How to Jump Hard into LinkedIn With Both Feet: Camille Trent
2020 has been a big year for LinkedIn. The social media platform now has more than 720 million users globally.
It has transformed into a platform dominated by content and connections rather than a place where HR professionals troll for talent and people look for new opportunities.
In short order, many people have decided to embrace LinkedIn as the social platform to drive their personal profiles and careers.
From doubling-down on the platform over the past seven months, I've seen first-hand the power of LinkedIn to drive my fractional CMO business.
I've made new connections with people around the world and had dozens of conversations, including Camille Trent, a brand and digital marketing specialist with Texas Citizens Bank.
I reached out to Camille because she has established an engaged following since jumping hard into LinkedIn in August. I want to learn first-hand about how someone leverages LinkedIn effectively.
Auto-generated transcript. Speaker names, spelling, and punctuation may be slightly off.
Mark Evans: You're listening to Marketing Spark, the podcast that delivers insight, tools, and tips for marketers and entrepreneurs in the trenches in twenty minutes more or less. If you're active on LinkedIn, one of the biggest benefits is the ability to connect with people around the world. A case in point is Camille Trent, a brand and digital marketing strategist with Texas Citizens Bank. So how does a marketer in Toronto, me, connect with a marketer in Colorado? Well, it's about LinkedIn. Camille has been writing some great content, so I reached out to her, see if she wanted to appear on the podcast, and here we are. Welcome to Marketing Spark, Camille.
Camille Trent: Thank you. It's good, it's good to finally chat. I know I've been exchanging comments here and there on LinkedIn, like you mentioned, so I'm glad we're able to do this.
Mark Evans: So let me start by asking you about your LinkedIn experience. Like a lot of people, I suspect that you jumped harder on the platform recently. Maybe give some background on why you decided to use LinkedIn and what you're getting out of it.
Camille Trent: Probably a few years ago is when I realized that you you could post on there. I didn't actually do that at the time. I, you know, shared a few posts here and there once every few months. And then this year, I was like, you know, there's some there's something here. Like, this this LinkedIn thing is a real deal. I started posting a little bit more, a little bit more, starting probably in January, so that I was going from like three or four posts a month to 12 posts a month. And then in August August 5, I I did write down the date. I was I'm just gonna jump all in on this. I'm just gonna post once every day. And once I set that, I couldn't it's hard for me to go back on it. It's it's a goal that I had for myself. So I did that, and I started posting every day. And so now it's been almost three months, not quite, of posting consistently. I've gotten some some really good insights from that and I've also gotten to meet some really great people.
Mark Evans: So as far as creating content on a consistent basis, I know as a writer, it's a challenge, and this is what I've trained to do professionally. How do you keep writing content consistently? Do you have any tricks? How do you capture your ideas? How do you tell whether the content you're writing resonates so you should write more of that and less of others? What's your approach?
Camille Trent: I can just go through my whole strategy, which I don't know if you can even call it call it a strategy, but this is what I do. So, throughout the day, I I just think I the number one thing is being open to everything being content or everything being copy. And so if you have that kind of open mindset of anything that you come across could you could the way that you see it, like the way that you interpret it in the world, that is your content because someone else actually sees that differently. When I have an insight or something I consider to be an insight, I write it down in Google Keep. So basically, just a notes app. What I like about Google Keep is if I do wanna write something more long form or if I I need to kinda have it's an idea, but it's not hammered out, then it actually shows up on the side of of Google Docs. And so on Google Docs, you'll see, like, Google actually, have it up right now. So you'll have you'll have the little Google Keep app right there, and you actually have your tasks right below that, and you have your calendar. So it's all kind of, like, in one central place. So then if you prefer to kind of use a word word documenting, word processing kind of thing, like a whole word doc, then then you can actually just pull in your notes from there. So that's kinda what I do to keep a running tab of my ideas and my thoughts. And usually, what it ends up being is a headline. A headline or maybe four lines. If there's if I have four lines right off the bat, then it's a pretty good indicator that it's content, you know, that there's there's something there because it's it has legs. And then from there, yeah, every night is actually when I do it. I started writing in the mornings around, like, nine. But, you know, I have a a 21 old, and and I have a husband, and so we have actually just been carpooling. So I I take him to work every day, and we do some day care. And so it was just a little too hectic to do it in the morning, and so I decided, okay. I'm I'm just gonna post at night, and whatever happens, happens. If it kills my reach, that's fine. It didn't. It actually ended up being about the same, if not better, when I started posting at night. And, yeah, and and so my process is just, I look back through my notes, I kind of see which one I'm feeling for the day, and and then I kind of go with that as a prompt. Really, I think if you think about it let me back up. If you think if you think about it as being open to everything, being content, and I have a whole backstory on that, but basically, I watched a documentary. It was called Everything Is Is Copy, and it kind of just changed changed my world a little bit on how I saw copy and how I thought about content marketing. So so I do that, and then I I pop open my my notes slash Google Docs, and I see kinda what I want to riff on essentially, what what topic I want to pick out and sort of riff on. And then I'll write something, and I'll post it usually around, like, 10PM my time. So that's kinda my process.
