Liz Sheffield Copywriting

Insider Insights for Raising ROI

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What do HR Buyers think of the proposal process?

Summary of highlights from HR Buyer Report

What do HR buyers think about each stage of the buying process, from proposal to delivery, service and follow up?

I asked them in my recent HR Buyer survey. Regarding the proposal process, here’s what one respondent said:

“The sales team worked hard to customize the final demo with samples I provided so that our CEO and CFO could picture what the solution would really look like for us. They spent a ton of time preparing all of that in advance with no guarantee that we would buy from them.”

Regarding service, another respondent had this praise to share:

“The best part: our rep documented everything so that when I worked with new people on his team, they could quickly draw upon these highlights. It was helpful not to have to explain myself over and over again.”

Learn more about the HR Buyer experience by requesting your copy of my HR Buyer Report.

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HR Buyer Report Provides Insights

Next week I’ll be releasing my HR Buyer Report.

It’s based on the survey I conducted earlier this year. In that survey, I asked HR professionals to share the good, the bad, and the ugly about their experiences partnering with HR service and solution providers.

Sign up here to receive the full report in your inbox next week.

In the meantime, I’m sharing a few highlights before the full report comes out.

One of my favorite insights: Celebrate the milestones!

Click on the image for five insights that will help you better understand your HR market.

HR Buyer Report
Five HR Buyer Insights to help you understand your market.

And don’t forget: sign up here to receive my HR Buyer Report in your inbox next week.

 

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5 Types of Content to Post on LinkedIn

There are 30 million company pages on LinkedIn. Hopefully your company’s page is one of them!

If you’re struggling with ideas about what to post, here are five types of content to post on LinkedIn that will help you engage with your HR buyer audience:

Branded visuals.

I recently started posting a #FridayThankful each week. It’s a way for me to stay connected, highlight my brand, and hopefully create a sense of community with my connections. Every week I use the same format–my brand colors, my logo, the “thank you” image, and a quote about gratitude. I invite people to share their own #FridayThankful in the comments.

Employee updates.

One way to connect with your customers and prospects is to introduce members of your team. Share employee milestones (e.g., anniversaries, awards). Talk about company celebrations or volunteer community events. In the content you post on LinkedIn, showcase the people you make your organization run like a finely tuned machine. This example from Idea Grove, a marketing agency based in Dallas, Texas offers a great illustration of how to showcase the people in your organization.

Industry content

Not long ago, I read that to keep conversations engaging, we should aim to talk for 40 seconds, and then pause to let other people jump in. The theory applies online, too. Make your page more engaging by using it as a place to share and interact with relevant content. Share relevant content from other websites, organizations, and industry leaders.

Video

Don’t have any videos? Don’t worry. That’s when you can look to YouTube, TedTalks and other sources for concise and relevant video clips. Share the video with your audience as a post on your company page. I shared this funny/not-funny video from comedian Kristen Bell–engaging and evocative content that I didn’t have to create but which I knew might resonate with my LinkedIn connections.

Your content

Yes, you want to share content from other sources…but you must also share your own. LinkedIn is where you should regularly post links to your blog articles, white papers, checklists, and any other content available via your website. As this post demonstrates, don’t be afraid to post from your archives–your page followers may be new, may have missed the previous post, or may welcome an opportunity for a refresher.

Don’t get overwhelmed by the idea of posting to LinkedIn. A daily post is a simple marketing technique. It’s a way to say hello and stay in front of your audience. To keep it simple, I chose five tips you can use Monday through Friday. Let me know how it goes when you use these types of content to post on LinkedIn.

 

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Why hire an HR writer who brings first-hand experience?

Photo by Bookblock on Unsplash

When I have discovery calls with potential clients who are looking for an HR writer, they often ask me how I got started in my writing business.

To keep the story short, I share how I spent more than 12 years working under the HR umbrella at Starbucks. My experiences in training and development, as well as ethics and compliance, provided valuable first-hand experience in a corporate HR setting. Likewise, working for an organization that was dedicated to the human spirit and considered employees partners, helped cement my conviction that people are what make a business.

Putting negative experiences to use

To save time I don’t mention the experiences that led me to Starbucks. (In part because those experiences are more years ago than I’d like to admit!) But in a conversation today, I realized those experiences are at the core of why I was drawn to the world of HR. And what led me to become a writer dedicated to the HR marketplace. In my other positions, I had not-so-great experiences related to the people side of the business:

  • My “onboarding” at one organization consisted of eight hours of sitting a desk in the hall, reading information stuffed into a 3-inch binder.
  • I witnessed rampant workplace bullying, as well as shocking levels of employee theft in another firm.
  • A lack of an HR department, policy, or programs (and the accompanying chaos) at another workplace prompted me to create the first ever employee handbook and training guides outside of my working hours.

Simply stated: these negative workplace experiences prior to Starbucks also inform my HR writing. Through these situations, I learned lessons about what is important in a work environment. I learned how not to treat employees. And, I learned the importance of establishing boundaries and policies so people can thrive.

