Liam’s Brand Stand: Employer Brand, Employee Brand, and Star Wars (at the end)

Brian Fink: [00:00:00] you are on RecruitingDaily’s One and only Sourcing School podcast. Ryan Leary, what’s going on?

Ryan Leary: I’m going on, brother. What’s up, man? It’s a good Friday. It’s not a good Friday, but it is a good Friday.

Brian Fink: It is a great Friday. And as soon as we wrap this up, I’m going to go have an excellent cheeseburger. And that’s what we were talking about earlier, in case anybody wonders what we talk about in the pre [00:01:00] show.

Ryan Leary: But it’s not just a burger. It is a… Double something Wagyu burger with a whole bunch of stuff.

Brian Fink: No actually real quick. It is a Wagyu burger. It is two patties, Wagyu beef, and it is two slices of cheese and a bun. And it’s very simple and it is fantastic.

Ryan Leary: It was, are you a mayo guy on the burger?

Brian Fink: No, dude. Like I don’t think there’s any, I don’t think we need anything to go on the burger. Like I just think we do the thing and we go with it.

Ryan Leary: Have you ever made a double cheeseburger from McDonald’s at home?

Brian Fink: Yes. Wait. Oh, wait a minute. Ladies and gentlemen, boys

Ryan Leary: and He jumped in on that one.

It’s Darmody.

Brian Fink: It’s Liam Darmody, our guest today an expert in employer branding and in getting the word and the message out. And he jumped right into the, to the intro call. Hell yeah to the burger. Yeah. Yeah. [00:02:00] What is going

Ryan Leary: on? I don’t know. We started making double cheeseburgers.

Liam Darmody: For real.

Yeah.

Ryan Leary: It’s, you know what? The double cheeseburger from McDonald, Liam. Yep. Badass. At home. At home. You can’t tell the difference.

Brian Fink: Nope. Oh, you can tell the difference between a McDonald’s cheeseburger and a burger that you make on the grill?

Liam Darmody: No, you don’t make it on the grill. No, it’s a skillet. You gotta use a, you gotta use an iron, cast iron skillet and you squeeze the burger patty so thin, it’s like a smash burger.

And then you put the cheese in between the patties and then you put some pickles and some ketchup and some mustard and some lettuce, then you’re good.

Brian Fink: Yeah. Okay. So real quick, that is not any burger that I’ve ever had at McDonald’s. I don’t even think McDonald’s puts lettuce on the burger.

Ryan Leary: No, they don’t, but they do every the onion and pickle. I’m tell, I’m going to make you one when you come up here. You can’t tell the

Brian Fink: difference. Alright, so everybody who tuned in, I can’t even talk, who tuned in today. I know this is not what you were expecting. You were expecting [00:03:00] some kind of great sourcing or recruiting or employer branding act.

For those of you who have fast forwarded past the intro, Liam, what’s going on my man? How

Liam Darmody: are you? Lots, man. I’m doing great. I am three weeks into my entrepreneurial journey. I started Liam’s Brandstand, which is a LinkedIn brand consultancy. I think as I’ve been geeking out about LinkedIn now for basically four years creating my own personal brand.

And that translated into a career pivot from sales and revenue operations into a employer branding and talent marketing role that I was doing at WillowTree prior to being on my own. And Always thought what could happen if I just dedicated myself 100% to helping people see the value of the platform that, that I’ve seen.

And so I decided to go out on my own and I set up shop three weeks ago and it’s been going great, it’s entrepreneurship is crazy, but I’m doing what I’m doing what I love, Which is awesome.

Brian Fink: All right. So let’s unpack a lot of [00:04:00] these different elements, right? You are doing personal brand coaching.

You are doing employer brand activation, and you are also focusing on LinkedIn strategy for teams. Yeah. This morning I am confronted by Ryan Holiday, who Ryan, not to be confused with Ryan Leary, Ryan Holiday is really starting to push content on. LinkedIn. And I feel that it’s the impetus is because you have Gary Vaynerchuk and you have Bloomberg that are now talking about LinkedIn being the network that is undervalued and has the most ROI.

What would you say to that? What’s that got?

