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BEYOND THE MARKETING DEPARTMENT

AT AN EVENT this year, I ran into the head of strategy for one of the country’s biggest hotel chains. He was excited. As a marketer, he had long known that a major investment in his personal brand would yield benefits for both himself and his employer. He had recently brought this up in discussion with his leadership team, and everyone was in agreement. Thanks to this conversation, the company would be investing in personal branding for leaders across the entire team. The head of strategy recounted all of this beaming with pride.

At that point, everybody I knew seemed to be looking for a new job, so I asked this person how long he planned to stay with the hotel chain. His response: “They’re treating me right. Why on earth would I leave?”

Same event, next day. I’m talking to another head of strategy; this one was with a major restaurant chain. She had also brought up the importance of personal branding with her team, but the response she had received was far less enthusiastic. The CMO said something to the effect of “Do whatever you like, but you’re on your own in terms of funding.” Understandably, this head of digital was angry.

I asked her whether she would stay with the restaurant company in the long run. Her response: “If you were me, and you always had to pay out of pocket to invest in yourself, would you stay?” By the end of the month, she had quit.

Leaders who won’t fund personal branding efforts usually argue that doing so would be an unnecessary expense. And while they may well be concerned about the budget, there is often a deeper fear at play that nobody will admit to—what if we invest in our people only to have them turn around and leave us?

It’s a scenario I know well. When we hired our first VP of sales, we were thrilled. He was a perfect fit for the position, and he had tremendous potential to take the company forward in the long run. We poured a ton of money, time, and energy into training him and helping him develop a thriving personal brand. He worked with us for four years, then went to work for one of our partners.

Was I disappointed? Sure. We were losing a good employee. But was I angry with this person? Not at all. I was happy for him because I genuinely cared about him, and I knew he’d be successful in his next position. In fact, we made sure that we continued to invest in his training up until his last day. And because there was never any bitterness or acrimony, he’s now one of Influence & Co.’s biggest brand advocates working for one of our largest partners. He continues to create opportunity for us on a regular basis.

This experience cemented our belief that an investment in our team is an investment in our company. Recently, two of our employees decided to leave. The transition was a hard one emotionally—these people are like family, after all—but again, we were all excited to see what great things they would do next. One had secured a job at Facebook, and the other at Lyft.

From an opportunity-creation perspective, I’m so grateful to have Influence & Co. alumni advocating for us in such innovative places. And on a personal level, the pride I feel in seeing some of the world’s most innovative companies hire our people is overwhelming.

Employees will leave and pursue other opportunities. Still, it’s important that you don’t let this prevent you from investing in them. Richard Branson once said, “Train people well enough so they can leave; treat them well enough so they don’t want to.” When you invest in your team, your organization becomes a place where people can become their best selves and do their best work. They benefit, you benefit, and your brand benefits long into the future.

A Team Full of Thought Leaders

Your team consists of a diverse and ever-evolving collection of perspectives, experiences, and insights. All of your team members have something valuable to say, and each of them has a trusted position within his or her own networks and social circles. In other words, every employee is a potential thought leader.

And yet so many companies restrict thought leadership efforts to the exclusive domain of the C-suite. In many cases, only one person (usually the founder or CEO) is allowed to publish content in the brand’s name. The logic goes like this: if there are more than one or two voices speaking for the brand, we won’t be able to control the message—and that’s a scary thought. Plus, as I previously discussed, many executives are afraid that strong employee personal brands will make it easier for competitors to poach their top talent.

If you think that rigid guidelines will ensure a unified brand message, I’ve got news for you: your team is your brand, and your brand is your team.

Every time an employee tweets from a personal account, she is representing your company (yes, even if it says “views = my own” in her bio). Whenever your staff shares something on LinkedIn, they do so as brand representatives. There are no benefits to silencing employee voices—you only end up creating dissonant noise and making your team feel disenfranchised (which gives your competitors great leverage in their poaching efforts). What’s worse, you’re squelching one of your most valuable branding assets.

On average, your employees will have 10 times as many social media followers as your brand account.¹ Why wouldn’t you tap into these networks?

