Decoding Human Behavior for Marketing Success with Alex Boyd

Overview:

In this episode of Tea Time with Tech Marketing Leaders, Alex Boyd dives into the shifting landscape of LinkedIn content—why impressions have dropped, what that means for creators, and how to keep engagement real and sustainable. He challenges the overused call for “authenticity” and offers a fresh take: treat your content like a professional performance, grounded in what you actually know. From building in public to leveraging content strategy tools like Aware, Alex shares actionable insights for marketers navigating a crowded digital space while staying aligned with their audience.

Transcript:

I thought it was Elijah.

Kerry Guard: Oh,

Alex Boyd: Was it Elijah? Yeah, he's so, um, he's so complimentary.

Alex Boyd: And that's why I, uh, I was like, oh, okay, that sounds like he's really like blowing me up, and I was like, that's, that sounds like this.

Alex Boyd: That sounds like a man of the hour. Yeah, I know. So anyway, that's why I did not mean chat. I meant, I meant Elijah.

Kerry Guard: You meant Elijah. That's fascinating. Yes. I did get help from Elijah, actually. Okay. Um, because Elijah told me a few weeks ago, oh man, maybe it was only a week ago.

A week ago, where you told me that I needed to let my hair down in terms of posting and that it was, he was so right. That's so dry. And I like took on my personality out of it. And, uh, and so that's why I've been telling chat, like, breathe me into this.

Like it's, you have all my content that I wrote before I got really dry and lame, like breathe me into this. And so, Okay. Yeah. So he did actually influence. Great.

Alex Boyd: That's great. Yeah. Yeah.

Kerry Guard: Uh, there, yeah, that's how I'm training. I'm using chat similar in terms of coding. Um, I have a tech stack for website building with next JS and tailwind, which I love. I love to be for chat and it's even better with chat because now I can feed the code. Like I can write all of my positioning, my messaging, everything in chat, you can see building a persona of the brand inside. And then when I'm ready to take it to the website, I can say using this component, um, rewrite it so it's reusable so I can reuse the same layout and then write a new page, reusing that component with this, I copy with this copy.

And then it just, I mean, I have to tweak it and there's definitely like a lot of back and forth with it, but it so beats copying and pasting into H2O. Oh, yes. Yes, it does.

So that's been an absolute godsend. Alex, I gave that intro that was spiced up by, uh, Elijah Speedback, my personality in a little chat GPT, but that's not really the story. So tell us, where are you now? And man, I mean, I know some of the backstory, but how you got there is just such a ride. Bring us along.

Alex Boyd: So I guess the journey started when I thought I would be a little hedge fund investment banker guy, and then was sort of like nudged away from that path and ended up kind of adjacent in brokerage, but sales. And then lost my patience with that and ended up in tech-ish sales and then sales leadership and then kind of like sales leadership and SDR, and then after that, consulting, and then had a partner in that agency, um, who was better at content marketing. And so kind of learning picked up that and led more toward that, and then ended up becoming known as a marketing guy. Um, and, uh, exited the, uh, agency last year, which was mostly an SEO agency. Still have a lot of interest in that and the whole portfolio, um, that it's part of, um, and awesomely enough, they're getting plenty of leads from, you know, LLN at this point, which was great. It's just like what other thing to dive into is like, AI SEO is so much different, but also it's kind of not.

Yeah. But, um, we're all getting plenty of leads still from search, whether from Google or other search, it's still search. It's still people looking for things. It's the, and anyway, so, um, which is a good segue into where I am, where I'm now, because I am trying my best to understand human behavior, and people looking for things is not a marketing channel to human behavior. So people look for things. Um, people have, I mean, there's a lot to go on about, like how the sales behavior helped me in marketing because I understood the stranger danger that you need to get over in sales and how that, um, in people's brains is very hardwired and not vibe coded, but very hard coded into the, the, um, hardware of what we're working with. And oftentimes marketers who haven't sold don't really get that as well as they should. So, uh, yeah, all of this to say, I, I happened to see a particular part of growing the agency, which was LinkedIn that needed work and aware the current company I'm a co-founder of, uh, as my main focus is, um, a LinkedIn tool for B2B and small to big B2B, but, um, that focus of LinkedIn.

So not like necessarily managing your huge audience, but more like, you know, growing fewer from, you know, two to 20,000 followers, usually like growing, um, and using it for building pipeline. Um, I do happen to have my wild front shirt on. Is it mirror? I can't see that.

Alex Boyd: Anyways, not a mirror. Okay. Cool. Um, so yeah, we are about to make our first acquisition of a different SaaS product that we plan to keep doing that. Um, it's a very small one, but, um, we'll keep increasing our purchase prices.

We go with confidence, but we're building the kind of operating system for SaaS now. So now that, you know, started agency, grew agency, okay. I sort of saw how to do that. Um, picked one problem, made a SaaS out of it. Now I'm like, okay, well, what else can we understand and build a system for? So the next, I think level is becoming, making the business systems behind growing fast-growing products and managing them well, profitably.

