Transcription:
April Rudin: (
Welcome everyone. My name is April Rudin and I'm the founder of the Rudin group. I'm really excited to be here today and moderate this panel, which is called personal brand, meets the enterprise. There's been nothing probably more important than digital and social media presence since the pandemic. And I've got three great subject matter experts to talk today. I have Mike Orr who is representing Seismic; Ben Timmins, who's here from Natixis, and we have Ali Manning from BNY Mellon wealth management. So I'm just gonna jump into the questions here because we have a rather short period of time, but a lot of great things to cover. So, um, Ali, can we start with you talk to us a little bit about how, um, BNY Mellon wealth management has utilized, um, executives and personal brand, especially over the pandemic and in your time there at BNY Mellon.
Allie Manning: (
Sure. Um, thank you. And, um, so historically BNY Mellon wealth management's LinkedIn presence has been driven by our company page. We highlight, you know, wealth management thought leadership, our company, sponsorships, and earned media coverage of our executives rather than really having our executives focus on their own online presence to amplify their voice and the BNY Mellon brand. However, we've always recognized the trusts that clients and prospects place in the individuals behind the brand. So advisors, our wealth managers and our leadership team that really is steering the organization and the value of these individuals' personal perspectives. So when members of our executive team showed interest in using LinkedIn as a platform to share content, we jumped at the opportunity to build out their profiles and to help position them. We wanted them to use their profiles to spark conversation, attract followers and humanize our business by sharing in their own voice insights on topics ranging from wealth management industry trends, relevant, current events and other issues that were important to them since kind of using our executives on LinkedIn.
Allie Manning: (
We've seen an increase in the kind of the frequency and consistency of their posts. We've seen a jump in post impressions by 150% in just a few months. In addition, the increased visibility for our executives really helped drive more attention to our brand and to the content that we are publishing. And as an example, we published a Bitcoin and blockchain primer in February of this past year, when we shared the primer on our wealth management company page, the post received 4,000 views or so when our executives shared the primer to their personal pages and coupled it with personalized commentary about BNY Mellon and the build out of the industry's first digital currency custody platform, we increased LinkedIn views of the primer by four hundred percent and really sparked an organic dialogue in the comments about BNY Mellon and the many firsts that our company has achieved. So in 2022, we're looking to continue to focus on building out our executives, personal brands on social media and view it as a really important part of our larger wealth management, social media strategy.
April Rudin: (
Well, that's awesome. Um, Ben turning to you, um, if you wanna comment on the personal versus, um, enterprise brand.
Ben Timmins: (
Yeah, yeah. I, you know, for, for years now with both sort of sales people on the social selling side, as well as sort of the, uh, brand advocate side and the executive side, I've always advocated for the, the adage of the rising tide raises all boats. Um, the idea that, um, whether your company is leading with thought leaders as sort of the key drivers of their social strategy or whether it's sort of in conjunction with social posts or, um, or some, you know, sort of somewhere on the spectrum in between, it's still really important. And, and it really does, um, you know, I wanna underscore Ali's numbers there. We are seeing similar situations across the entire industry. It's not just numbers, um, of people that are being driven to key pages or key insights or, uh, key white papers, downloadables et cetera. Um, as a result of social selling programs, it's not just numbers, it's the right people.
Ben Timmins: (
It is, you know, we have a, a strong certainty when a salesperson posts and gets 20 clicks that those 20 people really matter. They are perhaps closer to the revenue stream, perhaps closer to, um, you know, making a decision about whether or not to engage in a relationship with us. And so, um, there is absolutely a space for both of those both, uh, corporate page. Um, and I'm pretty sure, I think at the point of 2021, everyone's got a good corporate page, um, for that in conjunction with really good personal branding is, um, it's almost the price of entry at this point. It's, it's almost essential in 2021.
April Rudin: (
Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. I mean, Mike, as a platform provider to all of this and early advocate, along with me on personal brand, um, you know, it's difficult for people for individuals, right. To engage with an enterprise brand and so personal brands and getting to know the people that represent a firm become much easier.