By doing so, you can create social proof that can be extremely valuable for your brand. With a team sharing your content, your social distribution numbers will be much larger, and that network can create a domino effect of positive recognition and social proof from users and influencers who interact with it. As I said, social activity and engagement with content is a lot like saying, “I endorse this message,” even if a bio claims otherwise. When that person’s followers see your content, they’ll be more inclined to engage, too.

Remember, your team members occupy the intersection between your brand and the outside world. This puts them in the best position to educate current clients, prospects, and future employees about your culture. If you nurture your employees’ individual abilities to communicate the essence of your brand, their voices will come together in a harmonious way.

Think of it as if you’re conducting a choir—every voice adds depth, nuance, and power. By creating a culture of democratic thought leadership, you can ensure that every team interaction with leads, partners, recruits, and the public will be enriching and inspiring. And for many employees, adding value throughout networks can be a major source of pride. As we saw in the beginning of the chapter, when your employees feel a profound emotional connection to the company, they’re much more inclined to stick around.

Turning your team into an army of thought leaders has a profound positive impact on your audience, as well. Audiences now hold different attitudes about what makes brands and companies authentic, and we’re seeing that shift toward individualism as a form of a brand’s authenticity. Each individual member of your team contributes to your brand, and the more intentional you are about empowering that contribution, the more authentic your audience will perceive you to be.

That’s because when team members speak out for your brand, they humanize it. Suddenly your company isn’t just some faceless corporation; it’s a group of real people who talk about real issues and, in doing so, invite the audience to connect on a human level. And the more members of your team who can connect with your audience, the more likely it is that your company will become top of mind with them.

Breaking Down Silos with Content

Of course, it would be decidedly undemocratic to limit democratic thought leadership to the marketing department. To truly harness the potential of your team, you need to invest in thought leadership across all departments.

I’ve previously explained how crucial other departments (such as sales and HR) are to your content distribution efforts, as they are positioned to deliver the content you publish directly to leads and potential talent.

However, to engage them only after you click “publish” is to leave some gaping holes in your content. Your audience is as diverse as your team is, and you need to provide a window into your organization that is both broad and deep. Not only should voices and perspectives from other departments be present in the content you create, other departments should be creating their own content as well.

So what is the relationship between your content initiative and various departments? What content goals should different departments pursue, and what impact can they expect to see? And, importantly, which departments are positioned to yield the greatest benefits—and should therefore be contributing to your content budget? Here’s an overview.

Marketing

It’s logical that your marketing department would serve as home base for the company’s thought leadership efforts. After all, thought leadership is a communications platform for marketing the people and ideas that make your company special. Plus, your content is fuel for your other marketing efforts, from social media to e-mail campaigns. A robust thought leadership initiative can streamline, enhance, and amplify your entire marketing strategy from the ground up.

The benefits that democratic thought leadership can yield for your marketing department are immense. Having multiple thought leaders represent your company will increase brand equity exponentially. This bolsters company credibility, which in turn dissolves trust barriers, invites customer loyalty, and helps generate qualified leads. There are few marketing goals that companywide thought leadership can’t help you reach.

But what might a thought leader from your marketing team write about? Consider the following excerpt from “4 Ways to Jumpstart Your Content Strategy Next Quarter,” a blog post by Maya Luke.

1. Host a Content Party. Oh, you don’t have regular content parties? This is sort of a ritual every three months for our marketing team, and boy, is it a blast (mimosas may or may not be involved on occasion).

Aside from all the fun and games, this meeting is absolutely necessary for us to brainstorm and outline what the next quarter of content will include and how each piece fits into our overall marketing funnel.

This way, we can plan out three months of a strategy, and everyone understands from the beginning what guest-contributed and internal content needs to be produced. Try hosting regular content parties to plan out your strategy so you can thoroughly impress your CMO with all your ideas.²

In this piece, Maya is speaking directly to a niche target audience—her fellow marketers working on content strategy—and the guidance she provides is as helpful as it is completely, characteristically Maya. Pieces like this helped position Maya (and Influence & Co.) on top of her readers’ minds, which in turn boosted our brand equity and helped attract informed leads. (A quick note: When Maya wrote this piece, she was our director of content and social media. She now works at Lyft.)

