Laura Kenner on Cybersecurity Content That Connects and Converts

Overview:

In this episode, Kerry Guard speaks with Laura Kenner—content strategist, cybersecurity marketer, and solo marketing powerhouse—about building content that actually works in the trenches. Laura unpacks her approach to writing for both practitioners and decision-makers, and why understanding your audience’s daily reality is non-negotiable. She shares hard-won lessons on aligning with sales, using AI without losing your voice, and staying relevant on platforms like LinkedIn. Whether you're a one-person marketing team or scaling GTM across technical verticals, this conversation delivers clarity and actionable insights.

Transcript:

Kerry Guard 0:05

Welcome to Tea Time with tech marketing leaders. I'm your host, Kerry Guard, CEO and co-founder of MKG Marketing, and today we have the unicorn of cybersecurity. Content, Laura Kenner, Laura has hacked her way from tech trenches to content. Machine mastermind. She's the hacker of success, driving ROI obsessed GTM strategies for B-to-B, SAS brands. Get ready for insights powered by her AI-accelerated engine, real-world scrappiness, and a passion that turns code into compelling stories.

Laura Kenner 0:35

Laura, wow, that was a fabulous introduction.

Kerry Guard 0:39

It's all heart and part of having a podcast sidekick, who I appreciate. Thank you, Elijah, for getting us geared up here before we dive in. Laura, we've been playing around where we have a game first to introduce a topic. I know, I know it's very exciting. We're going to warm up with a little game that I'm calling True or False vulnerability rapid fire while I think of a better name, Elijah is going to have a timer going behind the scenes, I'll test out a cybersecurity Fact or Fiction, and you've got three seconds to shout out true or false, then 10 seconds to explain why. Oh boy. All right, all right. So cybersecurity Fact or Fiction, and then you're gonna tell us why you think it's fact or think it's factor efficient fiction. Ai, copy tools always produce robotic text.

Laura Kenner 1:28

Oh, it's hard. I'm gonna say Yes, true.

Kerry Guard 1:32

Oh, true. Why?

Laura Kenner 1:35

Because just the tool alone, yes, that's what you're gonna get if there isn't a human in the loop, if there isn't, if you're not providing a lot of context yourself, if you're just saying, Give me a blog that is what you're going to get. It's going to be generic. It's going to be fluff, it's going to be boring.

Kerry Guard 1:52

So, yeah, yeah, well, we'll unpack that later, folks, don't you worry. All right. Next question, short form, social media content can't drive real conversations, fact or fiction.

Laura Kenner 2:05

Oh, fiction. Short form can start conversations, and in fact, it can sometimes be more effective than the long form. I see these super long posts. I'm not sure if you're like deeply following someone or deeply into the topic. You might read it. That's something like that all the way through. But when you're on social media, you're probably expect probably expecting shorter form content, but it has to be, you know, it's gonna have some punch. It's gotta be have some emotional, you know, points to it, something that grabs the audience's attention and makes them want to react to it and want to respond and want to have a conversation. So that's the real trick in that. But it can be short and sweet.

Kerry Guard 2:41

Short ghost writing can never capture an executive's true voice.

Laura Kenner 2:45

Oh, false, okay. Because as long as the ghost writer makes the effort to really get to know the executive and their personality, their background, the things they care about, you know, a series of interviews with them, as much as you can get to know them, you can capture their voice. A good ghost writer can do that effectively.

Kerry Guard 3:08

Can you know one? Yes, cloud computing services are inherently insecure there.

Laura Kenner 3:15

Oh gosh, it's my understanding. There's a lot of sort of built-in basic controls, right in your public cloud systems everybody uses, but they clearly, they aren't enough. I've worked for enough different types of products, and understand all the places that they lack. And really, the cloud environment is a rented space, right? And you're running all of your systems there, and you ultimately are responsible making sure that everything you are running there is stay safe. That's not the responsibility of your cloud provider.

Kerry Guard 3:50

So subject matter, expert-driven thought leadership is a niche for most audiences. No, that's fiction.

Laura Kenner 3:56

God. Subject Matter Experts are the drivers of real conversation and real facts and real what I like to call boots on the ground experience, like they know what's going on, so they really they're not generating fluff like a GPT might do, or even a writer who's not well informed about the topic might do.

Kerry Guard 4:25

Long-form content is dead for SEO and engagement fiction.

Laura Kenner 4:29

Long-form content is excellent when you really need to wow, educate, and dig into a topic, you know. But again, it needs to have a purpose, just pumping out white papers or long, boring webinars or that kind of thing, if it doesn't have a strong purpose and a strong if people aren't getting something from it, if they don't have something to take away, if it doesn't become like a reference that they want to go back to, if it doesn't become a light. 12 moments, and they learn something and take something away from it, then it's then, then, yeah, it's useless.

