All right, Alan and Brad, thank you so much for taking the time to be here with me today and to chat.
I'm really excited to dive into our conversation.
I think there will be a lot of ah-hahs for many people that are listening.
But before we get to some of those, whether it's shocking statistics or tips and tricks that you have for our leaders listening, tell us a little bit about yourselves, your
partnership and the overall mission.
your overall mission.
guess I'll hard stop there.
good.
Brad, do want me to kick off or you want to start?
Yeah, so we've been an employee advocacy tool for going on 10 plus years and the partnership is kind of an interesting thing.
I was snooping on my competitors and Brad was a VP of Sales at one of our direct competitors and I booked a demo with him.
And the rest is history, as they say.
history.
So Brad jumped ship to join our company, which I think is pretty, pretty strong indicator of what we're doing and how we've, we've progressed and changed as a company.
And yeah, our mission or our goal is pretty straightforward.
We're here to help organizations activate their executives on LinkedIn, help them find their voice, help them to learn how to grow not only for the brand, but their own personal
reputations on LinkedIn.
It's 100 % of our focus as a company.
Amazing.
And talk to me a little bit about when did you start this and why, you know, obviously LinkedIn has exploded over the past couple of years.
So from what I understand, you were early movers in this movement to move over to LinkedIn.
Yeah, we started, I mean, it's 12 years now.
And I feel like that's a long time ago, almost like I sat next to Moses in high school.
That's how long ago that feels like.
And we started this 12 years ago with a real focus on activating employees.
And what really helped us pivot, of course, we will always help employees with advocacy, but...
About two, three years ago, Pepsi came to us to one of our clients and they said, hey, this is great, this is really working.
Why is this working so effectively?
And we had to do a deep dive on the data.
And what we found out was that 73 % of their employee efficacy benefits, their engagement, their comments, et cetera, was coming from less than 3 % of their employees.
So of course, the next natural question is who are those employees?
And of course, the answer is it was the executive teams, three or four really high profile executives at Pepsi that were driving this massive amount of conversations and engagements
around the brand.
And of course, naturally, those executives themselves also enjoyed some of the shine of representing the brand.
So once we realized that executives have such a massive impact on
success and failure of the brand.
We realized, okay awesome, employee advocacy is great and it's always going to have a seat at the table, but we really need to focus on helping executives succeed on social.
And oftentimes, executives have a lot of the same challenges.
We kept hearing them, the same handful of challenges again and again.
You know, I'm too busy to do this.
I don't know what to say.
I don't want to get fired.
you know what mean?
Because with the cancel culture the way it is, you say the wrong thing one time and you're, you know, eviscerating a 30-year career in 30 seconds.
And then, you know, more practical concerns that a lot of executives had, stuff like, don't want to share my password, are people going to be able to read my personal in-mails
and stuff like that.
So once we understood kind of the problem set of why a lot of executives were...
reticent to jump in.
That's kind what we tackle with our platform in terms of solving those basic problems.
We call them table stake concerns, things that you need to do in order to activate some executives.
And frankly, from time to time, a lot of executives are a little bit older and maybe grew up without social media.
And so need a lot of coaching, need a lot of assistance, and have a lot of concerns around what that means for them.
Absolutely, and I mean, what data to share?
73 % comes from 3%.
That really puts the 80-20 rule to shame, I think, you That's really impressive.
And the fact that, yeah, there are a ton of concerns, and all the way down to compliance.
I don't want to share my password.
is anybody looking at my inbox, right?
Those are all very interesting concerns, enough to dissuade someone from wanting to not just take the time to do it, but to trust somebody else to do it.
So it sounds like you've got to figure it out.
You're working and then...
Obviously we're always iterating and growing, but you achieving success, which is fantastic.
And we're going to get into that in just a second.
But I want to flip it over to Brad for a second.
So Brad, you jumped ship, came over, talked to me little bit about your role here and what stood out to you as the biggest reason, the biggest why to come over and why you've been
here ever since.
Kendra, I'm interested in this.
Why do you love me, Brad?
It is almost Valentine's Day.
Alan, set this up.
You're actually being pumped.
This is couples therapy.
Right.
I wouldn't put it past them.
But I spent my time before social HP and technology and in this space, as Alan mentioned.