Liam Darmody: Look, I think there’s a lot of, right now, organic reach on LinkedIn is probably some of the better that you can get online if you’re consistent and you provide valuable content that is insightful the, if you go to, if you go to the app stores, you’ll see that LinkedIn describes itself in its first sentence now as the social network for professionals, which I think is relatively new.

I don’t know if I’ve seen that descriptor before. So [00:05:00] clearly they’re investing in the social component. It started with the creator program and they’ve done this before. I think in 2017, 2018, you probably remember, like they had this like group of folks that they were investing in creating a lot of content.

It didn’t necessarily take off quickly there, but I think the creator program this time around has had sharper teeth. And they’re hiring creator managers from YouTube and all these other different platforms. So you can tell that they’re really investing in the feed and the experience of content on the platform.

And it helps that people like Gary V are talking about it now, but they wouldn’t be talking about it if it wasn’t a legitimate platform for personal branding and development. I think LinkedIn is uniquely positioned because it, they have. They have all the time in the world really to wait and to let people come into the fray because they are making money on the recruiter side.

They’re making money on the sales navigator side. They’re making money on the ad side. So they have the luxury of time to say, okay let’s let people come. Weighed into the waters as [00:06:00] they want to and they’re trying to make it happen as quick as they can, but they can be patient. And I think those people that are early adopters of creating content on the platform are seeing tremendous benefit as a result of it.

I’ve made friendships from this platform that are global. There are people in Australia that I’ve met connections with and people in Europe and people in Asia. It’s just it’s pretty fantastic online community.

Ryan Leary: Liam, I’ve got a question. I don’t think people today… Think of LinkedIn as a social

Liam Darmody: network, right?

100% agree with that.

Ryan Leary: So when someone comes to, and that’s on the disclosure, I look at LinkedIn, it’s probably my first stop every day. Yeah. So when I eventually pick my phone up and I get to LinkedIn and I say, okay, what am I going to do? I go to LinkedIn and I run through it because the people that I’m following are sharing information that, that help actually helped me throughout my day.

But I’m curious to get your thoughts here. Where is the line for what [00:07:00] people should be posting on LinkedIn? Clearly it’s not Instagram. It’s not Facebook. But some of that content is crossover. Where’s that

Liam Darmody: line for you? I think the line is different for everybody, right? I think you have to have a level of comfort in what you’re doing.

The way that I typically encourage people to think about it is Treat it like a journal that you’re comfortable to share with friends, family, or peers, right? It’s thoughts that are coming into your mind about business, it’s thoughts about leadership, it’s thoughts about self improvement, it’s thoughts about, How you’ve grown as a person.

It’s thoughts about things that you like in the industry. If you’re into branding and you think it’s, Pepsi just did a rebrand and they had this whole the spot on YouTube that they released in TV. Like I posted about that. Like it’s really just let people see what is going on inside of your head.

As it relates to the things that you’re proudest of showing, right? I don’t know if I’m articulating it that effectively, but treating it as a [00:08:00] journal is very unique, because you’re almost just like talking to yourself a little bit. But you’re letting other people in. And that’s what makes LinkedIn so unique is it’s almost like people view this as this job platform and your resume is your resume and that shows you what you’ve done and where you’ve done it.

LinkedIn gives you the ability to provide more context to who is doing it, right? The who behind the what. And if somebody’s looking at your profile. And they’re looking at your about section and it’s two lines long and it’s I am a C sharp developer or I write Python. Like congratulations, but what do you like to do on the weekends?

Like what, how did you get into software engineering? What’s your story? What do you like to do for fun? These are all things that you will end up sharing with companies once you work with them or business partners or clients or colleagues. Why wait until you’re interviewing for the position or once you’ve started at a company to share that information?

Just put it out there in the world and let.[00:09:00]

Brian Fink: Do you think that it’s important that, do you think people are not bringing their full self or their full authentic self to LinkedIn that they’re holding back because it is quote unquote a professional

network?

Liam Darmody: Yes, unequivocally. I think people are uncomfortable with the concept. What I hear most is, I don’t know what to write about I don’t think anybody cares what I have to say and they overthink it because they’re worried that their employer might see it and not like it, or it might rub them the wrong way, and my response to all of those things is I’ve gotten to the point where I just don’t care.