Kerry Guard 5:05

All right, that is it. Thank you. Laura Kenner, our resident cybersecurity unicorn, for your amazing insights and for being such an amazing friend. I appreciate you. All right, we got some questions here we're going to get into in terms of the topic. We unpacked a lot there around what Laura's superpowers really are, and now we're going to dig into it. My first question for you, Laura, is what sparked your journey from cybersecurity expert to hacker of success in marketing?

Laura Kenner 5:31

Well, it was a road I didn't plan to take this that's how life is right for a lot of people. So I'll start with I was a midlife career changer. Okay, I worked as basically medical office support type roles for many years. I wasn't happy. I wasn't going anywhere, and I decided to get a degree in cybersecurity. And I graduated with a degree in May of 2022, and while doing that, I had a baby. And, yeah, it was very exciting years back, oh, in 2020 I'm sorry, it happened in the middle of me, like, I graduated with my associate's degree in 2020 so, you know, March no marching down me or anything like that. Yeah, a lot of drama. The whole world fell off that. So I got the degree. I wanted to be part of tech. I want to be part of cybersecurity, the whole good guy, bad guy, the defense of the nation, defense of our data, defense of our privacy. These are things that are important to me, and I just wanted to be part of it. So I got the degree, and I was technically trained to be an analyst, like a security analyst or a SOC analyst really could have gone multiple directions, because it's sort of a general degree. And I have certifications in cybersecurity on CompTIA at SEC plus and network plus. And I keep those up because I want to keep my tech hands still in the suit in the soup that doesn't make any sense. I want to keep my tech hands in the clay or whatever. So I got the degree and right. But the thing is, before I didn't go looking for work in marketing, I thought I was going to be an analyst. But before I graduated, I'll never forget this. Three weeks before I graduated, I was like, I don't even have the degree yet I was approached by a company looking for a Technical Marketing Specialist, and to be honest, I almost didn't respond to the email. I thought it was a scam, but they found me on LinkedIn, so this is a huge plug for LinkedIn. I did know then that I needed to optimize my LinkedIn. I need because it was a challenge to change what LinkedIn was showing me and who was finding me, because it just wanted to show me all the medical hospital and doctors offices, kinds of connections, and I wanted to move into this new world. So I found that I needed to start getting those keywords in there and my certifications in there, and and it worked, and they found me, and I was very happy that opportunity was presented, and I took it with, you know, open arms. I was very excited about it, because I had this technical training, but I also have always loved writing, communicating like that's just always been my jam. So now I could do both. I could take technical topics and speak to a variety of audiences that sort of, that is what I'm good at, and this was the perfect job for me. So I just that was my first job in this field, that was about a little over three years ago, and I just grew from there. And so the marketing side, I've learned basically on the job from and from paying attention and from listening people and, you know, learning as much as I can, I'm basically a sponge.

Kerry Guard 8:44

So I love that. I mean, you have to be, have to be a sponge in marketing, because it's always, always changing so quickly, too.

Laura Kenner 8:52

But that's exactly why I wanted to be in cybersecurity. My old role was stagnant, and I knew cybersecurity was never going to be stagnant, because there's always new technology, always new challenges, like the whole good guy, bad guy battle. You know, whatever you do that, whatever the defenders do, the offenders are going to find a way to get through it and the game continues. So it's a very exciting field to be in, in general, and marketing, it turns out, has a lot of those aspects too, because it's we can get into this later, but it feels like the landscape is shifting under our feet basically daily. So the old playing books, as they say, just stop kind of being effective. They stop working. So you're always looking for something new, and that's, that's my brain works.

Kerry Guard 9:33

Yeah. I wonder if the playbooks ever really worked, or if we just kept pounding the same nail to make it work, and now we can't make it work anymore. We're gonna get into it, folks. What does a content machine with a cybersecurity engine look like in practice?

Laura Kenner 9:48

I was dubbed the content machine at my former company because I could quickly and effectively get out good content. And I did on a regular basis. And it starts with, like I said, my technical training, I could understand. I could work with product management, product marketing, and marketing and sales, and try to really hone in on what, what the piece of content is for, what's the purpose make it effective all those things. And once I understand that, yeah, I just, I just, I'm kind of a machine. I kind of, I just understand how to put the things together to meet the need and get it done.

Kerry Guard 10:32

It sounds like your expertise in cyber as well, from having your degrees and sort of starting you mentioned it earlier in the rapid questions of the boots on the ground, and that firsthand experience of that deep expertise, I imagine that gave you sort of that leg up of being able to quickly whip out content because you are, you were, you were in that seat, yes,

Laura Kenner 10:53

to understand the product, probably better than maybe the average person who hasn't had any cybersecurity training. I do encourage that for most people working in cyber I'm there's more and more sales and marketing and good market teams are people are taking the initiative to learn, at least get certifications and that kind of thing, because it's a very technically tough field to be in and you need to understand what you're talking about, or you can't talk about effectively. So the cybersecurity engine is my training behind the content machine is my writing skills, my content skills. So that's what that means.

