Get Seen, Get Supported

Nonprofit leaders want more people to see their work, but almost none of them want to be the one posting about it. 

Saralynn Finn and I dig into what changes once you get past that resistance: story stems, a repeatable format for turning an ordinary moment into a post worth reading, and the difference between posting out of obligation and posting because something actually needs saying.

Saralynn brings a nonprofit CEO's 90-day LinkedIn experiment into it, and I bring my own inconsistent posting habits. This is a second conversation, picking up where an earlier episode on visibility left off.

Episode Highlights: 

[00:04:00] Story stems: the copy-meme format built for LinkedIn posts 
[00:10:00] Madeleine Ballard's 90-day LinkedIn pilot, and what it actually delivered 
[00:16:00] Eric's own LinkedIn burnout, and what caused it 
[00:23:00] Personal pages vs. brand pages: where ideas actually travel 
[00:29:00] Authenticity, sanitized brand voice, and what political campaigns already figured out 
[00:34:00] Why LinkedIn rewards patience: posts take three weeks to peak

Notable Quotes: 

Saralynn Finn [00:06:25]: "Story stems, posts with familiar patterns, get three times the engagement of posts that don't have a story stem." 

Saralynn Finn [00:33:20]: "This humility does not require invisibility." 

Eric Ressler [00:16:05]: "I'm feeling a little burnt out by LinkedIn right now, and it's my own fault."

Resources & Links:

• Community Health Impact Coalition — https://joinchic.org/
• Dr. Madeleine Ballard — https://www.linkedin.com/in/madeleineballard/
• The Sidebar — https://theside.bar/
• Saralynn Finn — guest's site and consulting practice.

Hosted by Eric Ressler, Founder & Creative Director of Cosmic, with co-host Jonathan Hicken, Executive Director of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center. New episodes every Tuesday.

→ Subscribe: designingtomorrow.show → Work with Cosmic: designbycosmic.com

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Thank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Why LinkedIn? It's the fastest growing platform for really anyone if you're over the age of 30.

SPEAKER_03 0:09

Which is many of us. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 0:11

I've thought about the privilege that we currently have of having LinkedIn. Imagine people who were trying to move social impact ahead in the 1800s. They would have given their left arm to be able to reach as many people with their message as we could potentially reach with just three months. We trust humans. We don't just trust someone because they have a title. And so the more that you can bring who you are to your digital persona, the more that's going to resonate.

SPEAKER_04 0:48

Sarah Lynn Finn, welcome back to Design Tomorrow and to see more studios where we record. There was more to talk about. So I thought let's do another episode.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

So much to talk about, Eric. I just have really enjoyed getting to know you over the last few years and uh especially these last couple of months as we prepared to go to the forum together. And I just really appreciated your support with the workshop that I ran at the sidebar and having you kind of chime in with your experience on LinkedIn and just in general growing your personal brand was amazing. And I'm really excited to share it with your audience here on the pod.

SPEAKER_04 1:27

Yeah. So we thank you first of all for inviting me to just like crash your awesome session and get to meet some amazing people uh in Oxford. And I do think there's more to unpack here. And so I'd like to first of all just like interview you a little bit and ask you how you came up with this point of view, this framework, this way of showing up specifically on LinkedIn, but I think this applies outside of LinkedIn too. Let's talk about that. Like, why LinkedIn?

SPEAKER_02 1:55

Absolutely. Why LinkedIn? It's the fastest growing platform for really anyone if you're over the age of 30.

SPEAKER_03 2:05

Which is many of us. Yes. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

So like we can't we can't compete with the TikToks. I I don't want to be dancing at least professionally. But you know, when I show up professionally, that's that's the place. And and there's so much opportunity. But as we were talking about, it's not all about LinkedIn, right? Yeah. It's about relationship building and it's about being willing to be visible and vulnerable. And I loved the episode that you dropped recently about visibility and really the connection that it makes to this work that we were already planning on doing, which I think was just dare I say, cosmic?