Sales

A while back, my VP Natalie Stezovsky had a conversation with a prospect. This person had already made the decision to invest in content; now the choice was between creating it in-house and partnering with a company to manage it for him.

Rather than jumping down his throat with an aggressive pitch, Natalie forwarded to him a post I had published about in-house content teams. The piece is not some thinly veiled advertisement for our services; in it, I actively encourage readers who have the right resources to not hire out their content but create it in-house instead.

In sending this piece, Natalie demonstrated a desire to help. By providing relevant, objective information, she positioned herself as a trustworthy peer and not an agenda-driven salesperson. There’s nothing underhanded about this because if the lead did have access to great in-house writing talent, his company ultimately wouldn’t have been a great fit for us. Our ideal client is someone whose needs and resources align perfectly with ours—which sets the stage for the healthiest, most robust long-term relationship possible.

Constant customer interactions provide your sales team with some of the deepest insight into your target audience. What sales barriers do they struggle with? What concerns do leads have about the industry? By providing thought leadership content on these issues, your sales team can generate trust, establish valuable connections, and develop a reputation for being educators rather than predators. And that can be a tremendous help in closing sales and growing your business.

Recruitment and Training

Recently, I was chatting with a potential new hire. She seemed like a great fit right off the bat. I asked her how she’d heard about the company.

“Your content,” she responded.

About a year prior, she had discovered an article by Kelsey; since then, she had read just about everything our team had published.

“When I read that first piece by Kelsey, I knew immediately that she was someone I wanted to work for. The more I read, the more excited I got about the idea of working in a place where people spoke their minds but didn’t take themselves too seriously.”

By the way, Kelsey’s piece that had initially attracted the candidate was not called “The 6 Things You’ll Love Most About Working for Influence & Co.” In fact, the piece wasn’t even specifically about our company—the focus was on women in tech. But reading the article gave this candidate a sense of the values and philosophy at the foundation of what we do—a sense of our why. As she pored through our content, she also developed a sense of who we are as people, what we care about, and how we personally view our industry. By publishing content like this consistently, we were able to stay on top of her mind. All of these things resonated with her, and they inspired her to apply the minute she saw an opening. (We hired her. Obviously.)

This is the power of content to attract top talent. High-quality, diverse thought leadership content is a portal that invites readers to step into the inner workings of your company and to connect with your values and culture.

When key employees publish bylined pieces, they humanize your brand, revealing their distinct personalities to the world. This makes it easier for potential candidates to envision themselves working with you. Remember, top talent wants to work for the best—by positioning your team and yourself as industry thought leaders, you’re making your company an attractive place to be.

Content is also a means to weed out low-quality applicants. Paul Roetzer of PR20/20, for example, posts articles that are relevant to the company’s current job openings on his website. When someone applies for a specific position, Roetzer tracks the applicant’s activity by using marketing software. Applicants who don’t bother to read the articles don’t get called in for an interview. Think about it—if you publish a piece a day but the candidate sitting in front of you hasn’t read anything you’ve written, what does this say about his level of commitment and preparedness? If he’s competing with a potential hire who quotes your articles and asks in-depth questions about your content and culture, there should be no contest.

Rather than tracking if a prospective employee browses your onsite content on his or her own, consider taking an active approach by sending a candidate content throughout the application and interview process. In the final interview, you’ll be able to gauge how much the candidate learned throughout the process. Intellectual curiosity is a vital trait in good employees, and this process can give you an idea of how interested candidates are in continued education.

Great content won’t only help you find your dream employee—it’s also a valuable training tool. When we were a team of 20 people, I would happily conduct one-on-one trainings with everyone we hired. But now that our team has grown substantially, even working across different cities, that’s no longer feasible. So now we send new employees a “Before Day 1” document that includes content that my leadership team and I have published. This serves as a bridge for us to be involved in the training process from a distance. We still get to play the role of educators, helping bring new hires on board with our company culture and letting them learn about developments in the industry. Content enables us to form a meaningful connection with each employee.