Mike Orr: (
For sure. The there's a, there's a few interesting, uh, dimensions, especially in the way Ali and BNY, uh, approach the program. Um, one is certainly you're trying to humanize the brand, right. And that's what you need to do across the board, cuz people, especially in, you know, trust relationships, like financial services, you need to know who are the people across the, uh, the desk or across the screen that you're dealing with, uh, as a customer. And it's a great way for if advisors to get to know the, their clients as well. Um, and I think the important thing we've seen as, as a lot of the large scale social programs have either rolled out or been revamped is leadership is an important dimension of that program. So you, you need to have leadership as a corporate brand. You need to have those leaders that are, uh, externally, uh, going to be representing that brand, um, sort of, uh, show and demonstrate what are the best practices to engage in social? How do you actually put your own uh, commentary, as Ali said on, on the posts that you're making, you're not just repeating the content that the corporate brand produced, you're adding your own personal insights and that scales all the way down to advisors, to their associates, to everyone that's going out and engaging and building that human brand. And if you have the leadership really embracing that approach, it's, it's a great exemplar or to hold up and, uh, uh, example to follow.
April Rudin: (
Yeah.
Ben Timmins: (
If I can jump in for just one second on, of course, on what Mike was saying, social programs, social selling employee advocacy programs grow in fits and starts. I think everyone on the call knows this as, as people who have worked with them. Um, but they grow thanks to wins. It really is very much, um, among sales people, especially sales relationship professionals who are sometimes skeptical to bring in sort of the new fad or new trend. Um, when you get kind of that quick win or you get that first conversation that came as a result of social directly as a result of social people start to talk. Um, and that's when, you know, Ali's and my inboxes start blowing up with people, you know, in the sales and relationship sides of business is going, hey, so, and so told me to talk to you about LinkedIn. How do I get into this program? How do I, how do I, you know, push my brand as well as, um, as well as the thought leadership of, of the corporation.
Mike Orr: (
Yeah. And, and if you're sitting in between, or those fits and starts where you're, you're trying to kickstart, uh, a program again, um, having the leadership team get the value, right? They, when they get a win and they connect with some, an audience or a, a new influencer, a new, a new set of people, um, that then gets the value of the social program to them. And then that could cascade down to the rest of the, the field.
Allie Manning: (
Yeah. I, I mean, I think Mike, as I've talked to our employees who are seeing our executives posting, they are encouraged and excited about, you know, hearing from a voice that's different from just our brand. And it makes them want to kind of jump on that train and start to post themselves. It's I know we talked about this before, but it's kind of like the gamification they're seeing posts rise and the number of likes and the comments, and they wanna, they wanna be in that space too. They want to be sharing their insight and, and getting the recognition from their, um, peers and from, and from those who kind of sit in the same expertise. So.
April Rudin: (
Yeah, no, it really works. I mean, looking at this over, you know, the past 15 years, I can say that it used to be really much more of a pull and now it's much more of a push and, and that's really exciting also. I don't know if you guys know this, but even for our audience, feel free to ask questions as we're going, but when you're doing social media and doing social networking, you actually produce a hormone called oxytocin, which is a binding hormone and it makes people feel good once they start to see likes and shares and all of that. And so it, it really does, um, promote that kind of behavior. So there is some biology attached to that. Um, Ben, we can hardly have a conversation about social and digital without talking about compliance. Maybe you can share with us some, uh, ways that you've been able to create relationships and embed compliance and, um, become success partners in your programs at Natixis.
Ben Timmins: (
Yeah. Yeah. And so I actually reach back a little bit further back into my career and working at another organization to, to sort of answer this question, which is, um, working with compliance on this, it's a fight in which you're both on the same side and you're both rooting for the same success and you're both invested in each other's success as well. So it's, it's not a fight at all. It's really a good relationship. It's a great relationship to build. I think one of the concerns, if we were talking maybe five years ago, maybe a little bit more, one of the concerns is that a lot of the social selling programs, a lot of the social media programs in sort of legacy, large financial institutions were, were driven very much by sales and relationship personnel saying, I have to do this going to compliance or to the powers that be saying, what is it gonna take for me to do this?