SPEAKER_04 2:47

It was a little cosmic, yeah. And what I would say is like visibility is this topic that like everyone's thinking about. So yeah, I'm excited to talk about this because we did the episode about visibility. I made a case for why it matters and how to think about it the way that I think about it, at least. And then another episode about point of view, which I think those two things, especially where I think LinkedIn comes in, is like LinkedIn, in my opinion, is the platform where if you have a really strong point of view and a differentiated one, you can get visibility. And that's, you know, always at the whim of the algorithms, and we could get into all that. But I think listeners are probably like, okay, I'm I'm interested in being visible. We know we want to do that. I'm working on developing a point of view, but like I'm scared. I'm scared to go on LinkedIn. I don't want to be vulnerable, I don't want to be public in my work. And I've I'm happy to share my experiences with that. I'm sure you've experienced that to a degree as well. Um, but let's start before we get into all that fun stuff by just talking about uh you have this concept that you call story stems, which is kind of a way, not I don't think in like fully what you should do on LinkedIn, but a nice way to get started if you're first getting into LinkedIn, but also even if you've been there for a while.

SPEAKER_02 3:57

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, kind of what I want to bring to your audience today is a few hacks to kind of make the threshold between never posting and occasionally posting feel way more achievable and you know, something that you could do on a Thursday afternoon before you wrap up your workday. Story stems is one of my favorite. I like to think of them as memes for professionals, right? We're all familiar with memes. Maybe Eric's gonna show a meme here.

SPEAKER_04 4:28

Or Edith, our editor, will show a meme.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

Maybe a meme here. We're all familiar with memes, and why memes work is because it's a format that we're familiar with, and then the creator adapts that format in some kind of novel creative way that connects to the moment, right? So maybe it's Forrest Gump sitting on that bench, and you know, it's it's something witty about something that you've been waiting to happen. We get it, we connect with it, it's understandable. And story stems are like that, but for our copy. So a lot of times people lead with a question or a pattern, right? I think our proliferation of AI LinkedIn posts has uh really leaned deeply into the pattern, but you know, it's still it's still a good story stem. And the one that I like the most is recently I met insert someone you met recently, and then what we know from that story stem, from that copy meme, is that you're going to get a post that likely celebrates the person that this person that that the poster just met.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:52

You're gonna get a human moment where they interacted, and you're probably going to get a reason why the poster is sharing that with you, their audience, of why this matters, what resonates, what's the insight here that this person gave that connects. So to me, the story stem, it's a very evidence-based um option, right? These these different options that I laid out the the insight, the pattern, I met someone. Story stems, posts with familiar patterns get three times the engagement as posts that don't have a story stem.

SPEAKER_04 6:34

Interesting. Okay, so let me let me make sure I'm understanding this correctly. So, first of all, I should just say that one of my favorite life cycles of me posting on LinkedIn was when I was very actual meme heavy in my posting, and I'm feeling like I want to bring that back. Um and they actually performed better than some of my more serious posts. Um, not totally surprising. But what I'm picking up from these story stems is that they're a hack because they kind of build in this human moment. And I think what I've noticed about I'm gonna correct you.

SPEAKER_02 7:07

Oh, go ahead. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, they're a hack because they build in something that's the audience can expect. The audience knows what they're going to get. There's a format that's a format that's familiar. And we love novelty. Novelty is what we're looking for, but it's like we want a small amount of novelty.

SPEAKER_04 7:29

Uh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 7:30

And that's what the algorithm has is kind of oriented towards, unfortunately, is giving us something in packaging that's familiar, but with just something little new.