And what really stood out to me in terms of what Alan was attempting to do and what the platform does today is to give people an easy button.
At the end of the day, we just talked about a lot of the challenges and Alan referenced the fact that it takes a lot of
oftentimes to get this stuff done and the smallest excuse to not do it is oftentimes all anybody needs to not participate.
You've got to really think of all of the angles and get everybody covered and frankly make it easy for them to do it or they won't.
It's just human nature.
So the ability for our platform to enable teams of people that support.
executives and give them the opportunity to roll out a plan that looks very easy and very simple to their executives because part of it is just getting their buy-in and then
something that they can actually execute on.
It's going to provide value to them and their lives.
It's going to provide value to the organization and to the executives themselves.
Fantastic.
I love that you said the easy button.
I think years ago it was what 20 seconds that would cause us to choose a different path as humans.
20 seconds of something difficult or in our way.
And now I think that's probably shortened.
to far less than 20 seconds.
So the easy button is what everybody's looking for these days.
And I mean, whether it's executives or at the employee level, the fact that you're advocating for them and making it easy means that, as you've said, are becoming more
successful.
And on LinkedIn, of course, we heard that you have to have a brand presence and a brand page.
And now what you're offering is that we shift over to
individuals and executives and individual contributors having that social presence.
So talk to me about some of the shifts that you've seen from brands having their standalone presence.
Is that a thing completely of the past?
Is that still something that should exist or are we solely focused on the individuals that comprise an organization?
Brad, can I jump on that one?
Go for it.
Yeah, so there's two really interesting things.
kind of goes back.
and I think I mentioned this to you off camera before Kendra, last week we did a fireside chat with LinkedIn in New York with a couple of the editors and chief from LinkedIn.
And they mentioned something pretty interesting.
They said that executives get four times the engagement that an average employee does.
And we took that and ran with it and we analyzed the Fortune 500.
brand pages versus the Fortune 500 executives.
And what we found was executives get 100 times the engagement that a brand page does.
And what was interesting about that, and I'm gonna quote Tanya so that I'm not getting this wrong.
Her exact words were,
The reason that people are getting into posts and executives to post rather than companies from their company pages is because like everyone else, you want to see a person across
from you and you don't want to interact with an entity.
And so they told us during that fireside chat that LinkedIn is really leaning into activating executives on LinkedIn.
In fact, they've created a whole new community, internal community team called leadership and executive communication managers.
Their sole job is to activate and help executives carry content on LinkedIn.
And she mentioned that, in not so many words,
they're giving these executives a better and bigger voice.
In fact, that they're picking some of these executives for editorial pieces and they really are leading into the creator side of things from the opposite end of the spectrum.
Instead of just, you know, coaching and creators, they're actually trying to activate executives.
And so just wanted to tie back to one of the things that you were talking about earlier.
Obviously we're all seeing the bloodbath that's happening.
you
industry-wide layoffs everywhere.
Two really close friends of mine who are deep into their careers were let go recently and I was very surprised and shocked by that.
And I had a kind of aha moment, was both of them were at companies that are massive.
They were there for over 10 years.
They hadn't posted on LinkedIn in 10 years.
And they got let go.
And I just looked at it said, gosh, you have not spent any time building your personal brand.
And the number of people who are swimming out there now, you're competing against a massive amount of other really massively qualified people.
What does your network look like?
You kind of rested on your laurels sitting on that Accenture, IBM.
whatever name brand company, job, Amazon, wherever you were, and you're like, I didn't need to do that, I'm working for Amazon, I'm on Easy Street.
Well, when Easy Street ends, you're up Schitt's Creek, let's call it what it is.
So what you should be doing is, this is one of the few circumstances where it's a nice win-win.
Driving.
your thought leadership on your personal brand helps the company exponentially, but it helps you personally because then you become a thought leader within whatever industry or
vertical you're in.
You become a voice and now it happens.
It happens to all of us.
At some point in time, the sun stops shining and or maybe you make a move up the ladder as a result of the network you've built.
So it's kind of interesting on the one hand LinkedIn saying, hey, they're raising their arm and saying this is the most
thing in 2025 for LinkedIn, it's way more important than your LinkedIn personal, your LinkedIn corporate page.
And from the company side, they're looking at it going, this is super important to us.