Kerry Guard 11:27

Where does your content and writing skills come from? You said that it was a passion of yours and something you really loved. But where did that? Where did you learn that? Was that just something you self-taught and just did a lot and then you were able to use it more in that first marketing job? Or did that come with your previous experience in medical like, where did that originate from? Basically,

Laura Kenner 11:45

I've sort of always been a writer. I think probably a lot of people can relate to that. I just always that's those are the classes I got A's in. That's the classes I loved. And surprisingly, my technical degree, I didn't think there would be much writing in it, but there was a lot of writing in every class, which made me happy, because that's how I most effectively communicate. So I guess it's partly natural, but also learning the type of writing and the type of writing needed for marketing and selling a product that I basically learned on the job for my peers, yeah, from watching them, but I'm a quick study.

Kerry Guard 12:26

And how do you tailor messaging for technical versus non-technical audiences? It is a very we mentioned it very technical industry. Do you always sort of lean into that and speak their language? Do you also write? Are you also trying to meet other people who are maybe not as technical, but need to know this stuff are. How are you balancing those or technical audiences? I try to put myself in their shoes.

Laura Kenner 12:45

Now I can't call myself a boots-on-the-ground. I've never actually worked as an analyst. I haven't actually had that experience. I was simply trained. So at least I understand the language that they use, and I understand, you know the general topics, but I try to give them what I think they want. And also communicating with the SMEs on the team, like communicating with customer success and sales people, okay, what are you hearing? What are you hearing from prospects? What are you hearing from customers that they like about the product? And try to take those messages and get them out to the curious the audience. So the technical audience is going to want to know more about, what can they do with it? How's that going to help? How's that going to help them in their day to day lives? Is this going to make their life? Life more complex? You know, there's try and address the objections that they're going to have as users. Usually, the end users are more worried about, you know, how long is the onboarding how is this going to work with other tools? So I try to address those concerns upfront, whereas for the business buyer, they're more worried about, is this going to be this is going to save me time and money, and you know what's in it for me, and is it going to reduce my risk significantly? Is this something I even need to be concerned about.

Kerry Guard 14:00

It sounds like you're you're playing very much into that problem solution, sort of messaging, depending on who you're talking to, is that, am I picking up what you're putting down there?

Laura Kenner 14:10

Yeah, I would say that's true.

Kerry Guard 14:13

Yes, in terms of fear, uncertainty and doubt, that lovely FUD thing that I haven't talked so much about, but I feel like when you I'm having this problem myself, where, when you talk problem solution, it tends to naturally fall into creating a bit of worry and fear and uncertainty, just naturally, right, you're talking about the problem, and then trying to create and paint this little, glorious, wonderful Dream solution of how we're going to save the day. How are you navigating messaging? In regards to that? Do you find that you do have to sort of poke the bear with the problem of this? These are the potential problems that you could face that does happen to create fear, uncertainty and doubt or or. Do you pivot and make it more like a positive outcome? How? How do you navigate the world of fun in this wonderful what's running through my head?

Laura Kenner 15:09

I'm deeply against fear-mongering. I feel like there's too much of that in this industry, and really, vendors should avoid that kind of speak. You have to remember the people you're talking to, they're very aware of the cybersecurity threats. This is what they do all day. You're basically insulting their intelligence when you're coming in with you know, oh, this threat stories and fear mongering, and that's just it's disrespectful to what they do, what they want to know. Their fear is, really, can I get my job done effectively? Can I support and protect the business I work for? That's their fears. So they aren't so I just try to avoid that kind of language altogether and try to speak to them about the practical. I try to be very down to earth and on their level, and not this. This product is going to solve all your problems. It's going to be glorious and not oversell either. Because everybody people sense that they knew that they, you know, avoid that sort of sensationalism. I try to avoid that too. I just try to take a very down-to-earth tack and think about, what do they care about on the job, and what are they trying to get done? And what are they trying to accomplish? How do I do this with your tool? Where do I find that with your tool? And try to get into those rather than practical advice, rather than, if you don't get this, you know, you're going to be taken out by the by the next ransomware.

Kerry Guard 16:39

That's disrespectful. I love that I totally agree it is. Yes, yes. So how do you how do you breathe? Because you talked about needing to create connection and vulnerability, and not vulnerability in terms of cybersecurity vulnerability, but vulnerability in terms of emotion and connection. And how, how do you marry the practical with also getting somebody to feel and connect to the brand as well?

