How to Create Compelling Content on Social Media w/ Nick Stagge

UX Marketing

Blake: [00:00:00] today we have Nick Stagge on to help us discern how we can be creating compelling content, unwrap what it means to actually create something that's worthwhile on social media and how to maximize that.

[00:00:11] Nick, how are you doing today?

[00:00:13] Nick: [00:00:13] I'm good, Blake, how are you,

[00:00:13] Blake: [00:00:13] man? I am fantastic and I'm really excited about this one. I'm excited for me to learn a lot, so I'm sure the audiences as well. And let's, before we dive into it, I'd love to get a little bit of context on you. If you could just give us a brief snapshot of what your career has been like so far, how you got started, where you are now.

[00:00:31] Nick: [00:00:31] Yeah, absolutely. I, it's been a long, it's been a long walk. I started in retail and spent a decade working in managing stores on the Western United States. And, and. I learned pretty quickly in that environment that at the time, brands weren't doing a whole lot to help drive the last moment of the sale.

[00:00:52] They were totally reliant on, on the retail team. So I took that learning and I, I pounded on the door of Skullcandy and I convinced them that they should be better than that and they should create a retail sell through team. And they gave me. They said, look, you can come on for 90 days and prove that this will work, and if you're willing to do that, we'll take a risk.

[00:01:16] So I did 10 years in retail for that, and after 90 days we kept running forward. We built a global program, and then I was recruited to go do a, an upleveled version of that at GoPro with a larger audience. And. I realized while I was at GoPro and Skullcandy that technology is just where, where it's at and where the future of interacting with one another really is.

[00:01:47] So I left GoPro and I went to a, a tech company in Utah that's still focused on the same thing. So it was a nice, smooth transition. And I spent five years there and then just. Over the last eight or nine months, I have moved over and I as the COO of woolly a tech company that is putting digital rails around word of mouth marketing.

[00:02:12] Blake: [00:02:12] Awesome. So you've made quite the climb from being in retail all the way up to being a CMO now at a tech company. So I think that establishes a little bit of of your credibility there. I would love to know what you would consider your PR, your professional super power is.

[00:02:27] Nick: [00:02:27] Oh, man, I have so many weaknesses.

[00:02:30]I mean, so when I'll, I don't know about that. Some people who know me best would say, I, I probably, need a dose of humility. But, but I, I mean, I, look, I think because I, I recognize, I have so many weaknesses. I've found a way to. To team up with people who are truly spectacular and learn from them and learn the things that I need so I can be better.

[00:03:01] And the things that I, I just can't learn or aren't my forte. I've learned to lean on those people and have those people help prop up whatever sort of initiative or goals we have in place. So to me, I think it's all about understanding. What you're good at and what you're not good at. So you can put a team around you or you can join a team that compliment you.

[00:03:26] And I think if you do that, then you can become really successful.

[00:03:30] Blake: [00:03:30] I love it. So let, let's dive into the details here. We're here to talk about creating compelling content and maximizing your social media organically, getting more reach, reaching the right people for this whole thing. I'd love to just kind of be a thought experiment based specifically around LinkedIn, because I think that's where we're going to get the most out of it.

[00:03:49] So given let's just say that I'm somebody that is just starting out zero followers on LinkedIn. I maybe I just graduated from college and I'm just starting to do my own project. Maybe I'm starting an eCommerce store or something. I'm, I'm totally, totally brand new at it. if that's me, if that's the situation for this entire interview, I'd love to ask a few questions around that and how we can actually grow on social media organically.

[00:04:13] So first off, starting with. How can a, a person that's having a really hard time capturing their real voice, how can they actually find it? Because I know for me at the beginning of my journey, the hardest part was getting my thoughts onto a piece of paper or in text on a post or in a video in a way that actually came across as myself.

[00:04:35] So what recommendations do you have for finding your own voice?

[00:04:39] Nick: [00:04:39] Well, first I would just say. LinkedIn is the only platform that serves as a multiplier to your audience. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, they all take your audience and they, their algorithm divides it so you, so you get less engagement, less views than your total audience.

[00:04:59] And LinkedIn is the opposite. It's the only platform that's a multiplier. So you might only have four or 500 connections, but you can have a post that could reach thousands or tens of thousands of people. Now, the trick is to your question, how do you create really good content? And I think the answer is, there's a couple of things here that I think are really important.

[00:05:20] One is that somehow LinkedIn audience reads BS. Like they don't, they, they, they recognize it as BS and they just skip, skip right past it, right? So everyone's BS meters on high alert. And they want people who are real and are honest and are, are showing like some vulnerability on the platform. So I think the best way to start figuring out your voice is to just tell stories.

[00:05:54] If you're just getting out of college. Talk about a lesson you learned in one of your classes or an interaction you had with a customer or what it was like working part time jobs and building your, your own company on the side. Talk about moving away from your family and the, the experience and the pains that came along with that and trying to meet new people and network in real life.

[00:06:22] Like find the stories that are true to you and that are real life experiences and get them out there. The second thing is don't get discouraged because not every post is going to be a banger. You're going to have, some posts that have great reach and you're going to have others that have not so great reach, but learn from those.

[00:06:44] Evaluate, what is it that I did in this post that went well. And what did I do differently in a post that didn't do so well? How do I shake that? How do I change that up? You know, for me, I've learned that video's just not my thing. It's not my thing. Primarily because I got a face for radio, but I also kind of clamor up.