LinkedIn is telling us that they're supporting it.
And from your personal perspective as a middle manager or upper manager, this should literally be one of the most important things that you're investing your time in because
your network is your net worth right now, especially in this era that we happen to be in right now.
Absolutely.
And what do they say?
Clothes, mouths don't get fed.
Right?
If you're not, yeah.
Thank you.
Yeah.
If you're not putting your words out there, letting people know that you, you're available, what your skills are.
It's true.
Right?
were jealous of my network.
And yet there was a little bit of one-upmanship there is what I felt out of that.
All right, I got you.
as you liked it, you know, then we'll just award one point and we'll see what else comes out of the conversation.
Which I think is, you know, you're absolutely right though.
This is...
not the first round of Mass.afs we'll see.
certainly, or it hasn't been the first, I should say, it certainly won't be the last.
So now more than ever is a time to get serious about what you're presenting to the world and building that network and net worth to give you that shout out back.
You
But another thing that I think, and tell me your thoughts on this because I'm very curious.
So now I'm looking for a role, let's say hypothetically, I'm looking for a role.
go onto LinkedIn and I'm looking for an organization that aligns with my values because we know that people are very values driven in their job search these days.
So I'm looking for a company that's aligned with me and I can't find anything beyond their website on LinkedIn versus I see a company and I can get a
for the authenticity of their senior leadership or really any leader in their organization, any individual contributor, and I can sense and put the pieces together.
Here's what they're all about.
Chances are I'm going to go with the brand or the company with more visibility.
and more authenticity from the human connection side.
Do you find that that's a very useful tool for recruitment as well, not just obviously for sales?
Brad, what do you think?
79 % of job seekers say one of the first two things they do is go to the CEO's personal LinkedIn page of the prospective company.
So it's a massive statistic again in terms of what could be employees.
What's that talent pool looking for?
They're looking for an individual person.
who has a presence that they can connect with, they can see what they're all about, they make the assumption, and oftentimes appropriately so, that that person is representing the
company.
How are they gonna feel working for that person, for that company?
What are the values of that organization?
So there's a huge impact in talent acquisition.
There's also an impact in talent retention.
Because the same types of things that people look for in a leader that they're gonna work for, they also wanna stay with that leader as well.
So you're not only getting the best talent,
but you're keeping the talent for longer periods of time at a higher satisfaction rate.
Visible leaders, I'm trying to think of the right word, but it's still a 5X longer employee duration than non-visible leaders.
And I actually think that was, we found that on Edelman, if I'm not mistaken, Brad, as part of one of their Edelman reports, a trust barometer, has a massive impact on employee
trust over a duration of time.
And even just kind of...
Just to further Brad's point, one of the other interesting things that they talked about last week was how millennials are acquiring their information now.
And our parents' generation got their news from ABC News, Channel 7 at 11.
Are your kids home by 11 o'clock?
And that's just not a factor anymore.
More more people are, and I think it was some crazy statistic and I don't want to quote it because I don't know the number, but it's some insane amount of information that
millennials are getting in terms of their general news from TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn.
They're actually using it as their primary news source.
And of course we all know what an impact it has on
elections and stuff like that and elections are the absolute power rod of determining how people are making their choices and their opinions.
Well if people are going to choose their political leaders on TikTok or LinkedIn or wherever and you're trying to persuade someone to buy your widget, where do you think you
need to be in modern times persuading people to buy your widget?
And it's not on ABC News at 11 anymore.
Yeah, no, you're absolutely correct.
And I love that you guys are coming to the table with all of these statistics.
think it's, you know, just to think about the opportunity that exists for not just brands, but also for individuals is immense.
And so I'm a huge advocate for what you're doing.
And in thinking about, okay, so we've talked about retention, we've talked about why it's important for brand recognition for executives to be online.
And now this is one of my personal gripes and questions for you as somebody who has recently started to become consistent in the LinkedIn space and it is.
Brad, when you say like people need an easy button, I would sign up for the easy button and a heartbeat because it's no joke creating that content.
So how do you help executives stand out from the chat GPT rocket ship emoji?
Drop a thumbs up down below.
Here's what I'm thinking regurgitated information, what goes into the process to help them become the thought leaders in their space.
Do want to jump on that brother?
