Laura Pursley (00:02)
Yeah, so our company is mostly remote. all over the country. So all of the interviews are done on Microsoft Teams. And we just record on Teams and then we repurpose it from there. So we don't need fancy equipment. It's pretty simple to do. So we're trying to keep it simple so that it's within the person's workflow. They're used to using Teams every day. We set a Teams meeting. We do the interview. We get the recording. We repurpose it.
and go from there.
Ben Ard (00:56)
Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Laura. Laura, welcome to the show.
Laura Pursley (01:01)
Hi, Ben. Thanks for having me.
Ben Ard (01:02)
Yeah, Laura, I'm excited to have you on. This is going to be a really fun subject. You've got like a cool workflow plan story, and I think a lot of people are going to really appreciate the content. But before we dive into that, let's get to know you. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your career, all that kind of fun stuff.
Laura Pursley (01:19)
Sure. So I'm Laura Persley. I'm the Senior Marketing Director at US Signal. And I've been in marketing for 20 plus years and mostly in the tech space, of IT, healthcare IT, cybersecurity as well. And I've always just been intrigued by solving those complex problems and distilling them down into content that people can digest and solve their problems. So I'm excited to be here.
Ben Ard (01:43)
I love that.
I love that, yeah. Breaking down complex problems takes a special kind of mind and creativity and a lot of patience. And so I always appreciate the people that can pull that off and do that really, really well. Excited to have you on, So for today, what we're gonna talk about is how to build a scalable thought leadership engine by repurposing short form content across your org. Kind of a long title, but I think everyone listening is gonna get excited about that.
So first things first, Laura, what kind of kicked off the need for a structured thought leadership program for you guys?
Laura Pursley (02:15)
for discussion.
Yeah, so I've been thinking about this for a while and over there, you know, my last few roles in other companies, what I saw emerge was there was always one to two true thought leaders in a company, right? It's usually someone in leadership. They're really passionate about the company, the solutions that they have. They're out there promoting their products. They're creating content. They're posting on LinkedIn. They're doing your webinars. They're probably excellent speakers. And so as a marketer, that's great.
that you have that thought leadership there and you tend to put those people forward again and again and again. And then the challenge that I realized from that is that it's the person then that becomes the thought leader, not the company or the brand. And that causes a few challenges. One, it can get kind of stale having the same people presenting over and over and over. And two, if that person leaves, then what are you left with? You have no more thought leadership.
people might follow that person elsewhere and not stick with you as the company. And so I sat back and I thought, well, how can we expand our thought leadership? And so I came up with the thought leadership program and really trying to identify others in the company that can be thought leaders, that we can create content and pull out content from other smart people in the company. The challenge there is that a lot of those people might not want to
be put forward as a thought leader, right? They don't wanna maybe do all the webinars or they don't have time, they have full-time jobs. So what I thought is let's spread out the thought leadership and have marketing do the heavy lifting and pull out that content from those people that are on the front lines with customers, that are building the products, that are, you know, the customer success team, they have great stories to tell. So what I did was created this thought leadership program to expand our thought leaders in the company.
and really create a content engine from that.
Ben Ard (04:06)
Perfect. love that. So how did you start to find the right people inside the organization? What did the recruiting process look like? How did that kind of come about and how did that work?
Laura Pursley (04:17)
Yeah, so first I kind of sat back and thought, well, what do I want this thought leadership program to be? What's our mission? What are we trying to accomplish? So I kind of put that together as a mission and a vision for this team. I originally actually called it a task force, but then I changed it into just ⁓ thought leadership program, but really trying to identify people in the company that have those stories to tell. And so I started with the leaders of each of those.
groups, engineering, product development, sales, customer success, and met with the leaders and heard from them, who on your team do you think has good stories to tell? And really then identifying what expertise do they have? What are their areas of expertise? Is it a specific product? Is it a specific industry topic? Things like that. And so identify those people across the organization and then rolled that out to those people on their teams.
and really got their buy-in ahead of time and shared how we wanted to pull the content out from them to get their ideas out into the market with little work on their part.
Ben Ard (05:22)
Yeah, I love
that. So you went and you found the individuals and I love the thought process of, okay, we've got one or two really strong thought leaders. Let's kind of disseminate that. Let's spread the goodness across the org. I went to leaders. I found the right people. Now, how did you start to collect the content and what did you do with it? Was it interviews? How did you process it? How did you incentivize those people or motivate them or force them if you had to?
Laura Pursley (05:48)
Yep.
Ben Ard (05:49)
How
did that process kind of look like and what happened there?
