Episode Summary
Building a personal brand can stem from a lot of different activities. It’s all about what you want to achieve. LinkedIn has become one of the most popular channels to introduce yourself and let people know who you are. But some people do it only for the “likes” and never really connect with people.
So, how do you use LinkedIn as a way to truly engage with the audience? In this episode of Rep Your Brand, Nick Bennett welcomes Sam Kuehnle, VP of Demand Generation at Refine Labs. Nick and Sam get into what makes content appealing to a specific audience, identify ways to connect with people, and explain how you can get started with creating your own content to help you stand out on LinkedIn.
Guest Profile
- Name: Sam Kuehnle
- What he does: Sam is VP of Demand Generation at Refine Labs.
- Company: Refine Labs
- Noteworthy: Growing up, he wanted to be a professional footballer, physiotherapist, and psychologist. However, today Sam specializes in digital marketing, and his expertise is reflected in several fields: SEM, SEO, display, re-targeting, SMM, paid media, ABM, lead generation, analytics, customer acquisition, content marketing, A/B testing, marketing growth, multi-touch attribution, copywriting, and many more.
Key Insights
- You need to add personality while posting on LinkedIn. Sam is the VP of Demand Generation at Refine Labs, but on LinkedIn, in addition to marketing, he also talks about health. He believes that if you want to get on LinkedIn and start sharing things, you need to add personality or show the person behind it. "If I want to do this and connect with people, let's talk about things that I care about and continually help people with. For me, that's health. I grew up playing sports, played soccer through college, and then it was, 'How do I keep this in my life?'"
- The most challenging part of creating content is balancing consistency and value. Some people post every day on LinkedIn, but that doesn't seem to guarantee success. Sam publishes three days a week, but he provides value. According to Sam, the hardest part of creating content is balancing consistency and value. "The value side is the other way. I'm not going to put up a post just to post. Usually, I post on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I didn't post yesterday — Wednesday — and I said, 'Man, I really need to get something out there,' but I didn't quite have anything ready yet."
- “Likes” are not crucial for creating your brand. The long game and knowing what you want to get is the most significant piece. As Sam explains, people who develop their brand don't have to worry about “likes.” Instead, they should focus on why they are doing what they are doing and what they want to achieve. "I needed to know why I was doing it. So early on, I wasn't doing it for the ‘likes;’ I wasn't doing it for the followers. If you do it for validation, you're not going to stick to it in the long run. I wanted to be continuously learning — give myself opportunities to have holes poked in my thoughts, continue to strengthen skills and insights, and, honestly, just get input from people who are way smarter than me, which is what I found on LinkedIn."
Episode Highlights
Lean into What’s Natural for You
“My family has had an advertising agency for three generations back home. That’s up in Ohio and Trent; it was traditional print, radio, TV, all of that. So, as I started going through college, I was like, ‘Do you want to take it on? I don’t want to be stuck in Northwest Ohio; I don’t want to be doing print radio TV anymore.’
When you’re involved in those conversations, you see all of that happening over time. You start getting used to it. So when I went to college, I went to a school that had incredible medical engineering programs, but business just made sense. It clicked. So I was like, ‘I’m just going to lean into what comes naturally to me at this point.’ And from there followed the marketing manager.”
You Have to Be an Expert to Share the Insights That You’ve Learned
“For me, that was the biggest thing, ‘What does my opinion matter in this?’ I don’t have enough experience or exposure to it. So that’s probably the biggest thing. And then It started to change over the past couple of years. But, for a while, everything has to be this high-quality production. If I’m going to do a video, it’s gotta be top-notch. If I’m gonna do animation, it’s gotta be phenomenal.”
It’s Important to Have a Life Beyond Staring at Someone on a Screen
“There are times like this is a call I definitely won’t take face-to-face, but there are other internal meetings where you don’t have to be on Zoom. Let’s just pop in headphones. We can all go for a walk and talk about this, but we don’t. We’re not sharing screens. You don’t have to be here.
So trying to empower our team to figure out what are the things that you need to be in front of a screen for, and where it’s like, ‘Go hang out with your family. If you’ve got a new baby, hold your baby. You can hop on the phone and put it on ‘mute’ when you’re not doing anything. Just have a life outside of staring at someone on a screen.'”
What Can We Expect from Sam Kuehnle on LinkedIn in 2022?
“I don’t have follower goals. I am sticking to consistency, adding value, and really using it to continue to sharpen my skills. So as I get further away from platform execution, the conversations are still what keep me sharp and aware of what’s going on. What are the changes taking place? What does this mean for marketing, moving forward? So keeping a pulse on everything; it’s a really good way of keeping myself accountable.”