SPEAKER_04 7:42

Yeah, I I I resonate with that. And I think there's these like cycles. Like, I spent I have spent a lot of time thinking about like what breaks through and why. And like, even just as I've been publishing for a long time, um, off of LinkedIn, on LinkedIn as well, and I I'm happy to share kind of my current, maybe not ideal state of LinkedIn posting. What I would say is that like there's it seems to be that there are these ebbs and flows of patterns, right? So you talk about story stems working and being evidence-based because there's these patterns. And what I've noticed is that like there's a certain point where I think there's some patterns that are durable that are gonna work always, right? And I think like that third example that I picked up on being the human side is maybe one of them, maybe not. But then there's these moments where the patterns get oversaturated, and there's like a new, totally novel pattern or approach that starts to break through. That's like a literally a pattern interruption. And that pattern interruption is like, oh, I noticed that, right? If I'm scrolling my LinkedIn feed or whoever it is, and all the posts look like AI slop, and then there's one that's just like some dude who's like, hey everybody, like that becomes a pattern interruption. And and so I'd be curious to hear how you think about again, like you have these hacks, these story stems that are tried and true, they're evidence-based. Like, if we're talking to listeners who are like just wanting to get started, like I love that easy on ramp, right? Yes. Um, and at a certain point, like how do you know how long to ride that and and when it might be time to think about inventing a new pattern or a new story stem?

SPEAKER_02 9:18

I think that when you have like achieved your goals for visibility, yeah, is when you start to mix it up. Um, but I think that in terms of training the algorithm on who you are and who you want to reach and who you want to be seen by, stick with like what we know works.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:41

And while you're getting comfortable with the posting and figuring out the posting cadence that actually works for your real life on top of all of your other responsibilities, I don't want to minimize the impact that posting on LinkedIn has. And in fact, I'd love to share a story from Madeline Ballard, who's uh, I think her title is executive director of community health impact coalition, a 2025 uh school awardee, among other, you know, amazing accolades and work that they've had in making it so that millions of people, all potentially billions, all around the world, have access to community health workers.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Amazing.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

I mean, she's incredible. And she was really anti-posting on LinkedIn. Yeah. And I think that her point of view is gonna resonate and sound really familiar with a lot of uh your viewers and listeners. She felt like, who am I to be posting on LinkedIn? You know, I'm a white woman, I'm leading this global organization. The people who are doing the work should be the people that are out in front, and they should be the ones that are visible. Okay, so that's a common uh one. I don't have time to do this. This is not mission-oriented. This is this is not going to move the mission forward of the organization. It's vanity, it's ego. Yeah, it feels promotional. And then there's also the what if I get it wrong?

SPEAKER_00 11:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

Which I mean, yes, sometimes we get it wrong. So everybody gets it wrong. That's like, yeah, you know, sometimes they're gonna come for you in the comments, and that's that's the risk that we take in being visible. So I don't want to discount that. But so Madeline didn't want to post on LinkedIn, and she had a comms person um who said, Hey, what if we just did a 90-day pot pilot and tried it out and saw what the results were? And she was so angry at the end of the 90-day pilot to see how successful it was in growing her organization and her personal impact.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:54

After 90 days, she said she had more inbound press inquiries than they'd ever had. Her warm introductions were getting responses. She got outreached too by a publication that she had submitted, a journal that she had submitted articles to multiple times, saying, Hey, would you be willing to write an article for us?

SPEAKER_04 12:17

Yeah, the ones I submitted. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

Of course. Um, and you know, there were funding doors opening. I mean, look, Madeline is a powerhouse. Sheik is an incredible coalition, you know, built on an amazing strategy. So I'm not gonna say that everyone who posts on LinkedIn for 90 days is going to experience these incredible results. But what if? Yeah, what could just doing it for 90 days kind of what could that impact be for you and your organization? And it doesn't have to be original, right? You're probably not a comps person. Yeah, you're probably feeling like creativity is not a thing that you have the energy for in this realm, especially if you haven't seen it deliver impact for you yet. I will tell you, once Madeline saw the impact that posting regularly and with some intention delivered, she was she's on board. And now, you know, I highly recommend that you follow her on LinkedIn if you don't already, because her posts are really great. And I mean, like, do what she's doing.