Anymore, because I’m just being myself unequivocally on the platform. I am, like, Brian, you and I are talking now, the way that I am on LinkedIn is the way I’m going to be now. It’s the way I would be if I was having a royale with you in Atlanta. I’ve gotten so comfortable just being me that I no longer care.

And I think one of the reasons that is that I have started to view this platform as a personal reputation platform where I’m putting [00:10:00] myself out authentically because if somebody doesn’t like what they see, I would almost rather somebody look at my profile and be like, nah, he’s too touchy feely for our culture and then scroll on because why risk going through the process of interviewing with somebody and talking to them for three hours and meeting all these people if at the end of the day, you’re not necessarily their cup of tea and they’re probably not your cup of tea, like they’re doing you a favor by just continuing to scroll, so I care less about what other people are thinking and more about just being my authentic self so that People that are naturally attracted to that will find me.

What about,

Ryan Leary: This is something that’s always I’m always thinking about. One, just to piggyback on what you’re saying here, I think people, now that LinkedIn has built itself as almost a recruiter platform at this point, right? Even to the public, not just in recruiting. People are afraid, in my opinion, people are afraid what I say a recruiter is going to pass over me, right?

So very [00:11:00] similar to what you’re saying. And, but it’s an actual fear, and as you’re talking, I’m like, okay, I need a job. What am I going to do? And I’m going to put my, my, put my stuff on to man, all that shit that I’ve said out there, I’m probably getting passed up for half the jobs, but then does it really matter?

Am I going to work at that company? Am I going to work out at that company? Probably not. I can’t take what I say and how I do it. It’s not going to work. Question I have for you is this what is too much in terms of personal branding? What is too much? When does it become too much pushing me?

down your throat?

Liam Darmody: That’s a great question. And I think that I think that’s why I encourage people to talk about it like a journal because it’s not promotional, right? It’s not necessarily hey, look at me and how great I am and how awesome all the stuff I have is or how I think or what I’ve done.

That’s what your profile is for, right? Your featured section, put all the stuff that you’re proudest of in there. If you want to have like video [00:12:00] footage of things that you’ve done or presentations you’ve done or whatever, throw that in there. And then use the feed and to show people how you communicate and how you think about business concepts, right?

Or just your opinion on your specific industry. That to me is less self promotion and it’s more just reflection of who you are and how you think. And I think giving companies the ability, giving recruiters the ability to see how you think and how you communicate. On a social platform like this, about topics that are related to business or self, leadership or management or whatever industry you’re in gives a lot more context and color to who you are as a person, which could then result in them being more interested in finding out about what you’ve done.

Whereas I think most people are accustomed to look at my resume, find out if I’m a good fit and then look at the person. I think we’re seeing a little bit more of a shift where it’s like, Oh, I keep seeing that guy posting about a bunch of different stuff relating to this topic. I’m gonna go and see what they’ve done and look at their about section and maybe they’ll be a good fit for a job or something, or maybe they’d [00:13:00] be a good fit for our culture.

I think that a lot of companies going forward are going to be a lot more mindful of the cultural ad, right? Not necessarily just a fit, but are you adding to our culture? Are you somebody that we can rely upon? to reflect the brand properly or, LinkedIn platform and help us recruit more in the future.

Help us get more clients in the future. Be a good steward of our brand while we have you on the team. And so by that regard, I think it’s actually valuable. Obviously you want to be mindful of. The types of employers that you are looking for, right? If you’re looking to work for a fortune 100 or a fortune 500, probably going to be a little bit different in tone than somebody like myself, who’s worked at technology startups my entire career.

So that’s a fine line and something that you want to be reflective about. But I think if you just roll with, these are things I’m passionate about and fascinated by and they won’t offend 50% of the people that I share them with they’re worth sharing on the platform. [00:14:00] Huh.

Brian Fink: About offending people.