You got it.
yeah, I can jump in that one.
In a word, you've got to have your own authentic personality, right?
We've all seen too many times the drop a like, subscribe here, click below, all the click bait, all the paid for advertising that happens.
You need to understand, first of all, what resonates with your audiences, what your goals are, whether that's talent acquisition, partner development.
closing new business.
We've all got multiple things that we can do on LinkedIn.
The great news about LinkedIn is that every single one of those audiences are there.
There's over a billion users on LinkedIn.
There's every single audience that's important to businesses are there.
And what we do to help people make this easy for them and to help scale this is we start to align what we call their content pillars, which are the various pieces of topical
content that they have in the organization and align it with the leaders that ought to be delivering that message.
So you can boil down to
a couple of variables what content needs to be delivered through what bullhorn to which audiences and then you can assign various goals to those channels and you can develop
voices for each of these executives that really resonate and impact those audiences appropriately.
Please.
things that we're finding is way more powerful.
And I think this kind of goes to your point, Kendra, is we've moved away from Chad GBT and we're moving into a partnership with Perplexity AI.
And one of their kind of claims to fame is they do research-backed.
posts and so you know marrying what Brad has said we could identify an executive like yourself let's say you're the VP of aerospace defense we go out we source content that's
currently exists in the
internet world at large, we read it, we regurgitate it, we digest it, and then we use perplexity AI to kind of map that against what's happening data-wise, and then create
thought leadership that's a level deeper, that is science-backed, data-backed.
and again to Brad's point, maps back onto your personal voice.
So we do the research for you and that's really 90 % of it and we do research back posts which makes you look like you're not an idiot just to be completely blind.
So instead of going you know, LOL emoji rocket ship, I love internet, you know, we help you find topics and posts that are trending within your industry that are meaningful and
important.
do some research to help you understand what your position is on that and then we generate a post as a jump off point that helps you look like you've done all the hard work and
heavy lifting even though maybe you didn't.
Right, which is fantastic.
I mean, what a life hack there.
Amazing.
And do you also generate the media and the different mediums for people?
it simply text posts?
Do you also generate images or share images?
What is that?
Yeah, we have a couple of solutions for that.
Obviously, we use GenAI as one of the options, and then we connect into Pixels, Unsplash, and a few the third-party.
generic royalty free stock images.
So you can pick from that library and then of course you can upload your own assets if you want.
Okay, brilliant.
So there's many options that people can kind of choose from.
Okay.
And I mean, this is a bit of a crystal ball question, but do you think that LinkedIn will still be the number one spot for people to go to for the foreseeable future?
Is there any other competitor creeping up?
mean, I don't think the majority of executives spend time on Instagram.
Is that something that you would expand into or?
can't imagine it happening in our life, like in the next 10 years.
And the reason why is at least when you have Facebook, you could see Instagram, TikTok, you could see other companies coming, trying to erode that B2C space.
I mean, I can't, other than Blue Sky, which seems to be kind of a scientific nerd hangout, I can't think of any incumbent right now.
It's not even on my radar.
don't know if you, anyone else on this call knows of anyone that's, that's my conflict.
That's the thing, right?
Obviously these double-ended marketplaces take time to build because no one wants to be there until everybody's there.
And so it's always difficult to build marketplaces.
I am not aware of anyone who's even trying to do one.
I'm not aware.
that's on any radar.
So what's your alternative to LinkedIn in the foreseeable future in the next five years?
Maybe it's there, but I'd be very surprised.
But of course, we live in the era of surprises.
There's been many, many, many surprises in the last six months.
And so not sure what's possible, but if I was to put all my eggs in a basket, I would certainly be putting them in the LinkedIn basket right now.
you
So that makes perfect sense.
is this, so it doesn't really matter even if a new incumbent comes along, the principles of what you want to be doing in order to create your own network are the same and you know
Brad and I have had the pleasure of working with Amanda Coffey who's a really fantastic real-world networker and she's shown us the power of her personal network and happens to
be in New York.
It's incredible.
It's incredible what she's able to do, who she knows, the strings she's able to pull, the door she's able to open.
And you know, being a nerd and sitting behind a computer being a programmer never really resonated with me.
I was just like, I'm gonna nerd my way into this.
Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me,
masterfully negotiate and navigate their personal network for the outcomes that they're hoping for, you get a real quick understanding how important it is to start to build
relationships and bridges and connections.
And so it doesn't matter if it's LinkedIn or whatever the next LinkedIn is, those are skills that you're gonna want forever.
Absolutely.
Well, LinkedIn is essentially the opportunity to be able to find those connections and then it's up to you to maintain them, right?
And to build that relationship on a deeper level.
And so what I've been hearing a lot and I mean, seen it in action as well is when you take those connections offline and now you're building that relationship, whether that's over
coffee, over lunch.
and ensuring that you're just, you're not connecting with people on LinkedIn, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you're not connecting on people with LinkedIn the way you would go to
a networking event and hand out your business card and move from the next person to the next person to the next person.
You're sharing thought leadership, but you're also making sure that you're cultivating, you're cultivating people that you want around you to a certain degree and that align with
who you are and what you're showing up to be talking about, right?
Yeah, it's one of the big advantages to social media as opposed to other marketing options is it's a two-way street.
It's what makes it great.
It's what makes it scary for aging executives, as we mentioned, and what makes it special.
And part of what we help leaders do is identify and connect with the other members on LinkedIn that are relevant to them.
So we need and want to be.
good members of a community.
And my community might be different than yours based on what we do, what our goals are, but understanding what our community looks like, who's involved in that community and
being able to have a back and forth with them, an actual discussion is something we can facilitate on LinkedIn and it's very rare in the marketing world.
Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
Understanding that it does flow two ways.
I love that.
LinkedIn is the place.
Now thinking about employee advocacy, because we've spoken a lot about executives.
So thinking about employee advocacy, because obviously the numbers are very mismatched between the number of executives and the number of individual contributors that are able
to start a personal brand on LinkedIn.
as well, or that exist in an organization.
If I'm somebody that's in middle management and I'm looking to start to think about my personal brand in knowing that it's something that my organization is really advocating
for, what's my first step?
Yeah, there's the first step is always the hardest, is, you know, how do you eat an elephant?
And it's one bite at a time.
And interestingly, we were at an event, I guess, three weeks ago, and we were helping one specific company that's very large, and we were working with their employees.
we did, let's see, there was almost 200 employees.
And we did what we call a stack rank to determine who the most effective employee was currently.
And the employee who had shared the most frequently out of 200 employees
had posted 14 times in the year, the entire year.
So the interesting takeaway that Brad and I had when we were kind of just talking with the room at large is, hey, look, it doesn't take a lot to be the most successful influential
person out of this team of 300, 400 people.
The bar is generally set so low.
That's the first thing.
The second thing is we're
We've talked to lot of HR representatives, departments, so on and so forth.
And what we've been hearing more and more, and this is anecdotal, so I don't have any hard stats for you, but a lot more companies now are looking at your...
account and the number of times you're posting and your influence when they're making a hiring decision.
So let's say you know I'm deciding between you and Brad and for all intents and purposes it's apples to apples, the deciding factor on whether we're gonna hire you or not is the
amount of influence that you have online.
So you know companies are paying attention, it's super visible in terms of if you're engaging with the other executives, if you're posting.
And if you're the type of person who has any sort of ambition to climb the corporate ladder and do better for yourself, make more money, have a better position, it's
unfortunately now kind of table stakes in this modern world of working in an office.
You need to learn how to navigate and be successful on this platform or you're going to get left behind or remain stagnant.
mean, obviously if...
If you're riding the desk and you're in position that you're happy with and that's where you want to be for rest of your life, that's one conclusion that you can come to.
But if you have any sort of ambition at all, it's kind of must-see TV.
It's something that you have to invest in as soon as possible.
And to your point, investing doesn't mean every single day for four hours a day.
You can start off small and let that snowball or continue to remain consistent.
Well, we think you can even become a professional lurker and benefit from that.
And what I mean by that is comment on other people's posts, but not awesome rocket ship emoji, like meaningful dialogue.
to engage with other people.
There are content creators even within your own company or within your own industry, whether those are customers, whether those are prospects, whether those are connections,
they're generating content.
And so you can put on your professional lurking pants or shoes and invest and engage in that.
That's gonna help with your own personal visibility.