SPEAKER_04 13:30

Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is making me feel guilty that I am not running a better LinkedIn uh motion right now for myself and for Cosmic. Um, and yeah, I mean, I think all of the reasons that you outlined are common objections that I hear and that I resonate with. Um, and like I look, I love doing our show and I love having a podcast, and I love sharing ideas and getting feedback from from users, and I still cringe when I hear my voice or see myself on camera. And I like I I do uh you know, I have some worry about like being you know public in in my work, and and at the same time, like I've also felt at times that people who have that point of view, there's lots of reasons why you might come to that conclusion. Sometimes it's also like I said this in a recent episode, and it's a little bit of a contrarian take, but it's kind of like get over yourself, you're not that special. You can post on LinkedIn too. Like, you're not so special that you are like not too good, but like that you like don't deserve. It's like, no, like we need to share ideas in this space.

SPEAKER_02 14:38

Okay, so I have thought about this. I've thought about the privilege that we currently have of having LinkedIn. Yeah, imagine people who were trying to move social impact ahead in the 1800s.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

Right.

SPEAKER_02 14:51

They would have like given their left arm to be able to reach as many people with their message as we could potentially reach it with just three months.

SPEAKER_04 15:03

Huge point. Huge point. I mean, like when like it's like over yourself. Carrier pigeon is your main yeah. Hey friends, real quick before we continue today's episode. I'm Eric Ressler, founder and creative director at Cosmic. Cosmic is a creative agency purpose-built for nonprofits and mission-driven organizations. For the last 15 years, we've helped leaders like you nail your impact story and sharpen your strategy. But we're not here to just leave you with a fancy slide deck and a pat on the back. We roll up our sleeves and help you bring our ideas to life through campaigns, creative, and digital experiences. Our work together helps you earn trust, connect deeply with your supporters, and grow your fundraising and your impact. If you value the thinking we share here and want it applied to your biggest challenges, let's talk at designbycosmic.com. All right, back to today's conversation. So here, let me let me reflect back some thoughts in real time because like I'm gonna just come out with a an honest statement. I'm feeling a little burnt out by LinkedIn right now. And and it's my own fault because I truly do believe that you know you can complain about the algorithm and like visibility and reach and like the incentives of of of you know these companies. The attention economy, the attention economy in general, all of that. And you know, at some level, like I I believe there are real problems that need to be solved there. And at the same time, like it is such a gift if you approach it with the right intentions. And and there was a moment in time where I I had this real focus around like I'm gonna be dedicated to posting more, to posting more regularly, to getting clear about like what my modality is gonna be for posting and my my vibe, and to like learn and like get data and like work on that. And and I think there was a lot of really good lessons learned there. But if I can reflect on where I went too far and what I'm hoping to change, and when I do come back in a more meaningful way, I felt like at a certain point I was um I was posting out of obligation instead of inspiration, and I think that's what a lot of people feel like who get past the initial hump and start to say, I need to do three days a week, or like you know, this is something we hear, we heard this in our session. And and there is some, there's a kernel of truth to like cadence for sure. Um, but what I found is that when I post when I feel inspired to post, like those posts tend to do better. And like my most successful by metrics meaning like reach, engagement, resonance, inbound, like all the things you might measure to you know define success about emotion like this. The posts that I just typed out kind of like on a whim because something irked me or because I had an idea with my thumbs always perform way better than the ones that I had like a nice piece of art like pre-scheduled and posted for. So, like, what are your reflections on all of that?

SPEAKER_02 18:03

Okay, both matter, right? Yeah, like we have to do the KOL, the keeping the lights on posts that um are putting ourselves out there for the building the muscle aspect of doing the thing and getting comfortable and learning, right? Um, the only way that we learn about what works for our audience is by experimenting. So if you're not giving your comms team the room to learn and experiment, that's maybe uh a little aside. And when you do have the the zeitgeist of the moment, or you see something that you just can't let go and you want to post about it, that's amazing. Like, and that practice of writing and posting is what will remind you, oh, I have an idea, I should post that, as opposed to just talking about it with your spouse over dinner or like kvetching about it to your colleague over Slack, right? It's like we have a million ideas a day, most likely, and probably a handful of them could make great posts if we were oriented towards a channel.

