously I'll link to the book and the podcasts and YouTube and everything, but just tell me how people can find out about what you do and see more of your content.

Yeah, I would love them to come and connect on LinkedIn, of course. So it is Michelle J. Raymond, so we'll put those details. The J is in there so you can find me easily. That's why it's there. So from that perspective, that would be great. And I will drop some details for my newsletter that I think would be really helpful for people to understand what's going on on the platform so that when we do hit these turbulent times, which we do hit at the end of every quarter roughly is when they come through and we are seeing things getting rolled out in waves around the world. LinkedIn doesn't just roll it out to everyone because imagine 1.2 billion people would be complaining all at once. They test it in different regions. So it's good. And I'm connected to people all around the world, so if you want to hear things first, yeah, if you could sign up for my newsletter, it'll just be B2B growth code.com/newsletter.
But I would love to be connected with people. Thanks Chris, for this wonderful conversation. I hope that people will get back on the LinkedIn horse, so to speak, and give it another go or not give up right now, even though we're drowning in ai. And that can be a good thing. It can help you get started. But honestly, just if you can show up and be you, I know it's a bit of a cliche, but it's easier said than done, but the platform is just screaming out for real people, so there's a real opportunity for people who embrace that.

Thank you, Rochelle. I love that. I really appreciate your time at the end of this long day that you've had. It's been a wonderful conversation and I really love that final thought about turning up as yourself in a human marketing way. Thank you so much, Michelle.

My pleasure. It's the next time. Cheers.