Mark Evans: Now as a writer, one of the things that you're looking for is flow. You're looking for inspiration. You're looking for your content to essentially be easy. You don't want it to be hard. One of the things I'm curious about is given the fact that you're producing content on a consistently producing content on a daily basis, how do you stop it from being an obligation? You look on LinkedIn and there's a lot of people you gotta write every day and I can see people struggling. The the post gets shorter, the insight gets less interesting, and it's almost like they're going through the motions. So how do you avoid that kind of situation?
Camille Trent: Yeah. That's that's a really good question because I feel like I was getting close to burnout because it does take some time away from from family or just fun things. I mean, you're already having your workday and then this is just essentially more work. The the key for me is to not think about it that way. So when I when I very first started it, my plan wasn't to get leads or to to generate business. My my plan was just to experiment with it and to learn the platform because I knew that once I did that, that one, that's fun for me anyways as a marketer. But two, like, could share those insights with with members, of our bank. It would help me with the company page that I was that I was working on. And on top of that, I could share it with clients because I do do some freelancing on the side. I knew that there was a big enough why that I needed to figure that out. And then as I went, I I realized kind of how much I missed copywriting specifically. So I do some copywriting for for my job, but I also do a little bit of everything in terms of marketing and branding. So so it was nice to kind of have my own writing time. If if I just thought about it as journaling, essentially. And I've said before that a lot of my posts are actually just notes to myself. Like things that things that I know, but I needed to kind of reposition it to myself to to get the motivation to to really do it, kind of like hard talk, to myself. They're kind of like tenants, things that we know about marketing, but that I kinda need to position or pitch to myself or maybe pitch to marketing marketers in general that that this is a good idea, you know, like, to keep with it because it it is really hard with marketing both with LinkedIn, like you mentioned, and then just marketing in general. It's a lot it's in a consistency game. Right? So it's momentum and it's consistency. I think it can you can get really down if you don't see those results right away. You you have to love it. I just decided I was I was only gonna write about things that I wanted to write about. And so I did kind of pick some core tenants of, you know, branding, copywriting, marketing in general, but marketing from a customer experience standpoint. And I think that that has kind of like separated some of my content because I really try and look at it, look at things, and look at the world, and look at marketing from a consumer perspective, like not from not from a marketing perspective. And so are we making it easier to buy from us, or are we making it easier to like us as marketers? So when I picked those topics, and then when I thought about it as a copywriting exercise, like this is a way for me to get better at copywriting, and also to get better at consistency. Those are two huge things in marketing. So I really just thought about it as as a way for me to grow.
Mark Evans: As you focused on leveraging LinkedIn and using LinkedIn and providing insight, have you got any feedback for your employer? Do they look at what you're doing in a positive light? Did do they think that it may be distracting you? I'm curious about what that's been like over the last few months.