Laura Kenner 17:03

Oh, I feel like I need, like, an example in front of me. I work a lot better, like case by case basis, but, well, I feel like I do it all the time, but I can't think of any specific examples right now. When it comes to social media posts, I try to at least have a strong hook. It's not always emotional. That can be hard to do consistently, especially for technical products, and it's not always what I'm trying to do. It's usually a lot of my content that I put out for companies is educational. It's more about awareness. It's more about lighting a light bulb. But it's not necessarily going to be an emotional connection. Emotional connection is this sort of bigger sort of part of your brand, and that's harder to figure out, and that's, that's teamwork. I think you've you've got to all be on board with we want people to feel this way about our product. That's really hard for me to do without something like give me an assignment, and I'll do it. But for me to talk about a general way, I think it's hard for me to nail down that.

Kerry Guard 18:00

All good, all good. I appreciate you for pulling that apart for us as much as you could. And maybe a story will pop in, and you'll cut me off, and we'll dive right back in. And if not, that's okay too. What makes the Bootstrap GTM strategy different from traditional agency models?

Laura Kenner 18:16

My approach is, just like I've said, very down-to-earth, very practical, very kind of scrappy. I lean heavily. What I know best is organic, organic reach, working with SEO teams to help draw people to the website. I'm pretty good at that, writing content for that. I dare say I've successfully done that before, and on social and just, I feel like my approach is a little less um, try the next shiny thing, or try to be like the competitors, or try, you know, copycat methods. I just try to, is this going to be effective? What are we trying to do with this content? What's our plan? You know, what stage are they at? Is very important, like a very early startup that basically is figuring out their brand is different than a more established startup that is long been established, but trying to make some pivot so it's different kinds of challenges and in different spaces. So I just try to think those things through and be practical and little bit scrappy. And try to be by scrappy, I mean, be as effective as you can with what you can do organically. Of course, you're going to need ads, you're going to need paid and syndicated and all the things, but you've really got to your organic should be strong. There's no reason that shouldn't be.

Kerry Guard 19:39

It's the foundation. Yes, yeah. In terms of, you know, the go to market is sort of a big thing right now, it's, it's the new, it's the new shot, I don't say shiny. I think it's the basis, it's sort of that before the marketing plan, right? It's like that huge setback and that big. Sort of, how does this all fit together? Right? It sounds like your go-to-market strategy is very much content-driven.

Laura Kenner 20:09

This is just, it's the voice of your company. It's what everyone sees. It's not it's writing, it's it's your blog, it's your videos, it's your advertising, it's everything expressed to the public, is your content, right? So it is very important, and it's key. But I understand that that's not the whole go to market engine, but I do strongly believe, and this is another one of, one of my pillars of, I guess, my strategy, is that sales, the whole go to market team needs to work together, and they need to communicate, because there's a lot of breakdown, and there's, I hear a lot everybody saying this, right? We need to be aligned. That really needs to come from leadership, or it's not going to happen, right? So the first go-to-market hire, the first people in charge of setting up the first hires, and the systems need to see that and enable it and encourage it, and it shouldn't be. Sales and Marketing meet up once a month, and sales talks about their numbers, and Marketing talks about their numbers. That's not the kind of conversation that are really helpful, like, it's not about showing off what you're doing. It's about, hey, what are you hearing over there? Sales? What are you hearing from prospects? You're out on the street, you're talking to people all the time. You have valuable information we could use over here in marketing. Maybe we'll better understand how to speak, you know, to about the product. Maybe we're going off on a tangent over here that's not working at all. You're doing something else over here that is working on the street, right? So we need to be communicating. And then customer success. Same thing. How are the customers feel about this product? What do they like about it? What are they not like about it? Without that information? I'm I'm I hate the chat GPT word, but just came in my head, flying blind. I'm flying blind without that information. So really, teamwork makes the dream work, right? And go to market. Strategy is tough. It's, it's tough. It's a tough market, and I'm not gonna I'm not here to claim that I'm an expert. I'm three years deep into this industry, and I'm learning, and I have made it my mission to learn everything I can about what makes a company successful. Like, what really, you take two very similar companies a very similar niche. What makes one rise above the other? Like, what is that I'm trying to solve that problem, both through my work for companies and through the bootstraps member community that I have started, because I feel like that will help enable communication between all the people, and maybe we can figure some things out along the way. There's power in community so and learning together.

Kerry Guard 22:41

I love what you said. There's so much we can learn from, as the marketing team, from the different teams internally, because they all touch the customer differently. And really what we're learning, and what I've been learning and working with Elijah for the last six months, is that story is really the backbone to the success of any sort of marketing go to market where we're all sort of rallying around the same branding, the same stories, the same why us to your point, and so being able to talk cross functionally and learn from each other. And what those stories, what those customer success stories are, is that bread and butter to everything that you do from a content perspective. So I don't know how you would get that information if you weren't talking to the people who were talking to the customer on a regular basis.