SPEAKER_04 19:17

Yeah, and so let's let's break that down a little bit more because like what I'm hearing you say is that you need a little bit of both. You need some amount of structure because you use the word like practice, and I think that's a really good word. The other word I would use is muscle. Like it's like it is a muscle, and there is a certain amount of it that's just like doing the reps. A to get faster at it, so it's not as big of an impact on your schedule as an executive. Um, and B, because you'll actually make better content doing it that way.

SPEAKER_02 19:46

Um, I'm gonna add a C. Add a C C to quiet the chatter, the no in your mind, right? To give you that confidence to be like, shh.

SPEAKER_04 19:57

Yeah, totally. I mean, there's science to back that up. Like one of the practices that I've uh become familiar with is like upon waking, doing like a stream of consciousness journaling to just like get the noise out of your brain. And actually, um, I think that's a great just like hack or tip is like when you're like, what should I post about? I have a scratch pad of just like idea seeds that I that live with me in whatever you know, my Apple notes or even app that's like this might be a podcast episode or this might be a post one day. And I think that's a great way to like what usually happens is you come back to those ideas and you're like, wow, all these ideas were except that one's actually really good still. Let's do that one.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

Yeah, glad I didn't post any of those. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 20:39

But let's just break down like, do you need to post three times a week or every single day? Like, what's your point of view on that?

SPEAKER_02 20:45

Heck no.

SPEAKER_04 20:46

Yeah, okay, good. Glad to hear that. I agree, by the way.

SPEAKER_02 20:49

Yes, okay, good. I think how often can I offer my audience something that's valuable?

SPEAKER_00 20:55

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

And that's gonna vary. And it's gonna vary by season, it's gonna vary by where your organization is and its process, um, and what's going on in your personal life.

SPEAKER_04 21:05

Totally. Yeah, I think that's fair. And that gives me a little permission to be less active than I have been in the past.

SPEAKER_02 21:11

Anything that you've done that you do is better than doing nothing.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

And and that's that's a bar. And maybe eventually you want to raise the bar for yourself. But I think, you know, what who I'm speaking to is the executive director who does all of their, all of their energy goes into their program. And none of their energy really has the time to go into cultivating their identity or their reputation as a thought leader or as someone who is a connector publicly. And that's why I think the um, you know, the the encouragement of our workshop was to uplift other people's. Ideas.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 22:01

Because that is the fastest way for both of you to become visible and then get that support.

SPEAKER_04 22:09

Yeah, I love that. And one of the things I'm reflecting on as you say that is we have our spotlight series where we do interviews with social impact executive directors and leaders and on this show. And I love posting those because it's like I get to post something that's not about me. I get and the people who I choose to interview on the show are people that I'm genuinely interested in like learning from and sharing their perspective. So those posts are such a joy for me because I just like it does relieve that pressure. Um and I, you know, I have other posts that I do as well, and I have been significantly less consistent than I have in the past, and I can break down why in a little bit, but I want to also make something I think really important clear, a clear distinction between are we talking about like brand pages on LinkedIn or are we talking about personal pages? Should this be the ED? Should it be the comms director? Who should be posting in by in in like what method?

SPEAKER_02 23:02

Yeah, that's a great question. Uh so personal pages have the highest likelihood of having your ideas travel far. Um, you know, unfortunately, the brand page should be, I don't know, like an archive almost on LinkedIn. Just turn them off. I don't know what to call it. It's it's um it's not a place where you're going to get as much dynamic interaction, which is just how it works, right? We're relational beings and our algorithms can't overcome that as much as we want them to. So definitely it should be on you know your individual page. And if you have, if you and your comms team has the capacity for your comms team to do some support of this, you know, that's great. If not, go ahead and and do it on your own. And I think that both your organization's POV and your POV can exist on your page. And that differentiation is important, and your perspective on the work of your organization is ultimately what people want to be hearing. So it shouldn't just be a copy paste, Claude, can you rearrange these words for me of the post that the brand did, right? It should really be how are you connected to this post? What are you celebrating if you're sharing a post from your organization?