Laura Pursley (05:52)
Sure, so the process really is we set up individual interviews with the identified thought leaders. They're 15 to 20 minutes. And ahead of that interview, we decide on the topic and we come up with two to three questions, maybe three to four questions and things that they're comfortable talking about. We don't want to put anyone in a situation where they're going to get caught off guard or they're not very knowledgeable about a topic. So we work with them to identify what are they passionate about in their jobs.
What are they hearing from customers? What story do they have to tell? And then we set up a 15 minute interview, we record it, and then from that we can generate five to six pieces of content. So we can turn that into a blog post, we can turn it into an infographic, a checklist, any type of asset that we can then utilize. And then we really use that recording, posting on LinkedIn, things like that, and pulling out even just snippets and shorts from that.
for YouTube shorts and things like that. And we get, you know, five to six to sometimes 10 pieces of content just from that one 15 minute interview. And we really didn't have to incentivize people to do it. They're happy to participate. I think they like that they get their message out there with little work on their part. We used to have a content team and we would ask some of these people to write a blog post and they don't have time to do that, nor do they necessarily have the expertise.
they're in different roles. So we're finding that this is much more effective in getting that content from them and quickly turning it into other pieces of content.
Ben Ard (07:24)
I love that. That's awesome. So when you did these interviews, are they in person? Are they remote? You know, I again, I don't know the structure of your organization if you're all in office and then what did you use to record them so that you could actually kind of use that content across the different platforms?
Laura Pursley (07:41)
Yeah, so our company is mostly remote. all over the country. So all of the interviews are done on Microsoft Teams. And we just record on Teams and then we repurpose it from there. So we don't need fancy equipment. It's pretty simple to do. So we're trying to keep it simple so that it's within the person's workflow. They're used to using Teams every day. We set a Teams meeting. We do the interview. We get the recording. We repurpose it.
and go from there.
Ben Ard (08:10)
it. So when you're getting the recording, I love kind of like this desire to say it doesn't have to be like this overly polished kind of piece of content. It feels like people want the more almost raw kind of conversation because it's authentic and with AI it's kind of hard, you know, you actually want to know something's real. Is that a part of it? Like that you don't care if it's overly produced?
Laura Pursley (08:31)
Yes.
That's a huge part of it. Yeah, we're finding that that's the content that is performing well that people want to see. It's individuals, you know, that's why you see people going live so often and just talking to their audience. And yeah, we don't want it to be overly produced or complicated. So yeah, definitely we just want it to be real. And that seems to be working with our audience.
Ben Ard (08:54)
Very cool. So when you're repurposing, and we're not sponsored by any of these tools or, you know, teams or any kind of stuff, are you using any tools to repurpose or is how does artificial intelligence play a role? Is it all team based on your own team? How are you kind of finding the effective ways to repurpose the content?
Laura Pursley (09:12)
Yeah, so we do it all internal on our team. My director of digital does most of the interviews and repurposing of the content and we use we do use AI to repurpose some of the content. So you know you get the transcript and then you can turn that into different pieces of content and AI is great. You know it sometimes gets a bad rap, but you know if you have the transcript, why not use AI to say you know turn it into these three pieces of content and it is.
the words of the subject matter expert, not having AI create anything from scratch, it's just using the tools to repurpose and that allows us to get this content out very quickly. We do the interview and within probably two or three days we can have content up on our website, on YouTube, on LinkedIn, things like that.
Ben Ard (10:00)
love that. That's so cool. So when these individuals in your organization have contributed these interviews, you've created shareable assets for the organization to utilize. Are they sharing on their social profiles? Is that a part of the strategy or is it typically just coming from the business, but the influencers internally are kind of the face of those individual posts and things like that.
Laura Pursley (10:23)
Yeah, yeah, the way it's mostly working is we as a company will post the content mostly on LinkedIn, but then they will then share it with their network. and I'm assuming this is similar in other organizations where you try to get your entire employee base to use LinkedIn and create, create content and grow that following. And that's always been a challenge because again, people that's not their day to day, they're not marketers. They're afraid to
create content from scratch on LinkedIn, but they will certainly share it, especially if they're featured on it. So it kind of is a win-win. We get that extended reach of their network. It's somewhat approved content, right? So they don't have to create it from scratch. And it extends our reach and our following. And we've seen our followers grow pretty significantly from that model.
Ben Ard (11:12)
That's awesome. So when you switch to this, I don't want to call them micro influencers, like, you know, spreading the joy out of influencers across the org, what have been some of the results that you've seen that you're willing and capable of sharing of really having like this authentic internal spokes, individuals kind of really being, you know, the, the individual sharing good content out there.