Do you think that, I, do you think that offending a certain percentage of people helps create more viral content, or do you think that the community pushes back on that individual and puts them back in their box? What are we thinking about that from a, from that

Liam Darmody: standpoint? Delicate balance, but it’s a skill that a lot of people do utilize effectively, right?

People there’s that, there’s a, there’s something that’s a little bit controversial, but not in a super divisive way. So like I tell people, stay away from politics, just don’t go there, right? There’s no real reason to go there. It’s, it can kickstart all sorts of bad, conversations. But if you take a, if you take a stance on something and you’re saying, I think X about Y here’s why I think that.

Curious to know your thoughts, right? Other people are going to weigh in and there’s going to be a lot more engagement on your post and it’s going to get more distribution as a result of that. And as long as [00:15:00] you’ve said your side of it respectfully, and in a way that doesn’t necessarily reflect poorly on you or your company’s brand.

I think it’s great and it will typically involve more engagement following the post.

Brian Fink: Do you think there’s some key ingredients to making something go viral on LinkedIn?

Liam Darmody: Oh man, I honestly, I have it’s a total. So yes, I think being very vulnerable is something that typically resonates on LinkedIn, right?

People will see something and they’re like, wow, that took guts to put out there and they share it, they repost it, they comment on it. That’s why I think one of the things that I’m most encouraged by post pandemic and post this crazy economy that we’re in right now is seeing people posting about being laid off.

Five years ago, people didn’t post about being laid off. They were terrified to acknowledge the fact that they lost their job through a layoff, right? But now, it seems like [00:16:00] we’ve evolved into this place where it’s like we understand it’s not really reflective of the person themselves, it’s the company having to do some restructuring and making some difficult calls.

And that doesn’t necessarily mean that who is impacted. Is not a top performer or is not somebody worth hiring. It just means that their role was no longer required at that business. And so that’s why you see people posting about being let go. And those posts get tons of engagement because people want to help each other out.

There’s a natural tendency for the LinkedIn community to support one another and help each other. When times are tough. I think delivering tremendous amount of value. So if you’re an expert in some capacity and you share a post that’s like top 10 tips to do X, Y, and Z, that will typically have an increased likelihood of going viral on the platform.

But my The thought around being viral on LinkedIn is that less is more. And this is something that Dan Roth said in his interview with Entrepreneur Magazine when he talked about the changes to the algorithm that happened [00:17:00] a couple months ago. And he basically said that internally at LinkedIn, being viral, going viral is not something that they encourage.

Like they don’t, when something goes viral, they’re like weird. Why did that happen? It’s almost like they’re trying to. Dampen the amount of viral posts that occur and replace it with more consistent levels of impressions on valuable content that people find useful, right? And so I would say instead of striving to go viral, strive for 5, 000 impressions and a 3% engagement rate on your content and post three or four times a week, right?

Like I would rather have Four posts that get 50, 000 impressions and a 3% engagement rate, then one post that goes through the roof. Because it’s not sustainable to go viral on this platform. It’s, there’s literally, I’ve never cracked the code. It’s impossible for me.

Ryan Leary: It’s interesting you say that because that’s…

I was, as you’re talking, I’m thinking about, do I really want to go viral, right? What’s the value of going [00:18:00] viral? And I think, excuse me, I think that’s a kind of like a Shark Tank moment. If you all watch Shark Tank and they say how’d you get this? I went viral. I had 30 million views on my video.

That’s fantastic. What just happened for the last six months? Like, why are your sales dipping so low? Because you’re no longer viral. But if you’re consistent, you’re constantly posting just real thoughts that you have each and every day, a couple times a week, you’re building your visibility on whichever platform, not just LinkedIn.

I think that’s truly much more powerful than your one viral moment. You’re a one you’re Vanilla Ice at that point, right?

Liam Darmody: Hey, don’t be hating on Vanilla Ice. Is he

Ryan Leary: still flipping homes now? Is he doing his thing? I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m not going to lie. I was a little jealous when he was flipping homes.

I’m thinking, why can’t I do that? I want one hit and then flip home and have a TV [00:19:00] show. Come on, right? But seriously, I’m with you there. I think small, consistent punches, right? Jabs into the content. The world of content there is much more.