Alex Boyd: And so that's where we're here now doing.

Speaker 2: Um, so does that, is that a

Kerry Guard: feature that's going to hook up to a bear or is it separate, but they'll hook up through, or like, do they do two totally different things, but you need them both? How, how are they going to work or not work together? Yeah.

Alex Boyd: Uh, well, it hasn't closed yet, so it's not for sure, but we have, um, they're, they're just confirming the APA. So like I'm pretty sure it will.

Speaker 2: It's totally nothing to do with all this tea.

Alex Boyd: So much tea, uh, is, is totally separate. That's like, um, it doesn't touch LinkedIn in the slightest, which I love. I'm kind of, I'm low-key sick of LinkedIn. Um, enjoy it, but I'm just, I'm just, I've been doing it for so long. I'm just like, oh my God, the same thing over and over. You know, so, um, yeah, no, it's different, which is great. I'd like just like niche utility tools, like things that, you know, make people's lives easier. They don't cost that much, but they're easy to run. Just like it does the thing you want, you know, pay us some money.

Kerry Guard: Alex wears many, many hats. And so I want to be thoughtful, um, and transparent of the fact that I totally use aware and fricking love it. Um, my favorite feature is that it hooks up to HubSpot. So whenever a new connection happens, it hooks up to HubSpot. Not because I'm then messaging those people who are trying to hunt down their email address and start bombarding them when they didn't ask for it.

Don't do that. But because when they do become a solid leader customer, I get to see where they originally came from. And if it truly was LinkedIn, so, um, yeah, yeah.

I mean, that's all sort of hypothetical right now. I'm, as I'm, I'm market, I love that you're building in public. I'm marketing in public where I'm sort of sharing my journey of how how I'm doing my marketing to build my own, um, agency up. But that's sort of one of my hypotheses, can I see this?

Is this going to work? So I actually, I also love the other thing, I love is I think that the, um, is it influencer or cut? There's, there's like three breakouts of your newsfeed of the types of people who are posting, and to actually be able to see the people I follow and their content and be able to like and comment and gauge on it is way better than actual LinkedIn. I find LinkedIn infuriating because I'm like, I don't know these people and I don't care about their content, and why am I seeing them? Where are my people?

Alex Boyd: So there are so many Reddit posts that are just like, How do I get a feed of just people I want to follow on LinkedIn? It's so infuriating. Like, literally what you just said is like that's the title of many Reddit posts. So it's not the first time he's in the first station. Have you used the influencer discovery feature yet?

Or has it just rolled out? You did. Okay. Cool. So I'd be curious to hear, I mean, a little bit of a divergence, but that's like, I want to build my own list.

Let me find new people. And, uh, because how would you do that on LinkedIn? It's like, how would you build a list of cybersecurity influencers?

Hard to do. You'd have to just sort of know and scroll a bunch. And so, now you can search our database and stuff. So I'm glad that I'm using that.

Kerry Guard: I haven't, I've only dabbled. I'm excited to dive in. I'm working with my, uh, counterpart from a sales perspective is Ashleighy. Um, and so she has it as well. And so we're both sort of tag-teaming to make sure that I'm marketing one to many from a marketing perspective, and she's also sort of that one-to-one. And so we're trying to make sure we're working with similar folks, um, both from, uh, an influencer standpoint, as well as a prospect standpoint.

So that's been a fun journey. Being able to be on the same tool is super helpful. And I think we wired her aware of to HubSpot as well. So she's got everything piped in.

Alex Boyd: Got marketing sales alignment. Beautiful. The dream.

Kerry Guard: The dream. Living the dream. You had a wonderful conversation. Two weeks ago. I think it was two weeks ago with Brianna Doe and Morgan Ingram. Yeah. Um, I follow both of them. They are wonderful humans, and what, way to like, I think you called them giants of LinkedIn, like totally the three of you. Yeah. Hagging out, talking about LinkedIn is so, I learned.

Alex Boyd: It was a hint. I loved it.

Kerry Guard: Morgan was like, just, just all the time.

Alex Boyd: He was like, here's how you do everything. So this is amazing. Like you are good. But the big conversation that I sort of want to like give people, you should go, you should go find the show. We'll drop it in the comments so you can, you can go check it out. Um, if you haven't watched it yet, because why I watched it was because I had the same, oh shit moment that everybody had at the beginning of March of like, I've been working my tail off to get the crumbs of impressions that I did get. And now I'm getting like, wists of dust in the air in terms of my impression volume. What just happened? And I had all these hypotheses that I was throwing the maps of the LinkedIn community and I was talking to people and I was like, what did I do? How did I screw this up? And I didn't. It was a LinkedIn move.