Referral Programs

Referral or partner programs can span various departments, and no matter what kind you set up, a top-of-mind mindset can be extremely effective. It’s easy to think about how awesome you are when you’re raking in referrals, but you can’t get complacent. You’ve got to engage consistently with your partners to take full advantage of your referral program and create opportunity for your business.

Remember all the time we spent discussing likability, helpfulness, and other trust touch points? You can implement those ideas into a referral program to connect with your audience of current partners and clients.

Let me walk you through how my team increased our referrals and what we’ve seen clients do, too. (You can make the necessary changes if you’re switching between B2B and B2C.)

Step 1: Identify what makes a good referral partner or client partner. Before investing time and resources, identify the prospective partner as someone with a network or audience that’s going to be valuable to you.

Step 2: Deliver to this person all the information he or she needs to make an introduction (personally or through your website) to your company as easy as possible.

Step 3: Consider all the trust touch points and tools you have at your disposal and brainstorm ways you can use them to engage this partner. In the past, we’ve offered free services, gifts, introductions, and so on, and if she’s going to send any opportunity our way, she’ll typically do so within the next 90 days or so. When she does, you can move away from content to begin investing more in the kinds of trust touch points that aren’t as scalable and really make the experience as enjoyable and effective as possible.

Using a system like this allows you to prioritize your most valuable partners and make your relationships with them as meaningful and personalized as possible while still keeping everyone engaged with content to stay top of mind.³

Simple, right?

Nurturing Thought Leadership Across Your Team

Now that you understand the why of democratic thought leadership, it’s time to look at the how. Fortunately, the process for positioning yourself as a thought leader runs parallel to doing so for key members of your team. It’s a simple concept, after all—listen to your audience, write about what they’ll find interesting, publish, distribute, and repeat.

However, as gung ho as you may be about the process, you may encounter a bit of resistance from the other potential thought leaders on the team. And indeed, publishing a stream of great, consistent content can sound like a daunting prospect, especially when it seems outside of a person’s job description.

The words of the late, great stand-up Mitch Hedberg come to mind: “When you’re a comedian, everybody wants you to do things besides comedy. They say, ‘OK, you’re a stand-up comedian—can you act?’ It’s as though if I were a cook and I worked my ass off to become a good cook, they said, ‘All right, you’re a cook—can you farm?’”

Some people won’t understand why they should invest their time and energy into becoming thought leaders. This is a common concern, and if you don’t address it fully, it can derail your entire initiative; without a solid understanding of why and an authentic buy-in, the content that the team produces will be either weak or nonexistent.

The first step is to explain how their thought leadership is important to the entire business. Explain to these key employees that as individual thought leaders, they’ll be bolstering the goals and efforts of their respective departments; as a collective, they are the company’s competitive advantage. Get them excited about their contributions—when they share their expertise, everyone benefits.

The next barrier you’ll likely encounter is the fear of writing. As I’ve discussed previously, it’s something that many of us struggle with. Thankfully, to become a thought leader, you don’t need to be a great writer. All your teammates need to do is to supply the raw material—the ideas, insights, and expertise that are already swirling around inside their heads—and the writers will mold it into cohesive, polished content. For people with truly debilitating aversions to writing, make concessions; they can contribute through conversations, interviews, or informal e-mails. Do whatever it takes to ensure that everyone is comfortable and eager to take part.

Technology can also play a powerful role in making the process as collaborative, smooth, and painless as possible. Our team recently created our own software, Core, to help us streamline communication and create content more collaboratively. Plus, software such as 15Five and Slack allow us to crowdsource ideas and information. And remember our old friend the knowledge bank? A robust knowledge bank is a constant, reliable source of collective wisdom, which makes it a vital tool for collaboration.

Finally, make sure that everyone understands the personal benefits of the initiative. Being a thought leader dissolves barriers and positions you on top of the minds you care about. This helps you do your job more efficiently and effectively, and it improves your career prospects. By investing in themselves and their personal brands, your teammates are investing in the entire company.