Laura Kenner 23:26

Marketing can be so disconnected from that, like you can come to find out that what your customers say about your products has nothing to do with what you're marketing over here. So that disconnect, that's a road to failure. So just, I'm just saying, try to try to communicate, try to be on the same page. And what you said about stories, the story, especially for small startups, I love working for a small start. I love working for startups. I have the startup, startup bug. It's tough, it's challenging, it's it's flying the plane while building it, right? It's stressful, but it's also very exciting, and it's this huge opportunity to like, okay, let me take what I know and work with other people, and let's try to figure, let's try to make this thing fly, right? So that's very exciting, but that story, there's a reason why the founders and this gets lost. There's a reason why the founders started the company in the first place. They saw a problem they thought they could solve. For some they probably have a very specific person in mind, a very specific audience in mind. They experienced something on the job, perhaps back in the day, usually former technical people themselves, and they built this thing to solve a problem. But as the go-to-market team spins up, and everybody kind of comes in with their own ideas and objectives. And while this works at my former company, the story gets lost, and I think, you know, you got to hold on to that. So agreed.

Kerry Guard 24:51

Elijah is actually going to interview me for the podcast because I am taking a break, and sorry, Elijah, I'm spilling your tea. Um. Because I think that's important, and I and I agree that our stories as founders definitely get lost in the sauce. So I'm both excited a little nervous being put into the hot seat, but yes, I'm excited to share our story as we began in 15 years ago. So it's gonna be awesome. You talked about data and that being part of the glue that sort of holds the organization together. From a GTM standpoint, how do you measure the ROI of content in a cybersecurity context?

Laura Kenner 25:31

Um, it's it basically comes down to SEO for the website content. Um, and I work closely with the SEO team. I'm not myself an SEO expert, but I know enough to be dangerous, is what I say. I understand that. I understand the basic concepts. If you give me an SEO goal or write to I'll nail it. That's what I do. But when it comes to social media, that's harder. When it comes to like YouTube, that's harder when it comes to video ads, CTV, things I'm seeing that I think companies should start getting into a little bit more over here. On the video side, those can be harder, but there's still, there's always metrics somewhere. There's always, you know, it's so challenging, I want to two things I'd like to talk about are LinkedIn and YouTube. I'm a little obsessed with both of those, and companies like to use those, especially LinkedIn, and LinkedIn is so frustrating, because, sure, you can get some engagements, but that's like vanity metrics, right? What you're really, what I'm really looking for when I'm working for a company is that not the same employees and same like Friends of the company are engaging, but that new people, and potentially your ICP, are starting to engage, that's where it's like, ding, ding, ding. Something's working like that. Content is making its way out of your little circle and finding the right people. So that's a huge challenge, and that's not really anything to do with the likes or the reshares. It's just a lot of people just sort of, they pay attention your content. Don't necessarily engage with it, but they might come to you someday and say something. So it's becomes like hearsay is, it can be really hard to prove.

Kerry Guard 27:10

it's totally brand-building. It totally is one of my favorite metrics, and that, and it's hard to do with startups, because you're so new, but it's something to start paying attention to, and then look at over time is are more people searching for your brand name? So is your brand search volume growing? Now you don't know why that's growing if you, especially if you're doing a lot, but if you're doing one thing, like LinkedIn and video, and that's sort of the only play you're making, then looking at how that might be impacting on more people searching for you is one leading indicator that I quite get so and that is a strong start.

Laura Kenner 27:48

I think LinkedIn is a strong start for B2P. There's really no better hub, I guess, to start with,

Kerry Guard 27:56

yeah, I do love Elijah asked me all the time, like when he's looking at what we're posting on cross channels, one of the things he's looking at, and we always talk about, is who's new that liked or engaged with the content, so that ABM motion and thinking through that, I think, is killer, and totally agree with that. What advice do you have for founders with zero marketing budget? Where should they start? Well, what should they stop doing?

Laura Kenner 28:25

Oh, boy. Well, I'm a founder of a zero marketing budget. By that, I mean, I'm a consultant, and that's my paid work, but for the bootstrap cyber community as a passion project that's not making any money, and I spent a lot of time on it, maybe it will someday, I'll monetize and all of that, but that's a slow process, and I don't have a lot of time to dedicate to it, because, you know, client work comes first, but so I'm just taking what I know, it's also a proof of concept, like, Okay, I'm a marketer. I can do all these things for other companies, the companies I work for, let me apply what I know too much to my own. I don't want to call it a business, but my own community see and see what I can do. So creating content, build a website, writing the blog, making the videos, doing the LinkedIn posts, all the things, the newsletter, which I realized I'm way behind all the things, and it's time consuming, is a lot. So if you're, you know, you got no budget, it's your time and effort. And try to have some strategy. Though you can't be 10 places at once. It's even though you want to, it's hard. So I focus on LinkedIn and YouTube and my website. And that's a lot. It's a lot. It's enough. So, you know, choose your battles, pick your battleground, and try to be at least consistently there and participating. And, you know, connections, I can't say enough about networking and connections and communicating with other people, especially on LinkedIn. It's not just about you shouting at the crowd. It's about you. Participating in conversations. That's what really builds your trust and relationship with other people. So that can really help your business, too. So if you're starting with zero, it's down to you, and you've got to find the time and have a plan and just get at it.