Liam Darmody: Yeah, becoming a dependable, reliable, becoming a dependable, reliable voice that people find useful is beneficial.

And I think we’re seeing all sorts of growth hackers and growth marketers coming onto the platform. There’s like a ton of people that are. saying, seven tips to grow your followers by, I’ve been here for six months and I grew my followers 50, 000 and all that.

And I, it drives me nuts. I have to basically unfollow and block those people because it’s bad for my mental health. And I disagree with what they’re putting out there because that’s not the con, that’s not the idea of LinkedIn, right? The idea is that this is a platform that will represent your personal brand.

Through the course of your career, right? So treat it like that. Don’t necessarily worry about if you want stardom, go to TikTok, go to YouTube, go to, Instagram or whatever, and start focusing on building your mega following [00:20:00] there. Here, it’s just being yourself and having conversation and developing community.

That, that goes a long way and it creates opportunity for people. That’s one of the things that I think is important is to get the message across because 90% of people don’t post on LinkedIn, they’re intimidated by it, they’re not sure where to start, they’re not sure how their peers and colleagues will think about it And this is the only platform where that happens.

Other social platforms, they’re like, Hey, whatever, I just post whatever I want, right? But you should feel comfortable posting here. And if you see all these influencers being like, Oh, I got a 7, 000, 700, 000 impressions. Like it’s only going to make people feel less comfortable posting because that’s not going to happen to the average person on this platform.

LinkedIn makes you work incredibly hard for every impression and every engagement point you get. By design, and I think a lot of these growth hackers are colluding to boost their own engagement in the interest of making money and in the interest of getting as [00:21:00] massive an audience as possible and selling their courses, and then what ends up happening is people get discouraged because they don’t have five influencers with a hundred thousand followers jumping in all over their posts and Boosting the impression rate, right?

So that’s why I try and encourage people not to even think about vanity metrics. Just focus on being comfortable creating your voice here.

Brian Fink: You talk about those vanity metrics. I don’t think that they translate sometimes, right? I watch okay, so full disclosure, I watch a tremendous amount of video on LinkedIn, right?

And when I see somebody who has A hundred thousand followers and they have eight people show up to a LinkedIn live. I’m wondering what the hell is going on

Liam Darmody: there. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, there are a lot of principles that there’s, there are a lot of mechanics that play behind the scenes that I think a lot of people don’t recognize.

And the engagement pods have been a thing since social media started. And the problem with those. Those [00:22:00] types of mechanics is that it’s not actually teaching you how to become an effective content creator and to find your voice. It’s teaching you how to hack the system for a short period of time at.

To fill somebody else’s pockets. And then once that run, once that run is dry, if you leave that engagement pod or you decide you don’t wanna participate anymore, all of a sudden you have no engagement whatsoever and you’re starting from scratch. So there’s no point doing it to begin with. It just doesn’t make sense.

Brian Fink: Alright, so Ryan Leary, who just posted on LinkedIn and tagged both of us says podcasting is the moment. I no longer care what I share on LinkedIn. I’m just sharing, Ryan, last week or two weeks ago, I posted a picture of a JWA and an Ewok on LinkedIn because you don’t care about Star Wars,

Ryan Leary: and I look, Liam, I can’t carry people that never saw Star Wars.

They don’t even know what a fucking jab, a walkie, whatever you call that thing is . What am I gonna do with this guy? [00:23:00] All he does is he’s never seen Star Wars. What

Liam Darmody: kind of guy is this? I have also never seen Star Wars.

Ryan Leary: Oh, look at that. Game over, mic drop. Me neither. I’ve never seen it. I don’t

Liam Darmody: care to see it.

I have a theory. Have you seen Game of Thrones? No. Yes. Have you seen Harry Potter? Yes. Have you seen what’s the other, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter there’s one other one that was like an HBO, big time HBO thing but it’s eluding me now, but I have a theory. The

Brian Fink: Sopranos was

Liam Darmody: a big thing on HBO. No, Sopranos was awesome.

I love Sopranos. But I have a theory that there are people, there are two kinds of people in the world, there are the people that love the Star Wars and like the. The fantasy kind of movies like Harry Potter and Game of Thrones and things like that. And then there are people that just have zero interest in those specific types of movies.