Kerry Guard: Can you give us a little synopsis of like, what just happened? And why did we all like get undercut in terms of our impression volume? We'll get to why that matters. It doesn't matter in a second, but our big question was like, why, what just happened?

Alex Boyd: There's been a few rounds of this. So the even more recent one is that LinkedIn is now showing you for whatever reason, many people that they have twice as many impressions as they actually do on their summary and they don't and the posts haven't changed. So that's even more confusing. People are like, is this going to be reflected in the where I was like, well, it's LinkedIn's bug right now. So not yet.

Kerry Guard: So the data in a where doesn't even match the data in the platform of LinkedIn.

Alex Boyd: We bring it, we sum up all of the posts impressions, which haven't changed. And that's what we show you as your total post impressions. And then LinkedIn, the post impressions haven't changed, but the summary impressions is wildly different by roughly two X, but not quite two X. And we don't know why. So Jerry's still out. We do it the way you would think you do it, which is to sum up all the posts, all the impressions of the posts.

And that's your sum. LinkedIn's like, J K, we'll do it some other way. We won't tell you how.

So anyway, March 2024, there was a big sudden drop in media and post engagement. I don't know. Okay.

Why? There was definitely an algorithm change. But the, the total user growth in the US on LinkedIn is about one and a half percent a year, ish on average. So there's not a lot of difference in demand for content.

So with relatively fixed demand, um, and increasing supply, you have LinkedIn saying, okay, how are we going to reorganize and redistribute this supply across all the demand? And then you see people, you know, gaining and losing and so forth. Um, a lot of it, like the change happens and then it kind of moderates back. And there's a smaller change after a few weeks. Um, mine is not much different. And for example, some people say there's as much different. I don't exactly know why.

They have said why, but as with SEO, I never really believe all of what the platform tells you about how they think you should use it. Um, so there's that. And so I don't always believe what they say on the front. For example, they say, "We're planning to nuke the comment to get X tactic," but clearly, they haven't.

So there's that. I don't know why some people have gained or lost reach in a big way. I know that over time, there's more supply, and demand is increasing much more slowly. So there's going to be a continued whittling down of the ability to get lots of free reach, like we've been able to do for, you know, 20 years.

Yeah. For me, eight. Um, uh, and it, it might be on comments, but it's too eerily similar to like the two X number, for that maybe to be the case, we are going to start trying to measure post a comment impressions too, but, um, uh, for now it doesn't seem to make a total sense, but, um, yeah, comment impressions are coming. Yeah.

Kerry Guard: One of the things that Morgan said that I thought was super helpful was like, well, you know, this isn't the first rodeo. And he talked about the different platforms that have gone through this Facebook being a, being a big one. How also, I don't know how true this is either. It's just something Morgan mentioned in relationship to Facebook is that when a platform has to shift to.

Meet investors, board members, and the revenue goals. You know, paying to get more impression volume kind of becomes a thing. Whether that's happening on LinkedIn or not, we're not sure. He just sort of compared it to.

You've seen this, this is his first rodeo and this is generally how platforms go to sort of carve out impressions so that you have to buy more visibility. But what I loved the, where the conversation really went and where I like sat back and I was like, okay, I'm doing okay. Is that actually, even though my impressions came down, my engagement is still about the same. So my conversion rate, conversion rate, engagement rate, whatever is high.

Alex Boyd: Much higher. Yeah. Mine's like double what it was a couple of years ago on average. It seems like they're just getting better at showing the right people, the posts that they want in the feed, which is overall a good thing. Yep. But you're definitely right.

And Morgan's right, too. Like, there's no reason to believe this is not happening. It is already happening on LinkedIn, where I would do it too. Like there's why, if you're LinkedInia, the best, really hard to copy network in the world for people with budget, the most budget, so just corporate executives, mostly in the US and Europe, you're going to start extracting more value from that. And we've been freeloading on that, which is great. I love having been able to freeload and the freeloading will get more difficult.

And you're going to have to pay them for more of that at some point. So all of the like, you know, post inspirational photos and use this same hook and we all engage with each other, coaches and consultants that don't make any money, but we all want to do well on LinkedIn. That stuff is not professional social media. And it's going to be less and less effective over time as LinkedIn starts to kind of, I mean, they're already super profitable and have incredible sales efficiency. And they're going to get more efficient with it, which makes sense. So we should just be ready.

But do build up that like an organic foundation now. So by the time pay-to-play is much more of a thing, you're ready for it, and you don't have to pay quite so much to build up an audience as you would. Like if I started today on Instagram, I'd have to pay a bunch of money to get that going versus if I had, you know, 100K followers on Instagram easier. I'd have to pay less budget to do it. Kind of like if you have the greatest CEO, you're going to have to spend less and Google ads to get the hits on your pages that you want. So many good analogies here. But that's kind of how I see it today. It's going to keep dwindling.