[00:07:02] I don't feel as comfortable on on screen as I do just writing. So I have, I have a lot of friends who. Almost only post video and they crush it, but that fits their personal brand. So I think those are a couple of things that you can start with to begin figuring out your voice and look at it as a almost 39 year old dude who spends time on LinkedIn every single day.

[00:07:35] I'm still figuring out my voice.

[00:07:39] Blake: [00:07:39] So essentially you're, you're not going to be able to find it without putting stuff out there, right? Like you're going to at some point, have to be vulnerable and okay with the idea that you might suck for a while. Is that accurate?

[00:07:49] Nick: [00:07:49] Yeah, I think so. And look, here's another idea for you.

[00:07:54] I use buffer. It's a free app, and essentially I use it as like a LinkedIn. Working journal. So anytime I have an idea, I go to buffer. I just write it as if it was a post and I, if I don't like it, I just tweak it and, but I'm not pressured to try to get anything live that moment, if I go to my buffer. login right now, I probably have 45 posts that are partially written and some of them will never see the light of day and others will.

[00:08:26] But just as an idea comes, I jot it in and then when that idea feels fully baked, then I post it to LinkedIn. So there are things, there are tools you can use to start building up that, that muscle, and to start evaluating, Oh, I like this. I don't like that I could tweak these two posts into one post. but at the end, you could do all that in buffer unless you hit submit and you actually start seeing engagement.

[00:08:56] The learnings just don't come as fast.

[00:08:58] Blake: [00:08:58] Right. Yeah, I mean, I know that for me, when I, I've gone back and done this exercise, it's a terrible exercise, but sometimes it's necessary and I've gone back and looked at my first posts on tons of different social media platforms that I've tried out on LinkedIn.

[00:09:12] I'm super embarrassed of a lot of the stuff that I put out up front years ago, but. At the same time, I'm really happy that I just did it. That's, that's the key part. Like you're going to be embarrassed about where you started out, but that's a result of that. That shows you how you've grown. So that's, that's actually a good thing.

[00:09:30] You should be a little bit embarrassed or just look at what you wrote at first and think, Oh, I'm a lot better than that now, because that actually shows you that it's worthwhile that you've. Been moving in a positive direction and taking it a step further. I'm curious what you think are the elements that go into making a piece of content compelling?

[00:09:48] Like is there a formula or a checklist of things that you've noticed that have to be present in a post or it's not going to succeed?

[00:09:55] Nick: [00:09:55] No. No. I mean, look, I've, I've done posts that are, C I tried series for a while. I was doing a series things my parents taught me. And it was just real life examples of, of things.

[00:10:11] My dad or my mom taught me when I was a little kid, and then I would relate it to business. And for a while that worked. And then it didn't feel like it worked. It felt a little too forced to be honest. I've had posts that are three or four lines that crush it. I've had posts that are, Yeah. They fill every character count in LinkedIn.

[00:10:35] It, I think it the, the only core piece that wins here is when you are true to yourself and you tell a story that that is compelling. And, and, and I think if you do that, then you're in good, good shape. But I don't know that there's a magic formula that everyone should follow. I think every person and, and likely every post is going to be slightly different.

[00:11:03] Blake: [00:11:03] Yeah. And I think you could argue that. So you mentioned that video isn't necessarily for you because it doesn't match your voice as well as, you know, written texts does. But I think we can agree, like if you are really good at video, that might be the most vulnerable and compelling piece of content. If you're actually good at it, just because people can see you, they can hear you.

[00:11:20] Maybe audio would be a step down from that. And then text would be kind of at the, at the bottom of most compelling, unless you're amazing at it. Right? But how can you. If somebody is like you, for example, they prefer text. You could do video, you could do audio, all that stuff, but you prefer text. How can you actually make that come across as compelling?

[00:11:39] Because it's really easy to make a boring text post.

[00:11:43] Nick: [00:11:43] Yeah, so there is a little, if you, if you go back, and this is maybe more recently I've been testing and playing around with this idea, but I legitimately write a headline and a subhead. To start almost every single post. So I treat it a little bit like I would treat sending an email, and you start to see what's the really compelling headline one-liner right below that.

[00:12:10] Give a little bit of context. And then I space down and then I write. And a lot of times that makes people. Click in to open up the rest of the post and to read in, and it gives them a three second snapshot of, do I do actually care about this? Do I want to read any more? So I think if you can write a really compelling headline and subhead, the rest kind of can come.

[00:12:38] Yeah, that's, that's

[00:12:38] Blake: [00:12:38] interesting because we don't, I mean, I, I don't think about text posts in LinkedIn specifically like an email, but really it looks similar and you're just trying to reach people and get them to read more. That's the goal of an email is just read the next line, read the next line. And it's pretty much the same with, with LinkedIn until they can get to the very end.

[00:12:55] But how do you actually capitalize on that? So when you're creating content that's all good and well, you can have amazing content, but. How do you find the right call to action? What's the appropriate way to do that? So it's not slimy?

[00:13:07] Nick: [00:13:07] Yeah, that's a great question. So if you go through and you look at my, my profile in the posts that I have, I don't talk about Woolley.

[00:13:17] I mean, maybe one out of 15 or 20 posts. Do I talk about Willie, the company that I worked for? And even then, it's not, I work for Willie. You should come interact with us. You should visit our website. Like that's not, that's not how it works. instead, I use LinkedIn as, this is me. This is my, this is my personal brand.

[00:13:41] Sounds a little cliche, but it's true right. And I'm going to talk about things that I'm interested in and that I'm going through challenges that I have, questions that I have, and then I'm going to interact with people who interact with my posts. So I'm going to, if I like what they had to say, I'm going to like it.