I am one of those. Like I just, if I will sit and watch a documentary about crime or or about, or hang out on HBO and watch The Sopranos all day long, I’ll binge that. But. [00:24:00] When it comes to Star Wars I’ve just never, I’ve never

Ryan Leary: been. I’m not the only one. He was upset because I don’t know the difference between a, what do you call it?

A Jawa and an

Brian Fink: Ewok.

Ryan Leary: Ewok. Yeah, I’m like the little Ewok thing running through the desert. I don’t know the difference. Did you know they’re called two different things, apparently. If they’re in grass or

Liam Darmody: sand. Yeah. I couldn’t tell you what they even look like.

Ryan Leary: Here’s our viral moment

Brian Fink: right here.

Ryan Leary: This is our viral moment right here.

Liam Darmody: I’ll tell you what would go viral on LinkedIn. I would be willing to bet that if you posted, I have never seen Star Wars. Who’s with me? Or something relating to that. That would fly on LinkedIn. All right, I’m

Ryan Leary: putting it up right now. I have

Liam Darmody: never. Or or do a poll.

Have you seen Star Wars? Yes or no? Is

Ryan Leary: Star Wars one word or two? Oh God.

Liam Darmody: I think it’s two. It’s

Ryan Leary: two words. I have never seen Star

Liam Darmody: Wars. Am I [00:25:00] crazy? Or something like that. And then everybody will start commenting about it. Am I crazy or am I cra or am I crazy? Or is Star Wars overrated? Something like that.

You talk about controversial opinions, Brian, like that would be a perfect example. You’re not offending anyone. Is

Brian Fink: it overrated? Is it overrated? That would, that’s the key there,

Liam Darmody: right? You’re not over, you’re not over, you’re not offending anyone overtly. It’s not super offensive. But there are gonna be people that read that and be like, what?

Are you crazy? And they’re gonna respond, all right.

Ryan Leary: I have never seen Star Wars. Am I crazy? Have you? Star Wars is overrated. Yes or no. And I put the poll in there. Perfect. I

Liam Darmody: put a, should I put a photo in there? No, you can’t put a photo with a poll. Oh, that’s

Brian Fink: right. So wait a minute. You bring up the photo question I was going to ask.

It was like, Liam, do you have data about what performs better? Like hashtags or just. Content, or polls, or

Liam Darmody: photos. So I, one of the benefits of me being in [00:26:00] operations prior to joining, prior to starting my own coaching business is that I am relatively analytical. And so if you give me a data set, I can do all sorts of pivot tables and charts and all sorts of stuff and kind of identify trends.

And Over the past couple years, there’s a tool out there called Shield that uses a plug in that basically lets you it tracks all of your public facing data and you can export a CSV with all of the post data. So I’ve posted, I think, 3, 000 posts in four years or something like that. It’s ridiculous.

And I can export all of that data and run a manipulation analysis myself to see what performs better. So for example, in 2021, Polls were everything. You all remember this, like everybody was doing polls back then because LinkedIn was juicing them from the algorithm and you could basically just write a poll about, your favorite cereal and people, and it would fly.

So for six months we had nothing but polls in our feed and everybody was complaining about it except people that were building the polls. I happen to love polls because they’re one of the only, they’re [00:27:00] the, they are the only medium on LinkedIn that you can get quantifiable responses from your audience.

So you know, definitively, somebody is either saying A or B, or C or D, there’s four options, but I always say just do two binary poll options. So I love doing polls, I always have, but 2021 was massive. The polls accounted for 16% of my… Content, and 35% of my conversations and my shares. So I could see that polls were having a better impact on my engagement rate and my comment rate, so that would double down on those.

Now that’s not the case. Now it’s carousels. Carousels are all over the place on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is juicing those. So you’re seeing all these mega carousel fluencers. That’s the term that I came up with, but there are basically all just creating these sliders with 10 or 15 slides. And every click tells LinkedIn, this person’s interested.