Kerry Guard: Well, let's talk about organic social for a second, because I do think it's an interesting piece, and I do think the goalposts keep changing, which is so frustrating. In terms of I also feel like it's a bit I had this conversation with Elijah a few weeks ago, actually, we were talking we were talking last week about my posts and how they had he gave me great feedback. But it's this sort of game we have to play as creators to get visibility. And you could say that about SEO, too, that it's a bit of a game. But I feel like SEO. Isn't it dependent on users and engagement, right? Is it not? Not to the same extent as social is.

Alex Boyd: Yeah, not to the same extent.

Kerry Guard: Not to the same extent. It doesn't hinder. Like, completely like social does. Right. And so there's this gamification that feels more performative. On social and like then then then SEO. And I struggle. I think that's where I sort of start to lose my momentum, because I feel like I have to put up this performance sometimes to play the game.

But there has, you know, we you and I had this conversation sort of behind the scenes of like. Yes, you have to play the game to an extent, but you still have to speak. It's all well and good to grow, but are you growing with the right people?

Yeah. And so what are you seeing from that aspect of like this performative thing of wanting to grow, but then also making sure that you get the right audience? It's a tough balance.

Alex Boyd: It's a good question. What if you maybe we can dig into this because a lot of people share that feeling. What if we so let's let's just accept that it is a performance? How about we shift our minds and say, we're not going to pretend like it's not. And what if we performed professionally?

Right in the way a professional actor would practice their craft. They are choosing parts that they want. They're choosing plays and or movies that they want. They're building their characters in a way that makes sense for them. They're practicing the craft of acting to have the to deliver on what it is people come to see their performances for.

I'm a professional performer when it comes to LinkedIn. So I guess the cringe comes from when you don't accept that it is a performance. I have made the jump to saying it is a performance. I'm happy to perform in that way. In fact, I will get good at performing such that I'm not so attached to it. And if the performance is professional, not personal, I don't have to feel like it's my own identity and like me dancing on TikTok.

Because if the like I said, if it is professional performance and not personal, then we can simply practice our craft at it and then we have more choice over what kinds of performances do I want to do in what way will I perform? That craft again, maybe if we liken it to acting in that way, you can either be a dramatic person or you can be a well paid actor. Like being a dramatic person. Well, like that's kind of cringy, like this male dramatic person I don't want to hang out with versus, oh, wow, you're a professional actor. Like you did great in that role. I don't know.

Kerry Guard: I'd rather the latter. Yeah, that's interesting. Where does the authenticity piece come into that? Because that's where I feel like everybody's screaming at content creators to be your most authentic self.

And it's like, but I'm not this way. Do you have much energy for this discussion? It's a lot of energy to show up on these podcasts to write content. It takes me an hour sometimes to write up, even with chat help. Sometimes it takes me an hour to write a post to make sure I'm sort of checking those performative boxes. Right. And so that's where I sort of like struggle.

People want the quote unquote authenticity. But at the same time, there's this level of performance that needs to like married to that and that's the rubber meeting the road. That's sort of a I think, where a lot of our creators, all on this too, are kind of burning out. Right.

Alex Boyd: Well, it might help you to know that I don't talk and act in real life or even frankly, on podcasts, the way I do on LinkedIn. And yet people praise my content as being extremely authentic. I think you might have the wrong word there. I don't think people, you know, the Princess Bride, you keep using this word.

Kerry Guard: I don't think it means. You think it means authentic is not. I think what people are looking for is if

Alex Boyd: We think about the meaning of authenticity, we're looking for some sort of vulnerability, but it's very chosen. Like, I don't think they want authentic in the way that the authentic hole-in-the-wall restaurant that you go to is not particularly clean. Right. But you want the whole new restaurant in, you know, Latin America, that is clean for some reason, and just like you want, only the part of authenticity that you want. And that's what people don't really talk about or admit.

It's because people don't know what they want, and they don't know how to phrase what they want. So when I post abou,t like, stuff that we're doing in life and how that relates to business or whatever, I'm very much choosing a slice of it to offer. Which you could argue is not authentic. And yet it feels authentic to read. So what do we do with this? Well, I think we have to stop trying to be fully authentic, quote unquote, and also get professional because there's a contradiction there.

And because this is our social media accounts that we're operating, we need to operate it with our own goals in mind and not what everyone says we want. So if your goal is to get more cybersecurity, SaaS companies to sign up with your agency services, then I do not think you should be authentic in that word. I think you should be appealing to your buyers to convince them that you are likeable, trustworthy, and good at what you do. And to the extent that you can make them feel a feeling that they label as authentic.

Great. But don't get confused about what we're doing. And a lot of people get very confused about what we're doing on LinkedIn. And that causes them to take an hour to write posts. So the efficiency comes in when we lose the idea that we are doing something that we're not doing.

Yeah. And so I this all draws back to just first principles and human behavior. But you're not supposed to be authentic on LinkedIn here to hear first, folks. That's the secret.