And a lot of times, of course, people have writer's blog or...
gunshot, there's a million reasons why you may or may not want to get involved in stuff like that.
And hopping on the common bandwagon is a great place to like a jump off spot to get started and get going.
And I mean, one of the things that I find interesting too, and I've obviously been, you know, being in the space and trying to be consistent myself is that these things take time
as well.
You don't post once and then all of a sudden you have a thousand likes and your inbox is full.
It takes time and consistency to show up.
I think it's important that people recognize that you can't just post once and expect it to be a miracle and give up, but that you can consistently share a message and that people
aren't really paying all that much attention to you all the time.
So if you're fearful of it, chances are for the first couple of posts while you're finding your legs, they might not see it anyways, right?
So there's those fears that pop up.
But I think one of the things that internally I would be fearful of as an HR leader, coming back to the fact that you said you speak with lot of HR leaders, is what are people
saying?
Are they compliant?
Are they sharing anything that doesn't align with the company?
And do we have a pulse on how they're representing our organization?
And so I think that's where you come in, in providing that.
you know, that filter almost for whether it's executives or for employees, just making sure that there isn't anything slipping through the cracks that way.
Is that correct?
And through the, yeah, this just the security piece and the peace of mind for the HR leaders and the folks who are saying what's being said about us, the reputation
management, let's say that's out there.
their workflow is in the tool to enforce compliance and that's looking at it from one perspective.
So if I want Alan to lead the charge with a message.
I can create that message, can make it look perfect for him, I can get it approved by compliance and all the good stuff that I need to do.
However, there's another aspect of that challenge, which is what is Alan doing on his mobile phone on the train ride in?
He still can post anything that he wants natively on LinkedIn, as can any other employee that may or may not be part of an employee advocacy or an executive leader-led program.
So if it's coming from within the platform, it's easy to lock in compliance and make sure that nothing is going wrong.
But there's an audit tool that allows you to identify individuals and say, geez, regardless of whether or not we posted it and approved it, show me what Alan posted on
LinkedIn.
And I can get a full feed of everything he's posted.
And if it's a native post, I have insight into that.
And I can go, geez, look what he's doing on his free time.
you know, let's go tap Alan on the shoulder and say, wow, you know, this is impacting more than just you, Mr.
CEO, this is blowing back on the organization.
So that's a big concern and we can address it from multiple different perspectives.
yes, to have full visibility in that is very, very helpful.
And you can say, Alan, we tried to do this to make it easy for you.
And now you've just made life harder for everyone.
you are.
I get beat up?
Are you guys looking at my pose?
Hahaha.
is also couples therapy and a live audit.
So Alan, we have a couple of things we need to tell you.
I made one MyPillow post on LinkedIn one time like hump the brakes guys one time
pillow, jeez.
Part of what we help organizations with, at various different aspects, it's not always wrapping your head around data first or wrapping your head around better intelligence
after you've invested in a program.
It depends on where you sit and how comfortable you are with social advocacy as an organization.
But part of it is just educating.
Organizations on what the status quo is.
Where do you sit?
Where do the rest of your competitors sit?
What does your industry look like?
What are your audiences responding to?
If you have that information, you're much better equipped to push your current strategy in a particular direction or develop a new strategy that can help you activate employees with
the right messaging, identify key leaders, and start to build a brand around each of them that can also impact your organizational goals.
Absolutely.
No kidding, no kidding.
And I feel like through our conversation today, we started with an elephant and we have just been taking bites out of it.
So I want to thank you both because I think that there's so much insight and information and very healthy statistics as to why somebody should, if they haven't already, start to
cultivate that personal brand.
And with that, I'd love to ask, where can people find you?
How can they get in touch?
Because I think there will be a number of folks just chomping at the bit to chat with you and to see how you can help them.
Well, surprise, you can find us on LinkedIn.
Surprise, you can find us there.
can connect with us, obviously, there on LinkedIn, but socialhp.com is the website.
And you can find all of our contact information there as well.
Beautiful, beautiful.
Well, thank you both.
And I hope this will be the first of many chats because I know that as you continue to grow and evolve and as things change, hopefully not too rapidly or we don't encounter too
much more change, but I know that you will always be at the forefront of it.
So I look forward to more conversations and you can download them for us in the future.
Thanks so much, Kendra.
Thank you.