Camille Trent: Yeah. I mean, so I I don't take up any of of my actual work time to do my own personal posts. And so so there hasn't been any any commentary on that specifically. Although, I I've gotten some positive feedback in that. So I work for a community bank and we were were in the the PPP loans. Right? And so and that was a big deal for small businesses. Being able to share that message on LinkedIn and on Facebook that had a lot of shareability power just to know how hard that these these bankers were working and all the extra hours they were doing to try and get more small businesses funded and be able to kind of stay alive and also thrive during that time. I I published a lot of that stuff through our LinkedIn page and that got some pretty good exposure in the area. So people were excited about that. I think kind of once you see it working or once you see the potential with it, that's pretty cool. Another part of that is the SBA office themselves. I I think I tagged the SBA district office in a post that we did that was about the dos and don'ts of using your PPP loans. And that, yeah, that generated some good engagement, but most importantly, the the district office reached out to our CEO and asked if they could actually use the slider that we put together on LinkedIn for the webinars that they were that they were holding for small business owners. I think once you see it in that light, because obviously, our our team was pretty excited about that and being able to get that extra exposure exposure to our bank and having it be from a piece that was really just meant to be helpful that we originally created for our own customers. Seeing those kind of results, I think, definitely got them excited about it. As far as my own my own personal brand, I've I've been lucky enough to have some really good really good bosses and mentors. They were excited for for me to just do my own thing since and especially since it was on my on my own time. But but honestly, a a sort of a a side note is the fact that because I've grown a a few followers, not a ton, but because I've grown my personal brand a little bit, it actually does get give some extra exposure to the bank because when I go and I like those posts, then it shows it to more people. So there's those things. And then the last thing I'll mention is when we've gotten a few more employees, especially some of the younger employees, they had already seen our our LinkedIn content and seen our Facebook content. So I think that kind of warmed them up to us being like slightly more modern that maybe than some of the other banks out there. And one of our other employees had had started posting like every day or every other day. And that gives me an opportunity to, you know, interact with those posts and like those to to give them a little bit extra exposure. So it's an algorithm and it all kind of like feeds itself. That's kind of LinkedIn is very smart about how they've done things about getting people to use the platform that way because it all feeds into each other. But but yeah. No. They they're happy about about LinkedIn in in general. And I think happy about the exposure the the tiny bit of exposure that, like, my extra personal brand is able to bring to it.
Mark Evans: So it's been a win win all around. One of the things I wanted to talk to you about aside from how to leverage LinkedIn and your experience on LinkedIn is your thoughts on copywriting because a lot of your content, a lot of your posts are focused on how to be a better copywriter, and you've alluded to the fact that you're talking the talk and walking the walk. Why is copywriting get getting more attention these days? I mean, there's a lot of high profile marketers that are that I believe are giving a lot of copywriting one zero one advice. Why is that happening? Do you think that copywriting is underrated or undervalued?
Camille Trent: It's funny that you should mention that because I I did just post a few days ago that the copy is copywriting is overrated. And it was a little bit of a hook headline because it ended a little bit differently than that. But my thoughts are basically that when I I went to school actually, graduated in advertising and then copywriting specifically. So so there was a a copywriting program that I took in school, and it was kind of geared toward the big agency life. So I did read all of those books and talk to, you know, the marketers at big companies or the or the the creatives rather at at big agencies. So I kind of had that background. So it was really funny to see now that that marketing has kind of jumped on it. Obviously, copywriting is part of marketing. But historically, it's been kind of within the creative department within agencies. But when when I was graduating and there were recruiters over, one of the more interesting things is that it seemed like everyone in my class wanted to wanted to go to agency. Like, that was kind of like what we're set up to do and what we're excited to do. But right around that time, there was a shift where there were a lot of companies bringing creative in house. So bringing copywriting in house and bringing designers in house. And so I remember there being an Apple an Apple recruiter there, and that's what she was saying was, you know, that they are moving everything in house. Like, historically, they'd been with Chiat Day. Like, that's almost famously so that they've been with them. They'd started taking more of that work in house. And I think because of that, that shift toward in house creative, more in in house marketing, that more marketers have had to learn or at least understand copywriting. So that's, I think, kind of the background on it and kind of why it's it's become this it's become, yeah, almost overrated, like I mentioned. What I meant by that is that people have been talking marketers have been talking how, you know, they wish that they had learned copywriting early on and this and that. But it's almost become this weight on copywriters' shoulders of like, okay. We know that copywriting does a lot of the heavy lifting, so we're expecting you to do a lot of the heavy lifting when really it's a team effort because I really, really admire the designers that I've that I've worked with in agency and then freelancing and then also in house when I work with agencies. So design is is really important as well. And I think that that's been underrated at this point. Like, was almost like design was overrated, copyright was underrated, and now it's kind of like shifted. And so I think design is still really important. I think just having an overall strategy, like having your positioning figured out, working with a lot of small and medium businesses, they don't always have their positioning figured out. And they kind of just want sometimes they want clever one liners or, you know, just clever copywriting. Like, they they kinda just want you to fill in the blanks when really, like, you you need it to be, you need to have you need to have figured out the strategy ahead of time and have a good product, and have some other support, like, with design and with distribution. I haven't even gotten started on distribution, but it's not like you can just make good content and that's it. Well, there's there's a few other things that go into it. So honestly, I would say, like, copywriting is a little bit overrated at at this point. I mean, I think that it makes a it makes a huge, huge difference, but I don't think that you can just hire hire a great copywriter, and that's it. You you gotta have, like, the systems in place first.