And so you go through 15 slides, you do that a couple of hundred times and boom, you’ve got this massive [00:28:00] distribution for your post. How long that will last? I don’t know. But yeah I’m able to do a lot of that analysis and I have a lot of fun doing it actually.

Brian Fink: Okay, so you touched on that.

Do you know what the next trend is that they’re cooking up? Polls, carousels, video, LinkedIn lives?

Liam Darmody: So LinkedIn audio is a phenomenal way to spend time on the platform. It also is a phenomenal way to pick up followers if that’s something that you’re interested in. Because there’s just something about voice that really resonates with people.

That’s not really surprising. That’s logical. But live streaming, not as much. I feel like live streaming is hit or miss. I don’t know about you, but I know a lot of people just they like to read on LinkedIn. They like to look at images. They like to look at carousels.

Press play on the volume. And I think as more people go back to the office, that’s probably going to be a trend that continues. So I don’t really know how effectively that’s going to work. I think video inevitably is going to become more popular on this platform simply because younger generations are going to be putting video on here because [00:29:00] they’re native, video creators.

And so I think you are going to see more success with video eventually, but right now I think carousels are where it’s at and I still, I love a good text plus image post. The image is a scroll stopper, find something that looks really good, create it using mid journey or something that, is really eye catching stops the scroll, make sure you have a decent hook, and then they click see more, and then they’ll leave a comment if your content is compelling enough.

Those are my go to. I’m not a,

Ryan Leary: I know I’m gonna, this is gonna be unpopular when I say this unpopular . I knew that was coming. I got rid of, I have been avoiding video and audio. I’ve been reading a whole lot more on the platforms than I watch videos. It just, it seems like it takes more time for me to hit the video, unless it’s a DIY, right?

If I’m watching some stuff about fishing or a boat, [00:30:00] and I need to do some boat repair, like I’ll watch the video, but that’s just because I need to see it. I’m not going to read a step by step tutorial for 50 minutes. On how to do something, right? How to prep aluminum or something like that, but everything else business wise business tips, entrepreneurial tips, anything.

I find myself reading it and comprehending it more than I do video. I get more distracted because I just play the video in the background now. Yeah,

Liam Darmody: I’m the same.

Brian Fink: Okay, I was just going to say, I was like, I like the closed captioning feature because I just, it allows me to go through the content that much

Ryan Leary: faster.

Do you watch TV with closed

Brian Fink: captioning? Brian, I don’t really watch TV unless it’s Star Wars and in those instances, I’m too busy looking for Jawas and

Ryan Leary: Ewoks. They just make sounds like, wee. Some shit like that, right? My daughter watches TV with closed captions and it bothers

Liam Darmody: the hell out of me.

I actually have closed captions on my TV because I say [00:31:00] to my kids, if you’re going to watch TV, I at least want you to have exposure to what the words that are coming out of their mouths are saying. It does drive me nuts as well because I fully comprehend all the words and how to spell them. But I’m trying to at least feel a little less guilty about letting them watch screen time.

So I do have them on when they’re watching it.

Ryan Leary: Love it. Fink does not like closed captions.

Brian Fink: So Fink likes closed captions on videos. That’s how I do LinkedIn learning as quickly as I do is I turn on the captions. I run it at 2x the speed. I also listen to my podcasts at 1. 5, right? It helps me.

Ryan Leary: Yeah. Listen to your own podcast.

And

Brian Fink: to us, no, Al does cause she claims that I don’t give you enough time to speak and that I’m always talking and sucking the oxygen out of the room.

Ryan Leary: So I use the time to do other things, just I’m watching Star Wars on the backend and not telling you, let’s see. I posted the poll. Let’s see if anyone’s actually answered my poll yet. [00:32:00]

Liam Darmody: Let’s see. You posted two posts in 10 minutes, right? Yeah. Yeah, that might be that might be a bad thing. If the poll doesn’t do well today, I would say do it again on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week and see what

Ryan Leary: happens.

So I’m just saying we’ve got three votes. And all say no. Oh, you said no. You don’t count, Fink. Get out of here. You can’t say no, but we have two others that

Brian Fink: said no. It’s all good, Brian. It’s all good. These, the, okay, so real quick, that image I posted are not Jawas or

Liam Darmody: Ewoks. I was wondering, yeah, I think I’ve seen an Ewok and that didn’t look like one, but I didn’t know what it

Brian Fink: is.