Kerry Guard 30:13

You got to feed the machine. I talk about LinkedIn and feeding the machine all the time. To your point, it's not just about I think I just read a stat from Alex who owns a company called aware, where you put you can use their platform to easily post and engage with the audience, with your audience. It's an awesome tool, but he just posted that you need to be engaging with other people's content daily, 50 times a day.

Laura Kenner 30:42

But I follow a lot of people, especially anybody, if they don't have to be in the cybersecurity business, right? I just follow people who make sense to me, who are talking about marketing and sales and what's in content and what's effective. And I've learned from so many different genres that I feel like I can bring it back home. That's part of what I'm doing too with my own content, is take these lessons that I am picking up and figuring out how to apply them to the cybersecurity go-to-market team, because I feel like we're a little bit behind. I feel like we're a little behind all hot trends right now, and like, for some reason, a little bit resistant to doing some things that I don't know outside of our niche companies are doing. So, yes, I heard the same thing, like, it's more effective now, and I think I'm starting to experiment with this. And I feel like it's, it's true, LinkedIn is changing. Like that's one of those landscapes that shifts under our feet all the time. We're, you know, slaves to the algorithm, I guess. But, and that's very frustrating, but you do the best of what you got right, still the best platform to be, so you still have to be there and figure out how to make it work. So I am finding that commenting is very effective, and now was, as a person, going in and commenting builds trust with you and potentially sideways to your brand, but as a company, a company page going in and making a lot of comments, I haven't figured out how to navigate that yet. That's a little bit tricky, because immediately, because it's a company logo, popping into a combo, it's immediately feel salesy, so and can be off-putting. So that's, that's a delicate dance there, but you better have something. You better come to the table with something to say or something to add to the conversation. That's all I know.

Kerry Guard 32:22

I could tangent there. I'm not going to go on like, No, I love I totally agree LinkedIn. LinkedIn is definitely tectonic right now, in terms of how shifting under us. I actually just read a post from somebody today, who's she's got 88,000 followers. She started the concept around hype women. Hashtag hype women. She started the meme with Jamie Lee Curtis. Who was who? Like, I think I forget who it was, but she like, they were both up for ox Oscars. This other woman won the Oscar, and she just, like, hugged her and cheered. It was, like, so excited. So Aaron's kind of a big deal. Maybe you follow her, I don't know, but she's leaving LinkedIn and going to Substack. She's like, I'll still be here. You can still connect me, but I'm taking my content elsewhere because I'm tired of LinkedIn, basically strong-arming me and not getting my content in front of people. And so I think that frustration sort of coming through. I was having that frustration earlier this year where I was like, I'm posting, I'm doing all of the things, I'm commenting, I'm engaging with people, but like, nobody's saying the thing. And then I hired an expert storyteller, and he helped me find my voice that wasn't so when I write, I write very technically. I'm kind of cold. And so he helped me take my actual voice of how I talk, and translate into posts. And now things are like going crazy. So I yeah, I agree with you. LinkedIn is a tricky one. I think if you're a founder and you're struggling with it, don't just bang your head against a wall. Bring somebody in who know, who's doing the thing and doing it well, and can help you figure out how to, how to get it to to work for you, so you don't feel like you're working against it. It's, it's just one of those things. It's where you need to be right now?

Laura Kenner 34:10

Right when you mentioned no bucket, it's all you, but what you said there, though, that's working. It's really that it's more genuine. It's coming off as more human, not as maybe you tend to write a little bit stiff, or not sure how to characterize it, but, um, you know, try to. No, that's right, like you would talk to a person, and that's you gotta remember that,

Kerry Guard 34:31

yes, yeah,

Laura Kenner 34:35

Sometimes I'm just trying to get something out and don't put much heart into it. And yeah, it goes nowhere. But sometimes I put everything into it, right? Like, I like this thing, whatever it is, is really important to me, you know, and I put a lot of time and effort and thinking about what I'm exactly, what I'm going to write, and try to be as real as I can, and try to be down to earth and all the things I believe in, and it just goes nowhere. And it's so. Frustrating like it's starting to feel ,I don't blame people for leaving or for trying other avenues, because it's starting to feel like high effort, low results. So you know, LinkedIn, what are you doing to us? What are you doing to us?