Ben Timmins: (
And then pulling together sort of a, um, a bit of a rudimentary program, right? Um, what we're seeing now is sort of almost a phase 2.0, where there really is, um, very much a relationship in which the tools and the people are coming together. And so, um, it's really turning what would normally be a trade-off into a win-win situation. So if you're looking at a tool, um, a couple of them out there here say social, obviously Mike would like me to say Seismic Live social as well. Um, it is a situation where, um, sales professionals who are maybe not used to it, do, um, need to connect their personal social channels to, um, a method of checking their compliance and recording their activity. Um, it's not an insignificant move. However, the power in, again, those, those tools to be able to surface content, to give you analytics recommendations, insights really turns that to, um, a win-win situation. You give something up, we're gonna give you something in return. On the flip side with, with compliance, it's the same thing. It's we have this tool, this tool is going to help us maintain compliance with FINRA or other regulatory bodies in terms of making sure that we're not saying things we shouldn't and recording all of our activities and in return the sales and relationship people are getting what they really need, which is the ability to, uh, to engage on social. And even beyond that.
April Rudin: (
Yeah, no, that's well said. Ali, maybe you can share some of your secrets of your success or what things you've noticed that have changed even over your time at BNY Mellon.
Allie Manning: (
Sure. Yeah. And I think a little bit different from Ben, but I first started in 2015 with BNY Mellon and our advisors were not encouraged to share post content on social media just because there wasn't a formal program or guidelines in place. There were different regulations that we had to account for. However, knowing how important it is to have advisors be visible on LinkedIn, we worked really closely with our compliance team and our corporate counterparts to put place a use of social media policy that just really shared guidelines and do's and don't on what to do and do not do on social media. Um, and then we established a brand ambassador training program that really shares educational materials on how to engage on LinkedIn shares, best practices for building robust profiles. You know, how to position yourself in your summary, um, what title to use, what, what headshot you should be using, making sure it's appropriate, um, and then really tips and tricks for how to broaden your reach by sharing BNY Mellon content and third party content on the platform.
Allie Manning: (
And we work with LinkedIn regularly to update, um, regular kind of best practices and things that are going on in their world to make sure our decks are most up to date. What time of day post, how to review metrics you're seeing to optimize your post, which hashtags and tags you're using and kind of what just works best on the platform. And then we kind of offer these trainings to each new hire. Um, we offer them to our regional and executives teams to help them better leverage the tools that we have. And just so they're feeling empowered to amplify both with our thought leadership and our brand values, but then their own expertise and personal brand. So we don't necessarily have a program in place right now, uh, like a seismic live social, but we're working towards something hopefully like that quite soon. And in the interim, we're trying to give our employees the tools that they need to still put their best personal brand forward.
April Rudin: (
Yeah. So Mike, I mean across, you know, practices, um, as a platform provider across best practices that you've seen from, um, clients and the conversations that you've had both on the business side and then on the compliance side, um, what sort of tips or what things have you seen that have added to the success?
Mike Orr: (
Yeah, for sure. Uh, I think Ben's point about, uh, partnering with compliance early in the process is, is a really important one. Um, the traditional approach of designing a marketing program and then going get approval for it. Uh, doesn't really work in a dynamic environment like social and you need to, um, figure out how you're gonna do this at scale, uh, because the platforms can help. But if you don't start with some of the principles that Ali talked to around, you know, having, uh, the value in it for the, uh, for the employee, for the advisor, having leadership engaged, making sure you do the education and that that's continuous and ongoing, um, the program isn't gonna be successful. What we've found is that, um, there's a big content challenge with a lot of these. When, when you get to scale, when you get to the 10, 15,000 advisor scale, um, you can't produce enough personalized content to really engage each individual advisor and help them engage their, uh, their individual networks, right?