Mark Evans: One final question. If you are a marketer and you wanna improve your copywriting skills, some give me can you give me some basic advice?
Camille Trent: I think that the main thing that companies miss out on is there's an opportunity to differentiate, and a lot of times, they decide to play it safe. I think that anytime that you have an opinion or something that you believe strongly in, that you should lean into that. I think in general that that is great for brands because it's more it's more relatable. It's more believable. I think when people try and be on the fence and not offend anyone, then they don't get any fans that way either. They can't have both. You have to be willing to not upset people, but you have to be willing to not please everyone because that's the way that you are going to please the people that matter most, The people in your ICP that are actually gonna buy from you ultimately. I think not chasing vanity metrics and really just chasing good content. And I I I mean, personally, I don't think that I am the I don't think copywriters are the only ones that know good content. I think this something I've been trying to preach a lot to is that most people know what good content looks like based on the things that they like and the things that they share and really the the media that they consume when they're not at work, the the TV, the movies. That's good content and good copywriting. So a couple tips that I can give is the headlines obviously super important. I'll talk a little bit about about LinkedIn specifically, but but the with LinkedIn, you need a a good starting line. A lot of times, it seems to be better when it's short, but it doesn't have to be. The next two lines really need to get you to keep reading the next lines. So I know everyone's heard that a lot. Is that the first line needs to get you to read the next line? But that's that's a big part of it. I kind of also started thinking about the headline as the thesis. So if I think about posts or whatever I'm creating as a an essay almost as a almost as a persuasive essay, then then the first part needs to be kind of your thesis or your abstract. I've been thinking about this a lot because my husband is in immunology. He's a research scientist, so he does grants. But it's kind of similar. Right? Like, you you should have the most important stuff up at the top. That's how it is in newspaper. That's how it is in science. That's how it is in copywriting. You should have your most important statement up at the top. It should build build into something. It should give you a reason to keep reading, but also have enough enough structure in the middle where it's not pure text. Like, it's nice to break it up with bullet points or at least short sentences. Short sentences are better in general. But to to back up, I think it's just have something to say. Like, have something that you believe in strongly and that you know that your target audience will care about. And you can find that out based on what they're talking about, you know, what they're talking about on other social networks, what their interests are. I mean, those things will tell you what they're interested in. So being able to relate to them, committing. Like committing to the niche that you have, committing to a human voice, not not a corporate voice, like committing to the the style that your customer wants to see. I think Gong does a really good job of this on their LinkedIn company page and just in their copywriting in general. As they sound like, you can tell it's written by a human. I've seen the same thing from from Lemonade. I think it's what's called with I think it helps you buy homes. But you can tell that it's written by a human. And I just stumbled across their page, and I immediately liked the brand. And I I knew nothing about it. Like, I didn't know if their product was any good, but I knew that I, like, felt an affinity for it because I I could feel the copywriter on the other end of it. Like, I could feel I could feel a connection to that person. That's what what's about is connection with copywriting.
Mark Evans: Camille, where can people find you to learn more about you and and consume your content?
Camille Trent: I mean, obviously, LinkedIn. If you if you send me a DM, then I'll I'll try respond as fast as I can. That's probably the the best place. I'll stop there. I have some emails and things, but I think you can find that on LinkedIn as well.
Mark Evans: Well, thanks, Camille, and thanks everyone for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review and subscribe via iTunes or your favorite podcast app. If you like what you heard, please rate it. For show notes of today's conversation and information about Camille, visit marketingspark.co/blog. If you have questions, feedback, would like to suggest a guest, or want to learn more about how I help b to b companies as a fractional CMO, consultant, and adviser, send an email to Mark@marketingspark.co. I'll talk to you next time.