Kerry Guard: I think that's so helpful because my brain was getting tongue-tied around both of these ideas. I need to be. I need to play the game in terms of professionalism of showing up and being an authentic, authoritative voice of knowing what I'm talking about. At the same time, it needs to feel. Real. Just feel there's still something that needs to feel real.

But like. It needs to toe the line of that. Professionalism, right? Like the it's when they I think Brené Brown talked about this in terms of vulnerability. And like it's one thing to show up vulnerable, but it's not showing up to say all the That's going wrong in your life to think that's not like Emotional dumping into the world is not being vulnerable.

Yeah, right? And so I feel like that's where people are getting confused with LinkedIn and this idea of authenticity of like you need to be overly Emotional about it and it doesn't and that's it's gonna get the clicks and that's it's gonna get the engagement and that's and you know You have to show your your personal side and like so I I love this sort of definition So helpful even for me I sort of get lost in the sauce of it of like I got to play the game to get the impressions up And I got to be performative and I have to talk about my kids and I have to talk about Life that I have to marry it to business and I have to do all of these things to get the impressions and the clicks up and it's like to an extent Yeah to to and To an extent and so I I think that's where the Playing the game in the algorithm to being there for your audience and that's really like where I'm trying to I don't know How you feel about this in terms of the role you play But I became a fractional marketing leader about two three years ago and honestly, I Think the only reason why I do it is because I get it Like I am living my audience's life mm-hmm, and I Boy, do I get it right so I can speak from an authentic place of understanding What they're up against? Because I'm living it and so that gives me that authenticity sort of stand on and say yeah Yeah, you're expected to do a lot very little and it's all on your shoulders and the struggle is real And here's how I'm combating it right so I I think that's where the performative piece comes in and where some like I I don't know how you did this as an agency owner Right is like how do you getting my question? I swear How do you sort of speak to your audience and stand in their shoes when you? Haven't necessarily lived it or in that like like that's where I think people are struggling with The platitudes and the people Sounding I just saw post the other day of somebody being like can we all stop pretending that we know what we're talking about Well, we haven't actually done it please Yeah, right How are you doing?

You know you do something similar? You've sort of lived in shoes multiple shoes lots of shoes from sales to marketing to now building a business How are you bringing that into being able to speak to your audience and creating that connection in an authentic way without? Because you do such a great job of it.

You're not I don't feel like you're standing on your high horse, talking down to folks, trying to tell them like it is. So where does that profession like that, performative yet authentic? Place come from for you. Where do you draw from to get to that?

Alex Boyd: Okay, two questions that are related one is Given that you know what you're talking about how do you perform well and the other one is, should people who don't know what they're talking about talk about it and if so how? No, so the second one is easier I don't advocate the people who don't know what the talking about should so that's why I agree with that I think you should stick to what you What you know and that is like I say creatively defined but like I don't mean that you need a certification I mean you have to know it you have to have something valuable to offer otherwise your product your knowledge product is bad So let's assume your knowledge product is good You know something of value You you with marketing What is the performance aspect of it like so let's say you've already said which I believe let's say we all agree that you know What you're talking about with marketing? What do you think you need to do? Perform what does that mean to you when you say that? I have an answer, but I want to know what you think, yeah

Kerry Guard: I think the performance comes from the additional energy that you are trying to create In a post or even on a stage like this right there's an extra level of I'm a true introvert Through and through I don't know if you all know that but like after this podcast I gotta go decompress right yeah I'm putting out a level of energy that I wouldn't normally put out Why I post takes me a while is because I'm trying to put energy into it that Is it something that comes necessarily it get you know gets easier with time But is it inherently? Part of who I am

Alex Boyd: I'm pausing on that, what kind of energy what it energy for you energy for them and if so what kind This is important I

Speaker 2: Need to use just

Alex Boyd: Well, I think this is important to answer my question because I want everyone feels this way but Energy can mean power energy can mean anger energy can mean a train coming at you I mean energy is everything so like what kind of energy in for whom?

Kerry Guard: Energy, meaning I don't know how to describe it. It's like a forward-moving feeling, I'm just driving myself nuts. Okay. Yeah right like I'm up and I'm smiling and I'm happy and I am I do feel those things I'm not I'm not putting on a performance where You know, it's nice because I'm happy to see you and I love how we have this great connection and this great conversation That's just really natural and flows So it's easier to create that energy than it would be if somebody didn't sort of reciprocate it. Yes, but it's I want to I want people to feel happy and have joy when they're watching this, right? I don't want them to feel bored and create joy.

Alex Boyd: Okay, so that and that's what I was getting at because you have defined energy in the in sense that people should always feel joy when they see your posts In a way, right?

Kerry Guard: Brands right sort of part of my brain.

Alex Boyd: Ah Okay, good and this is I think this is important It's deeper than like the tactics of LinkedIn, but it really this will prevent burnout if you Are you as a person always feeling joy?