Kerry Guard 35:17

Authenticity is totally true. So if you're a founder and you're on the struggle bus with LinkedIn, you feel like you're posting all the time. Are two pieces of I think, between Laura and I with two pieces of advice. One is, start commenting. Start engaging with the community. Get in there. And it doesn't necessarily have to be on your customers. Content. Influencers are great people who you aspire to. Just start engaging. And two, find your authentic voice. I love to send videos to Elijah, and then he helps me deconstruct them and then write the post in my talking voice versus my writing voice, and that has made a huge difference. So lots of great avenues to develop authentic content. If you're stuck, try something different stuff the I think the one thing we've learned, Laura, between the two of us talking here, is to not keep taking the same hammer and the same nail and just banging away. You gotta keep iterating and pushing and pulling.

Laura Kenner 36:15

Yeah. I mean, we're all working for a living, right? And we're trying to get things done, and we're trying to get things out. It can be hard to take a breath, step back, and take a look. And you're like, you know, to have that moment to even realize, you know, what? If that changed something, you know what? The hammer is not working. Like, why isn't this working? You know, it takes that moment to break out of it, but you're totally right.

Kerry Guard 36:38

SEO is so important to you, and it's been something that's worked so well for you for so long. How are you combating that in terms of geo, like geo is coming into play now, have you changed your strategy from a content perspective? Are you seeing our engagement on your website go down, like you're getting less clicks and views to your website because of geo? How? How is geo playing a role in your SEO strategy?

Laura Kenner 37:05

I'm paying attention to things. Everybody's losing traffic, and I think that's going to continue. From what I'm seeing, there's more and more generative answers, and people are going directly to the AIS to get answers, but And I'm hearing that the ways to get found by them is to be brand mentions, basically. So your blog and your own company page on social are probably a little less effective there. The machines are still going to read those, but what they seem to trust for is what people are saying over on Reddit or what other people on social worst thing about you and linking back to you. So, you know, how do you make that happen? That's that's actually something like swirling in my head right now. You can't just jump into Reddit and be like our products, great, blah, blah, blah, like that. You'll be shut down immediately. So it's about drumming up buzz, I guess, drumming up conversation, getting people to talk about you. And that can be really hard when you're a small company, just even trying to get people to know that your exists, let alone talk about you, like, I think in the old country song, like, give them something to talk about, let's give them something to talk about. Like, that seems to be one of the keys to get found. But, you know, I don't have that all figured out. I think we're all learning as we go. I do think I haven't changed the way I write or what I do, because I do think quality, helpful content is always going to be useful so and it's going to get found. It's just, it's just getting less organic traffic from search.

Kerry Guard 38:37

All right, one more I can't I can't help myself. What's one myth about AI-assisted copywriting you want to bust?

Laura Kenner 38:44

It's automatically going to be awful. There's no way it can be impactful and effective. But it can, because it what matters isn't the AI. What matters is the human in the driver's seat, the human in the loop. Yes, if you just sit back and say, write me some write me some ad copy. Write me a web page based on this. Yeah, it's going to be generic. It's gonna be awful. But if you're a writer, you know how to you know what's wrong with it. You know immediately what's wrong with it. And you can sit there and have a conversation with it, and it learns. So one of the powers of these tools is, the more you work with them, the more they learn how you want things done. So then more of my writer Ness becomes part of the machine, and it starts anticipating what I'm going to say. Like, no, I don't like that. That's too salesy. I don't like that. That's too stiff. I don't like that. It's too fear-mongering things like this. And it does learn so and then I still, ultimately, I'm in control of the end result, and I know what I want out of it so I could get into it as a whole. I've basically forced a machine through my own writing process, everything I would do. But that's not something like that's tricky when it comes to, like, generative, not generative, I'm sorry, agentic, like, I'm not sure how I would teach at this point, an agentic workflow that would actually work. Work, but I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about trying.

Kerry Guard 40:02

I want to circle back with you on that, because I think there's a big myth floating around right now about agentic not really being there yet for anybody to figure out. There are people who claim that they've done it, but when people actually go to use it, they say it's still too willy-nilly. It's still making up so much and not actually doing the thing that needs you to do. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna see, as you dabble, we're gonna circle back on that, Laura, there are so many tools, and it's overwhelming.