Mike Orr: (
Everyone's different. Everyone wants to differentiate. I think Ali's point about being able to personalize that commentary that you're making as part of sharing the content where it may be core corporate content, maybe Natixis, or maybe BNY content, but you want to be able to put a spin on that that provides your own personal insights, right? To each post that you make, each engagement you have in social. Um, the good thing is that the technology has evolved in, in our platform, um, in that we can, pre-screen using AI for any risk, um, because once you deliver the content, there's also, there's, there's always a fear in, in sharing, uh, something out there and social. Um, and part of that is, am I gonna get in trouble with the supervisors or the regulators, um, and you can do all the education, but you may still run into that hesitation.
Mike Orr: (
And what, what the technology allows you to do is submit that for a pre-screen that doesn't require, you know, weeks to get reviewed, it's immediate. It goes against all the risk factors that are out there and all the regulatory concerns. And it'll come back and say, yeah, this is fine. You can, you can, this will be posted for you. Um, or here's a problem like you should, you know, talk to the compliance officer to, uh, to resolve the awarding around this issue. Um, so putting those guardrails into place really helps drive this success to the next level in a social program. And it helps scale compliance without scaling compliance, which is always, you know, the big problem and challenge.
April Rudin: (
Right? I feel like people now, today are really realizing the importance of their personal brand, uh, especially given the pandemic and so many different things, being remote and everything being like Googleable. Um, I, I also, um, feel like that it's important for people to know that their personal brand is portable regardless of the organization that they're with with, they wanna make sure that their personal brand is actually a reflection on them. Is that something you take into consideration Ali like at, at BNY Mellon?
Allie Manning: (
Yes, definitely. And we've kind of positioned our trainings and guidelines in a way that is definitely personal brand first per professional brand in there, BNY Mellon brand in there as well, but we wanna make sure that they're putting their best foot forward personally before, uh, they talk about the BNY Mellon brand. So for example, we provide our employees with branded backgrounds, um, that they're welcome to use on LinkedIn, but we don't include our logo. We include just our colors, branded element in, we give them opportunity to kind of have different options of summaries. So we give four different examples of how a summary might look. And then we want you to personalize that to yourself. You don't need to have the BNY Mellon wealth management boiler plate there. Right. You can say kind of what you want about your, um, your personal career trajectory and growth. So we give them, you know, ways to, to incorporate our brand, but we don't want it to be brand first. We want them to be putting their personal, uh, brand first.
April Rudin: (
Ben, how about, uh, at Natixis, I mean, what kind of engagement have you seen even on personal content, let's say on passions, on, um, interests and things like that and engaging, um, whether it's, you know, potential clients or existing clients versus say investment management straight content.
Ben Timmins: (
Sure, sure. I think one of the things that a good social selling program, uh, administrator fears, the most is a situation in which he, she, they are scrolling through their LinkedIn feed and see the same post five times from five different people, you know, talking to what Mike was saying about the, the variability of post and also of the, um, the inherent creativity that goes into, um, I need to make sure that this post, which is about, you know, regulatable content, um, is said in a manner that sounds like me, right? Social media is organic at, at its core. And so that's really key, um, making sure that, um, your social sellers, your employee advocates, your whatever, you'd like to call them, your people who are using, um, corporate social content to sort of boost both brands they're, they're still people. Um, and they need to, to look and feel and sound as such and that, um, I think that can sometimes be a little bit of a challenge and nascent programs, um, from both ends from both sort of compliance and from sales.
Ben Timmins: (
Um, so LinkedIn a, a decade ago, or maybe a little bit longer, um, was much more of a static site. It was more of sort of, I'm gonna go in, I'm gonna put in my resume and then I'm not gonna come back for a year. When I started consulting people, in Finserve on how to use their personal brand on LinkedIn, the number of times, or like, I don't remember my LinkedIn password, um, was, was high. It's not high anymore. As the result of, you know, seismic changes, um, in, in how LinkedIn thinks about its network, LinkedIn, like every other social network is really, really cares about people who log in every day or three times a week. And so you want to have a variety of content as a result. And so how does that, you know, come back to the question. You want a situation in which when someone is looking at their feed and they see a post from you, it's not about your employer every single time, because then it just starts to feel like, oh, this person got a seat and an employee advocacy program, and they're just gonna keep hitting the button and I, I'm not gonna click it.