Kerry Guard: Oh, no, how can we

Alex Boyd: if you don't know what it means, brand? Yeah, I enjoy I don't always feel joy today. I posted a cantankerous post because I was freaking annoyed about people spaming my feed and so My brand my personal brand is that I am a person with many different emotions The brand is that I know how to process them and the performance is to make it fun Not necessarily fun to make it Compelling to read. I want it to be easy and compelling to read that is the performance for me So whatever emotion I have make it easy and keep like to read whatever marketing tactic I discussed me easy to be that is the performance of it but you've nailed it with it when you said and someone commented the same thing of Posting when I don't feel like posting Well, you probably don't feel like posting something bubbly is the difference But maybe you want to post something cantankerous now the skill is can you channel cantankerous or whatever it is or angry? In a way that's easy to read and compelling, if you can do that You won't burn out because you'll always be able to represent how you are doing in this way And I am an introvert myself, but I don't change my Myself for LinkedIn.

I just run it through a filter that makes the copy easy to read and compelling The same thing applies to how I talk on a podcast. I'm probably Clear and brighter than I usually would, and it's a bit of an up energy, So like maybe an increased, slight volume literally of my voice. This is a louder voice than I'll use But I'm tightly defining the performance to a few things I'm not trying to tell you in a bubbly way when I'm not and If you lose that way more sustainable, right? So I invite you to to remove the carry is bubbly from your brand and define it more simply. And when you get to the core of it of what your brand really is? It won't feel exhausting because it's actually authentic. Then we narrow down what performance means of what just you have, marketing tactics You have literally going through a long post and cleaning up the copy and removing unnecessary words. We have making the hook Shorter and relying on either a cliffhanger or pain point like these are just easy to these are easy things that markers know how to do It's all psychological of the feeling that I have to be someone else than I'm not when that is not actually appealing to people It's not always that

Kerry Guard: No, I mean, I think it's like I am It's definitely a balancing act for sure. I don't think people want this the same thing all the time But I also feel like they are here to be entertained To a degree so and that and that entertainment to your point can become in multiple ways in terms of how emotions show up for sure you know, I Generally believe That there's enough hate and anger in the world and so my My wanting to add that joy and that bubbliness is just to take a little bit of that out of the air For people who might be feeling that way that day because that's just how the world feels right now So yeah, but you're not wrong in that that does to do that all the time Is it it takes energy?

So if can I training? Yeah, totally so but I do think that there's I Also wonder too of like I Feel like what people are asking for too in the world and this is where I'm sort of struggling as well is like When is it okay Just and I'm trying to do this a little bit I'm trying to walk the line of this in my posts of feeling like it's okay to not know. Yeah true I Feel like we all feel like we have to show up and have all the answers and with the way that things are going right now And how quickly they're moving we're all learning on the fly right Yeah

Alex Boyd: If we think about for example like like a corporate marketer Thinking I don't I don't know enough to do this so I have to pretend like I know and this was the position I was in when I was in sales is I responded in two ways one I'm committed to showing up only to the extent that I know what I'm talking about. Oh I must go learn it so And it was accounting accounting and tax So I learned enough about accounting and tax that I could show up only knowing the amount that I knew so the One upshot of this like a hard truth that can't be solved with a tool or AI or anything And maybe if you use it to learn but like you have to learn the subject matter So you have to learn enough about cybersecurity or whatever it is that you can talk about it And this is people often want an answer that doesn't involve. Yeah, you've got to go learn your stuff, but Why can't you just have to like go learn your stuff?

And then it'll be way easier to show up with the amount of knowledge that you have because you will have had it and I'm not I do it having done it before like to this day I have pretty good accounting jobs Not necessarily gap and audit like sometimes I struggle with like for example like the finer points of when a liability should be recorded for like a Continued liability on acquisition. I got school. I was like, I thought it was recorded then it's actually recorded now cool But I know enough to know a lot about it because I just dug into it and was like I'm gonna come out when I know a lot and then it was easy to sell I didn't need to follow a sales process. I just had business conversations. So if you're in marketing same deal I mean hope I wish you would have chance to be in sales marketers because then you before I Had in conversations with prospects who would tell you when you're wrong and you'd feel that in your body of life Oh, I don't know what I'm talking about and let that propel you to go learn Social media becomes so much easier when you're compelled to go learn your stuff and then come back out and talk about it So absolutely.

Kerry Guard: I am a learner by practice, right? I can't just go I know for cyber security I can't say that I know what the audience goes through or be able to like that's why the brand has got to own messaging That is not Anything that I can help with that's not my job nor should it be because I don't know The product and the industry the way that the marketer needs to know it now from an SEO perspective and a digital ads perspective We know the platforms we do the best practices. We know how to help you get seen. That's our job But we are never going to understand The product and the audience the way that you need to And so and we can't and then unless we live in those shoes, which is why I sort of went out and said, okay How how do I get to know what marketers are going through and I learned by doing so? I had to become a marketer on the brand side to do that, right?