Laura Kenner 40:31

And I'm trying to think I did my first. I'm so proud of myself though. I did my first two-step Zap on Zapier. It was, it was for free, like, let me try. I know nothing about coding, all right, that was not part of my training. And I'm like, trying all these things. I'm having conversations with Chat GPT, what's the best thing? And kept coming back to Zapier. I'm like, fine, so I get in there. One problem I have. I subscribe to all these emails. I subscribe to all these newsletters, because these are people I follow that give me ideas for content and teach me things. And I want to collect all that goodness and find topics to talk about for my own content for Bootstrap Cyber. Um, well, that's a long, you know, time-consuming process, reading all those emails and taking notes and figuring out what, what's what aligns with my brand and so on. So I just built a two steps that read all emails tagged with this tag and pull all points related to blah, blah, blah, given information about what I was, what my brand likes to talk about, the topics my brand talks about. And it put it into this document in my Google Docs, and put out, does it? It did it? And I was like, Oh, I like literal double drop. I'm like, Oh, my God, I have the power. Like, I was, like, drunk with power, like, what? And it, like, saved me so much time. I'm like, wow, that alone, that one little zap, like, this is something I do want to experiment with, but the trick ultimately, is still going to be, how do I get workflows? And there's a difference between automation and agentic, too. Agentic when you let it make decisions for you, which but workflow is automation for some tedious tasks like that, like sorting through a ton of emails and pulling out the good bits, that's a huge time saver. And I see a lot of value in that. So I'll be playing with that as I go forward.

Kerry Guard 42:19

Oh, workflows. I totally agree. Workflows. There's power in that, if you have the time to really, like, figure it out, there are huge powered workflows. So again, again, I'm going to follow up with you. I feel like, ah, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna follow, if people want to learn more about things like this and follow your content now that you're going to start teaching us all about AI workflows, where can they find you? Where can they subscribe?

Laura Kenner 42:48

Oh, gosh, well, follow me on LinkedIn, Laura Kenner, and check out my YouTube at Bootstrap Cyber and on LinkedIn. Oh, I also have bootstrap cyber.com. Is my website, and then my home, my home ground, so you can always contact me there.

Kerry Guard 43:06

So good, Laura. Before we go, my last question for you is, because you are more than a marketer, I'd love to know, outside of marketing, what is currently bringing you joy in your personal life?

Laura Kenner 43:16

Oh, gosh, see, I knew you were gonna ask this question. And like, the answer I want to give is my child, my son. He's light on my life. Love him so much. But this feels too like everybody would say that. So one of the weird things I find relaxing and enjoyable is I'm huge Aldi nerd. Aldi the grocery store. It's a discount grocery store is growing like wildfire here in America, and I've been doing that year, but there's like a whole culture around it now. And I follow Facebook groups, Aldi. Aldi groups, all the Isle of Shame groups. If you're familiar with the Isle of Shame, well, it's a little grocery store, and they have the owl of shame is their Aldi finds. And it changes every week, every Wednesday. So all the nerds we call ourselves know this, and that's it makes like a treasure hunt. So you go in there, and every week there's something new, and it's all shame, and it could be anything from like a food processor to a pair of shorts or socks or something like, really household goods, I would say mostly household goods, sometimes clothing, um, and all in all, over the year that all shame changes. We call the all shame because, like, that's where you blow your budget. You're like, well, like, don't look, don't look. So sure how they know that, but, um, yeah, I kind of I like to do when I have time, to just go down and stroll and see what's in the all shame and see if anything I don't need that I want.

Kerry Guard 44:45

They're just, at least you're getting out, that's better than Yes, rather than the 2 am Amazon of shame.

Laura Kenner 44:51

Oh, I do that too. I do that too. Yeah, that's yeah, I didn't need that. Or I'll even forget I'm like, so for. I surprised myself. Oh, that was in my cart. Apparently, I ordered it.

Kerry Guard 45:07

Oh, we have all been there, especially when you have kids and you're up with them in the middle of the night. It's just what happens.

Laura Kenner 45:16

Because I'm a mom, to go to the grocery store alone, and that's the key, though. It's not with the little man. I love him to death, but little man, why? Why are we here? You know, without the drama, like just stroll around, take my time, I find it relaxing.

Kerry Guard 45:33

I love that. I love that. And now I'm going to go check out Aldi, because I've never heard of it, and I'm going to go down that rabbit hole, and I can't wait. That is. Thank you so much, Laura. I so appreciate you. What an episode our resident cybersecurity unicorn for your amazing insights and being such an amazing friend to the mkg team. If you loved this episode, brew another cup and binge these tea time hits through our SSS feed, Episode 12, where we were scaling pipeline first through paid media, learn how to engineer ads and actually convert as well as episode eight teaches you to SEO secrets in the cloud security pro we dive into Priority pruning and SERP feature wins last, but certainly not least. I'll leave you with Episode Five, where remote leadership meets marketing. Explore the art of crafting culture in a hybrid world. All of these details will be in our show notes for you to explore. I'm Kerry Guard, host of Tea Time With Tech Marketing Leaders. This episode is powered by MKG. We manage the details, you capture the market. See you next time.