Ben Timmins: (
Um, you know, the ability to almost on like a 30, 30, 30 rule, which I know that number sort of changes a little bit here and there, but the, the ability to maybe spend 30% of your time talking about the brand 30% of your time talking about the industry and 30 of your percent of your time talking about yourself, you know, your, your passion projects, et cetera, allows you to be a well-rounded person on social, which is what we all wanna be. Um, and also just allows you to potentially get more engagements on that other 60% of content. So when that final 30% comes in its content about Natixis or BNY, um, people click on it because they, they trust you as a content curator.
Mike Orr: (
Yeah, for sure. We actually have data that shows that. We've, we've seen programs change where they were really heavily promoting, uh, corporate content to begin with, to where they were promoting. Um, third party content, the more reflects your personal interests, uh, and to of more engagement, even though it was only one of the things they were posting out of the collection of, uh, of content they were sharing on their profiles with that corporate content after making that change. Uh, so it does, it's a, it's almost a permission, uh, based approach and it builds trust, right. It kind of, it is that, Hey, I'm, I'm sharing this with you because, um, I think it's actually relevant and not just that I'm, I'm pushing a button.
April Rudin: (
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's all on the getting to know you, um, you know, like all of us might share some of the same keywords or share some of the same content on social media or on wealth management or whatever, but that's why, where we really diverge, you know, each of us is gonna post something different. I I'm sorry. Ali, you were gonna say?
Allie Manning: (
I was, I was just gonna say along the same lines of sharing content in that 30, 30, 30 mix. Um, what we try to emphasize with our employees is that once you start sharing content, you should try to be consistent with that content and share frequently, not overshare, but posting once, uh, once a month does not amplify your content does not make your content reach more people. Um, and for BNY Mellon, uh, we often get requests for our company page to share about a regional event or a speaker somewhere. And we try to put that back on our employees as well to say your connections and who you are connected to on the LinkedIn platform. Those are the people that you want to see your content. So if you can share your personal thoughts and perspectives and continue to share on a regular basis, you'll start to see your reach expand. You'll start to see the views, uh, you know, get higher and higher until you are that trusted voice on the platform. Um, and then you can kind of weave in that mix of content.
Ben Timmins: (
Yeah, I think one, one good sign and I'll, I'll throw it maybe to Ali for, a second or two on this is we as social media, marketers get marketed too as well. Um, and so the thing is, you know, looking at back at, I don't know, five or eight or 10 years of connection requests or InMails or other things by people trying to sell me or my organization, things. So services, contracts, whatever, um, who are the people where I've stuck with them, um, the people where it felt organic, um, and the people where, you know, they came to me, Hey, we don't know each other, but I, I think you might have a problem and I can help you solve. I have maybe not engaged in a situation in my career where I have signed a contract within six months, um, for a product as a result of that.
Ben Timmins: (
But I've had situations where I've changed jobs and a manager says, Hey, we really need to start looking about looking at and thinking about this platform or this service. And the answer is, oh, I have three people in my LinkedIn right now who would be willing to answer a message from me and we can have a demo tomorrow. Um, and that's also because people on LinkedIn tend, tend to not disconnect. If you're putting out good content, you tend not to disconnect. So there are, are connections where I have never met these people, maybe added them 3, 4, 5, 7 years ago. Um, but if I know that I need a, a leg up in a certain area, and I know that they are still working for this company that produces this product, they're, they're gonna get a phone call.
April Rudin: (
Totally agree. Yep. Mike, you have any examples you wanna share from, um, clients from that?