So For folks who like, you get to apply the finance stuff as a business owner, right? Which is so helpful So for marketers who know enough about the product and enough about the industry, but have never sat in a practitioner seat Right. How do they help their brand show up authentically? On social and through their marketing, having never done it It's one thing to learn. It's like going to university or college, I'm learning about the thing, but then you have to apply it if you're never applying it. Do you really know it?

Alex Boyd: I don't so this is I think again case of We think we need to be doing something that we don't have to be doing When we talk about what you know Let's split it into two things Have you done the job of a siso? No, and I don't think your job is to have done the job of a siso necessarily But what do you know? Well, you have the insider knowledge of the workings of a company that serves many sises for example You probably speak to a much wider variety of them than each of the prospects do So you have for example two types of information that they don't have how the company works And why it built the things the way that it did which presumably at your company You have the experts that have done that job right founders executives Maybe sms I mean someone someone there has done the job right and you can learn from them You can get the insider knowledge from them You can usually boil down a lot of the deep insights of a profession to like 10 different things The rest of it is like good really good detail and judgment But you can boil it on the key insights to not the many things So learn the 10 key insights from the people that you work with That's number one And then the second one is the cross section knowledge You talk to many more people than each of your prospects does so you have the knowledge of The of the aggregate but not of the detail so stop pretending you Or even thinking that you need to have done the job your prospects have done But instead say well, what do I know and what is it my job to know? It's my job to know exactly how our company all works together And it's my job to be able to talk to lots of these different types of people Such that I know what they all think in aggregate. That's how before I was a startup founder I had a really damn good idea of how startup founders think and act because I talked to hundreds of them I talked to many more of them than each of my founder clients And so I was able to like write emails like them I mean before chat gpt was anywhere a thing I wrote emails like a silicon valley ceo because that's all who we talk to And so I didn't individually just like Was able to write like that No one taught me I just soaked it up Um, so I didn't know how to But I knew all the like knock on effects of it.

How much should you be paying yourself for each round? What type of entity do you need why can't you exactly convert entities on a dime like all these other things? so If you don't know something, think about well, what do I know? And what really is it my job to kno,w probably different than you think it

Kerry Guard: is Yeah, no, and I think that's where The performative piece like that that's where people I think are getting confused and why I wanted to have this conversation Was because I think when people think about performing They have to and it's the faked so you make it sort of mentality Of like if I just pretend that I'm the thing and I'm performing it Then maybe I will become the thing and I will know what I'm doing And I think that's where people are pushing back on social media to say Can you please stop trying to talk about the thing you don't know? And I think what you're saying and what I love and what I think we all need to lean into is to talk about the thing You do know and what your expertise is and to lean into that and to let it be okay I feel like what everybody's saying and part of what you're saying too is it's okay To not have all the answers and to go get them if you feel like it's important to be able to do your job Or lean on the right people To be able to you know bring that to the table but I think we all need to get away from this notion of we need to have all the answers and or pretend we do and which And that's not what we're saying when we're saying there's a performative aspect to showing up on linkedin it's more of what the The performance is more of that polished professional aspect, right?

Um when I'm sitting at home at night on you know on the couch Uh having my ice cream and my yoga pants. I'm not going to show up to work that way It's the same idea, right? How I talk to my friends when I'm texting with you know emojis Oh, well, we like to use emojis on linkedin that's um And we even like an omg every once in a while, but how I'm talking to my friends Is not how I'm going to show up and talk on linkedin and I just really wanted to take a minute to Create that distinction because I think that's what people are trying to say is yeah stop pretending but performing performing and pretending are too different

Alex Boyd: Yes, you can think of it as polishing or you can think of it as professional performing, but like Get away from the idea that you are creating personal drama As a way of getting attention, because that's exhausting and it's also not necessary. It's not necessary, I also want to bolster the so then once we've said don't talk about things. You don't know what you're talking about. Let's bolster what you do know, right? So like I think people often know a lot more than they give themselves credit fo.r It's just not the knowledge.

They thought that they needed to bring out um so like Every cyber security marketer knows way more about The things that are probably in the cracks and my if I were ghost fighting for them My job would be to dig into the cracks to figure out what relates back to the main thing and then draw those connections So the skill is to find Yeah to search your organization and to search yourself to find what you do know So you don't have to feel like you have to pretend so hard to know stuff that you don't know and then All of the exhausting part is just faking it, right faking it is exhausting So don't but then the the answer then is not give up. It's good. What can I do? So be resourceful with what you know and what knowledge you can get, rather than giving up. So my choice is not I don't know the thing, shut up. It's well. Can I can I learn it or can I Talk about something related but different um, I'm just not gonna Be content with giving up having accepted that I shouldn't talk about what I don't know Um, or if I do I'm going to be honest that I don't know um I mean even this is probably done a lot of This has probably gone off script for you. I don't know what your script was.