Laura Pursley (11:35)
Yeah, so the way we're really measuring it is on the platforms and the way we are measuring engagement, just watching to see, we get a spike in engagement? Are we increasing our followers on LinkedIn? Are we getting additional downloads of this content? So that's the way that we're measuring the increase from this program and really just the exponential amount of content that we're able to put out from previously.
within marketing and we would come up with ideas and we would put out the content and this has just given us a whole other breadth of content to put out and to repurpose. So it's been really great.
Ben Ard (12:09)
love it. Now are you finding that this content is typically top of the funnel or are you using for middle and the bottom of the funnel content as well?
Laura Pursley (12:16)
It's kind of a mix. It really depends on the topic and the person that we're interviewing. So we have a mix of people that we're interviewing from high up leadership. So it's addressing industry topics. So that's more top of funnel. We have others that are telling customer stories, that are referencing sometimes specific customers. people that are consuming, reference.
referenceable materials and things like that. So it's really just a mix, mix across and depends on the type of asset that we're creating.
Ben Ard (12:47)
them. So another question, when you're looking at all of the different formats of repurposing these videos, what's performing the most? Where are people most engaged? Is it the actual video material? Is it like the entire interview? Is it clips? Is it the infographic side or posts or quotes? Any kind of trends you've seen on like the right formats for repurposing?
Laura Pursley (13:08)
Yeah, we're really finding that a lot of people are engaging on the shorts. Like you said, people don't have a lot of time. They see this, the one to two minute snippets of it. And that's what's really getting a lot of engagement. And then we are seeing an increase in the clicks on the assets as well. the video and them seeing the person in a video format is really performing well.
Ben Ard (13:30)
I love that. Very cool. So one final question, because I promise these always go by quick. We're almost out of time. When you're looking at this program, you're a little bit deeper in it than a lot of other companies. Any lessons or advice to anyone saying, yeah, we're going to kind of start doing this interview format with employees? Any advice of things that people might want to steer clear of, like lessons learned to say,
Hey, by the way, you might want to avoid doing this or you should really focus on this if you're kind of starting up a program like this.
Laura Pursley (14:02)
I don't know if there's anything necessarily to avoid because if you try something and it doesn't work, then you can just pivot. I would say just get started. It doesn't have to be this huge program. We ended up identifying about 40 people, but that was just because as I started talking to people, they're like, ⁓ one team member, one leader put up his whole team as people that would be able to do it. I think you might be overwhelmed with the amount of people that want to do it. So you might have to scale it back, but I would say just start.
and don't be afraid to, you know, it doesn't have to be a huge program before you start doing it. Just even start with five or ten people and get it going and you'll be surprised at how willing people are to meet with you and share their experience.
Ben Ard (14:44)
I love it. And did it help just as an aside when you ask leadership who on their team you feel like would be a good fit? Was it helpful to be able to say, Hey, by the way, your boss is the one who recommended you. We'd love to interview you sometime. Did that help in the process?
Laura Pursley (14:58)
Yes, absolutely. And we also asked the leaders to also share with their teams that they were behind this as well. So it wasn't just marketing coming to them, asking them to do this. So it's kind of from both sides. And the other, I guess, caveat I would say is that we also did say, if you're not comfortable being on video or us sharing you on video, that's OK. We still want to interview you and we can utilize the content in written format.
Ben Ard (15:10)
Perfect.
Laura Pursley (15:24)
We did put that out there because some people may shy away and say, I don't want to be on video. So they wouldn't do it. So we wanted to take that off the table and say, we'll use the content, but we won't share you on video. Yeah. Yes.
Ben Ard (15:30)
That's fair.
Yeah, yeah, to be accommodating and maybe
even after the first interview to be like, you know what? That wasn't so bad. Maybe you can use the video or maybe next time I'm okay with the video. Yeah. Love it. Very cool. Well, Laura, thank you so much for your insights today. This is amazing. I think it's an incredible program, obviously generating a lot of really cool, authentic quality content from experts in your org does so much for your business shows your expertise, but
Laura Pursley (15:40)
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Ben Ard (16:00)
Also lets people build a small relationship with the people inside the company who they learn to love and all that kind of fun stuff. I think it's amazing. Laura, for anyone who's listening and wants to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you?
Laura Pursley (16:13)
Yeah, the best way is to find me on LinkedIn at Laura Persley and I work for US Signal so you can also follow us there.
Ben Ard (16:19)
Perfect. And we will link to everything in the show notes so you can click on Laura's name and connect with Laura on LinkedIn directly there. Laura, thank you so much for your time and insights today. I really do appreciate it. Have a great day.
Laura Pursley (16:31)
Alright, thanks Ben.