Mike Orr: (
Uh, yeah, just traded some, uh, in email messages with Ben, uh, a couple of months ago when he changed jobs, but, uh, yeah, no, it does happen that, uh, you can stay connected with people that, uh, you know, uh, you never know where anybody's gonna end up and, uh, it is a great repository if you can help people. I think there's just so many different ways to use, uh, social media that certainly having a presence, building a brand, but part of your brand is, you know, commenting on other people's, uh, posts celebrating achievements. Uh, I've seen some amazing, uh, posts and comments, um, which goes into, uh, one of the things that we've really embraced and are, are trying to advocate for is around diversity and inclusion. And I think social's a huge opportunity to do that. I've seen some great leaders talk to the programs and the, uh, the approaches that, that they're doing, that celebrating some of the wins that they've had and creating a more diverse and inclusive industry.
Mike Orr: (
And then just inherently, when you bring your people forward in social, you can represent how diverse or not diverse you are. And it brings that to the surface. It's not just about the, the, the, you know, advertising or the, the corporate brand or the corporate message. Now it's about the people that are actually contributing and, uh, and making a difference. And I've seen somewhere that those marketing people all running social programs have create, you know, helped enable advisors to create brands around really diverse, um, diverse topics and diverse people and, and create really unique and inclusive brands, um, that, uh, that stand alone right. And create that value that, uh, you, you can't do as a corporation, I don't think.
April Rudin: (
And it's on display for everyone to see. I mean, we have four minutes left. Um, Ben maybe, uh, you'll speak for a couple minutes on the opportunity to use social media for diversity inclusion, and then, um, Ali, we'll conclude with you. So,
Ben Timmins: (
Yeah, Mike, Mike used my, my favorite buzz phrase, diversity and inclusion. And, um, we started to see not only in marketing, but in the sales process a few years ago, the diversity and inclusion, which was sort of up until that point, it was important content, but it was sort of thought of as, uh, soft content. It was sort of employer of choice branding. It was sort of, um, this is a great way for us to talk about ourselves as an organization. We started to see due diligence questionnaires and vendor questionnaires and interview processes, RFPs, you know, real hard points of a potentially revenue generating relationship, start to include more comments, questions, et cetera, around diversity and inclusion. And so now it's not even remotely controversial for me to stand up in 2021 and say, diversity and inclusion is marketing content and it can drive revenue.
Ben Timmins: (
Um, and so yes, I do still think about employer of choice branding. It's something important, you know, as we think about sort of the pantheon of who's following you on LinkedIn, whether you be a person or, or a corporation, um, you need to think about those, those, your constituents, who are they, what are the boxes that they fit in and how do we feed each and every one of those subgroups. Diversity and inclusion feeds actually a bunch of boxes and it's really important. Um, and so yes, having the, having the, the synergy between, um, being able to talk about the people in an organization and the organization's capabilities, expertise, et cetera, is really important. Again, plugging a social selling and brand, uh, ambassador program. That's part of how you do that. I, I don't know for certain if, uh, you know, uh, a charity 100 mile bike ride has created relationships that have actually driven revenue, but taking pictures of that and sharing it on LinkedIn, because you're doing it on behalf of your employer, um, helps to advance your brand and their brand. And it's, you know, going back to the phrase I was using before, it really is a win-win
April Rudin: (
Totally, um, I mean, and it's public, right? It's something for people to see. So whether it's promoting your brand or recruiting, and there's just so many different ways you can win. Ali, maybe one minute from you on diversity inclusion and personal brand versus enterprise.
Allie Manning: (
Yeah, sure. I think, um, what I kind of would go back to is our executives on LinkedIn and how they've been able to use their voices as a, you know, an older bank of BNY Mellon. Historically we have not posted maybe content as, as inclusive, um, in the past. But I think using our, our CEO who is a woman, um, and having her share her perspectives and her thoughts has really humanized our brand, especially on the diversity and inclusion front, and just continuing to, you know, have, have the conversation on social. It's a great place to, to, to engage.
April Rudin: (
Well, this has been a lively and engaging conversation. I wanna thank each of you for joining this panel and thank everyone for joining our session today and, you know, to be, um, um, continued. So thank you.
Allie Manning: (
Thank you so much.
Ben Timmins: (
Thanks.