Pouring my heart into the people side of the business

The “learning” experiences I had in those jobs pushed me to find work that allowed me to focus on the people side of the business. I enrolled in a training specialist certificate program at the University of Washington. Nine months later, I had my first interview at Starbucks. While preparing for my interview, I read Howard Schultz’ book, Pour Your Heart Into It.

My jaw dropped as I read each chapter–was it possible for a company to:

  • Hold itself accountable to its mission statement?
  • Ask employees for their feedback?
  • Value people alongside profit?

In my Starbucks interview, I asked the HR manager (who would soon become my supervisor) those very questions.

“Before I was hired,” she said, “I didn’t believe it either. But the answers to your questions are yes, yes, and yes.”

Working with an experienced HR writer

This is what I bring to my clients: awareness of the good, the bad, the ugly…and the great…when it comes to the people side of the business. I know what it is to feel like a helpless employee, and I know what it is like to be a program manager creating HR programs that govern, create, and support a great work environment.

There are many talented writers–in fact I consider many of them colleagues; however, if you want content that will engage and build trust with your HR buyer audience, working with an HR writer who brings years of real-world HR experience is essential. The right writer helps you establish credibility and build trust.

And believe me, in the world of HR–credibility and trust mean everything.

 

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Entice trade show booth visitors via social

If you want to make an impact with your HR trade show booth, you need a solid strategy. In a previous post, I highlighted the steps that Archbright, an HR services provider based in Seattle, used to make their trade show booth stand out at the Lake Washington HR Association (LWHRA) Annual conference. Three steps to a successful HR trade show booth include:

  1. Use a current trend to draw in your audience.
  2. Entice visitors via social channels prior to the conference.
  3. Follow up after the conference to maximize your investment.

I explained step one in detail a few weeks ago. In this post, we’ll look at how to create an HR tradeshow booth strategy that uses social media to entice visitors to stop by your booth.

As I mentioned, the team at Archbright took to social to get the word out about their booth before the conference. Prior to an event, make a strategy for how often you want to socialize your attendance and what you’ll include in your social media to entice visitors to stop by. Consider these questions as you plan your approach:

What is the consistent message we want to convey about our booth via social?

One of the successes of the Archbright approach was that they had a very clear message on social: stop by our booth and color. That message drove the words they used, as well as the associated graphics. Attendees knew what to expect. The clearer you can be about what someone will experience or receive when they visit the booth, the better. They may have a long list of vendors to visit, make sure you answer the question, “Why should I visit this booth?”

In the example pictured above from O.C. Tanner, their team used a tweet one day prior to the conference to provide a visual of their booth (easier to find), an image of some of their give away items (love those buttons!), and an invite to talk to their team about #HR and #HRtech.

Pro tip: In addition to your message, look for other tweets or posts about the conference and include those as part of your strategy. Don’t rely on just your content, leverage the sense of community that comes from sharing others’ content. Find other people talking about the conference and respond. Once you’re part of the conversation, people are more likely to want to engage with you at your booth.

When do you want to start socializing your booth?

You’ll want to determine timing based on the audience, the size of the event, and the number of attendees. I’ve found that the national audience of HR professionals is very busy on Twitter. If you’re going to use Twitter for a national event, you need to plan an aggressive strategy to get noticed. A local HR audience may only get active on Twitter a few days before the event.

For a national event, a safe place to start is at least a month prior to the event, then two weeks prior, and the week prior to the event ramp up into daily posts related to the event. In tweet above, the team at Jobs In Logistics shares their booth number, as well as their message and the conference hashtag, on June 5 in preparation for #SHRM19 which began on June 23.

Pro tip: Do some homework prior to the event to gauge interest on your channels–find the conference hashtag from last year and see how many people used it, when they started using it, and how often. Use that intel to inform your strategy.

How often do you want to socialize per channel?

This study from Co-schedule has helpful information about how often to post, based on the channel. For example, they found 15+ tweets per day to be common on Twitter. Mind you, you won’t want every tweet prior to the conference to be about your booth, but this does give you an idea of the frequency. Similarly, they suggest that one post per day is the most common on LinkedIn.

As you build your strategy, consider the time it takes to create a post and an associated image, as well as schedule the post, and respond to any replies or retweets. What may seem easy on the strategy wall can actually require a significant amount of time from your team.

Pro tip: If using social to entice people to come to your booth is a new approach, be wary of jumping onto a new platform just for the conference. If you engage with the conference audience, you want to keep the momentum going–social trust is built when people see you and engage with you on that platform before, during, and after the conference.

Hopefully these three questions spark the discussions you need to create a solid HR trade show booth strategy that includes social media. Engaging with participants via social offers a powerful way to build a sense of connection before they’ve even reached your aisle.

Check back next week when I’ll be offering tips for how to follow up after the conference to maximize your investment.