Kerry Guard: Oh, yeah. No, totally But I love it. I'm here for it it's

Alex Boyd: probably entertaining podcast as a result because we stuck to what ended up being more relevant

Kerry Guard: Yeah, and I think that I think this is where the whole point of the show was to talk about the end of the day How do we need to show up on linkedin not because we want to get The vanity this is where I do think vanity metrics are a thing the vanity metric of Impressions and engagement for the sake of it But to truly show up for our audience in a way that creates That natural engagement because we are not only Providing value, but we're doing it in a way that has this performative entertainment aspect that's engaging Um, it makes them want to read it because it's it's nice to read. It's compelling.

What's that word? It's compelling To read so I think that's really what I was trying to hit home today as well as for my own Like I run into those days where I feel like I have to post I don't know what to post about and I'm tired and And I have to put on that energy to sort of find the that performative aspect to get the thing out and make it compelling um But I think we it sort of you took the air out of the balloon in a really lovely way to say that Being performative isn't necessarily showing up in a way that's that Pretending you to be something you're not and to pretend you know more than you do and to really lean into What you know and your expertise um And to still be you it's still youth and this is all me. I'm not pretending to not be me It's just an it's just a certain side of me. That's a little amplified That on the everyday right um So I could talk to you literally all day And about this conversation And maybe we'll just have to have a round too, but I'm so so grateful.

Is there any last? wise words of wisdom that you haven't yet said or that you want to leave us with as we go out inspired to tackle the world of linkedin as we build our our brands both personally and for our clients and

Alex Boyd: companies Just to what you were saying Some people ask you to write every day I would much rather do if I'm if I'm trying to get most of my writing in a certain type of emotion or energy I'll just write a lot When I feel that energy and then I'll schedule that later so that I have a bright post on a day where I don't feel bright um And that's the doctoring of social media that doesn't require emotional labor So definitely do batch and schedule um to fit the Randomness and variation within your own life um You might get a bright post from me on day when I don't feel like that because I had three written I had 20 more drafts that were in draft status Or I literally just copied and pasted a post from three months ago and paid posted again the day We're just perfectly fine. So like The beauty of linkedin for introverts, especially Is that you can do that you If you're introverted and you go to a party you can't really Repurpose a past party appearance But on linkedin You can That's why linkedin works so well for me as an introvert is because I can do that. It's great So use it to your advantage. Let it serve you let the the asynchronous nature of it serve your humaneness

Kerry Guard: Yes Yes, I find that my LinkedIn post my best ones actually come when I'm Um anywhere but at my computer. So I'll be on the beach with my daughter and she'll be hanging out in the water And I'll have a moment of like, oh, I want to write about this thing or um, you know in Yeah, or in the car or whatever. I totally agree to strike with the iron taut and then to bank it. I thank goodness for scheduling for sure For sure. I love it Alex, I am so grateful where can people Find you and where can word get a drop a link? um a shameless plug of my aware link in the In the comments so you can sign up and uh get your product because this is you know all this lovely information about what Where it's coming from is Alex being able to Ingest all this data and see what's happening and bring it back to us such a thoughtful way as well as his own experience of linkedin so so Wow, what an what uh treat for us all today as we beg our heads against the wall How do we crack this code? Um, and that's the thing is it's not a code to crack. It's just showing up every day and doing our best. That's all we can do. Yeah, find me on LinkedIn.

Alex Boyd: You might imagine loving that. It's great to be here. Last question for you.

Kerry Guard: Alex. I'm going to go on script for this one because it's just one of my favorite questions Is uh outside of work and all of these many entrepreneurial things that you're up to What is currently speaking of joy? What is currently bringing you joy right now?

Alex Boyd: Waking up with my one-year-old cat um Like putting his head under my hand to get me to pet him That brought me a lot of joy this morning. He does that many mornings, too We've been away for a week and a half on vacation So like he's been at boarding for two weeks. So he's very much like, yeah, I want pets. So like that's pretty cool. Yeah,

Kerry Guard: I can't tell that too especially when I have my mouse Oh my hands are my mouse and I'm trying to get work done. He comes, I mean, instead, yeah, right, don't put that thing.

Alex Boyd: That's stupid, I think I'm way more fun.

Kerry Guard: Yeah, Awesome, awesome as always. I'm so grateful. Please like subscribe and share this episode was brought to you by MKG Marketing The digital market that helps complex brands like cyber security get found via sio and digital ads So it's by me carry guard c on co-founder MKG Marketing And if you'd like to be a guest and have a wild ride of a conversation like we just have here Do you have me? I would love to have you on the show. Thank you, as always to Elijah Drown my podcast sidekick, and uh, see y'all next time.