It’s Ahsoka Tano, it’s Ahsoka Tano, and she is the star of the new Disney series that debuted two days ago. called Ahsoka, and that’s where she’s joined by Supreme Wren, and they’re on their quest to [00:33:00] go find Grand Admiral Thrawn and

Liam Darmody: Ezra Bridger. Okay.

Brian Fink: Everybody’s Yay! We’re so excited about finding these people!

Alright, Ryan. I’m good with law

Ryan Leary: and order and suits and…

Liam Darmody: Yes! Law and order! The best!

Ryan Leary: Dude, when this writer strike has gotta end. Seriously, my nights are spent on Channel 10. That’s it. That’s all we watch.

Liam Darmody: That’s so amazing. I actually computed that I’ve watched a full seven days worth of forensic files.

That is nice. In my time, in my I’ve watched literally seven days if you would multiply by 24 hours. That’s just, that’s, I like crime shows and all that stuff. I’ll take that any day. Fink,

Ryan Leary: it looks like you’re about to explode. You’re like, give me the goddamn burger and get

Brian Fink: me off this planet.

I’m like, give me the burger. It is… It’s like I show up each week. We talk about recruiting. We talk about sourcing. We talk about employee branding and we bash the hell out of Star [00:34:00] Wars and I’m just like, I can’t do this guys.

Ryan Leary: Every guest from this point forward will not have seen Star Wars.

That’s going to be the first question. Have you seen Star Wars?

Brian Fink: Have you seen Star? It’s the Have You Seen Star Wars show by Recruiting Daily sourcing.

Liam Darmody: Liam,

Ryan Leary: go ahead, man. No you, Ryan. I was just going to say, Liam, this has been amazing. Yeah,

Liam Darmody: it’s been a fantastic conversation. I could go on for hours with you guys.

This is great. We could,

Ryan Leary: we might have to add a third person in and double up on the No Star Wars on the show.

Brian Fink: Liam, all right, so with that, I will ask you, I’ll ask you three things. The first one is, Are you willing to come back and enjoy the show again in the future? Okay. Number two, there was a tool that you mentioned and about getting data out of LinkedIn. What was that tool? I failed to write that down.

I want to make sure it’s

Liam Darmody: included in the show notes. It’s called Shield Intelligence. It’s shieldapp. ai. [00:35:00]

Brian Fink: ShieldApp. ai. All right. And then number three, this weekend, are you going to watch Star Wars or not?

Liam Darmody: No. I I just responded to Ryan’s post and I voted that it is overrated and I’ve never seen it and I will not see it unless my kids force me to.

And thus far I have not been asked to watch Star Wars by my children, but if they do, I will do that. I’m a good dad. I will suffer through it or maybe I’ll probably enjoy it. Everybody I know who’s watched it says it’s great. I just don’t have the draw there. So who

Brian Fink: knows? Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, friends of all ages, Liam does not like laser swords or Ewoks and Jawas.

Liam Darmody: But my thinking is they’re lasers from the 70s, right? Like we’re living in a time when AI is creating full movies. Am I going to be bored by the lasers from the 70s?

Brian Fink: No, it’s lasers from the seventies, just those words in a sentence by themselves should encourage you to watch it, right?[00:36:00]

Ryan Leary: The sword fight that they

Liam Darmody: had? Yeah, there’s what are they called? Lightsabers? Lightsabers, that’s it, sorry. I used to call them

Ryan Leary: lifesavers. Wow, God. I’m like, yeah, I want a

Liam Darmody: lifesaver.

Brian Fink: All right, hey, thank you for, yeah, thank you for checking in with us today. Thanks for being part of the show.

It’s Liam’s brand stand. If you’re looking to increase your EVP get your word across and definitely take advantage of the free version of LinkedIn. He’s your guy. I’m Brian Fink. That’s Ryan Leary and that’s sourcing

Liam Darmody: school. Awesome guys. This was fantastic. Thanks for having me. [00:37:00]