SPEAKER_04 24:37

I I think that makes a lot of sense. And I think that to me, the it's if it's either the algorithm or just human psychology or a combination of the two, that's the kind of stuff that I'm personally more interested in that I find myself engaging with. Is like, I don't want to see the company line. Like, that's great. If I want to learn that, I'm gonna go to your website and read it. Um, I think it's important to have a company page that is accurate and like shows that it's alive and real, that's maybe even reposting some of the staff content. That's how we run the cosmic page, probably not as consistently as we should, and the design tomorrow page. It's just like we're not investing any time or thought into those pages. Everything's coming through my personal page on LinkedIn because to your point it is a personal platform. But I think that like the stories that feel the most like raw and human, and I'm not talking about like I don't need to know everything about your personal life, overshares, or overshares, or like trauma dumping or anything like that, but just like give me the the raw, uncut stuff, right? That's just like, hey, this is what we're struggling with right now. Anyone have any tips? Like, I'd love to see more of that content in the social impact space. Hey, we had this intervention that we tried and it didn't go as well as we thought. Here's maybe why. Anyone done something similar, right? And like that's a tough thing to sell.

SPEAKER_02 26:00

Absolutely. I wish that our sector was not as allergic to admitting failure as it feels like we are.

SPEAKER_04 26:07

It's tough though, right? Because it's then like, wait, now donors are like less. Oh, are the do these guys know what they're doing? And funders, same thing. But I think that's a little bit of a trap. I don't think it's actually true that that's a problem. As long as you're smart about how you do it and again, not oversharing. Yes. Okay, so we're talking to listeners here, they're sold. They're like, yes, okay, LinkedIn is the place for me. The time thing is real, right? If you're an executive director, let's say you have a comms team, um, or even if you don't, I think this has to be original content from the ED at some level. Do you agree?

SPEAKER_02 26:41

I agree. I agree, and I think that this taps into your kind of uh point of view on having a point of view.

SPEAKER_04 26:49

Yeah, it okay. We're going real meta.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

We're going really meta. Um you have to be visible in the the letters, the characters that you're writing, in the ideas that you're sharing. And I think that it can feel like, oh, am I gonna get feedback from my board for sharing something publicly in a way that is like not exactly aligned with my organization? Of course, you're aligned with your organization. You just also are human and have your own take on this and can share your journey with this topic. You can share kind of how you see this playing out in your day-to-day, right? Being visible in this is what is, like you said, going to be like moving it forward with a broader audience than you might normally reach. And that's that's like what is going to make it so that when you know someone gives you an introduction to someone else and they go and they check out your page and they see, oh, look, this is a human, not just a title.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:02

And I I trust that, right? We trust humans. We don't just trust someone because they have a title. And so the more that you can bring who you are to your digital persona, yeah, the more that's going to resonate.

SPEAKER_04 28:17

I think that's a muscle too. And like, uh, because I feel like early in my LinkedIn posting and even early in the podcast content that we were doing, I felt this pressure, right? Of just like, I need to be an expert and I need to share expert tips. And uh more and more I think it's really about just like, hey, here's what I'm thinking about, and here's what's interesting me, and here's observations and things that I've learned, and not trying to make everything a teachable moment necessarily, unless it really is one, and I want to share that. Uh what's your take on that?

SPEAKER_02 28:50

Uh, I mean, I'm gonna use the word that I think everyone's tired of, but authenticity. Yeah, it matters, yeah, right? People can feel it instantly.

SPEAKER_04 29:01

And you can feel it when you're not being authentic. Like I've typed stuff that I'm just like, is this me? Um, and that's always a bit of a struggle, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:09

Yeah. And I think that's probably the most time-consuming part, right? Is okay, here's my idea. This is what I want to share. But then how do I bring myself, my professional self to it, my personal self to it in a way that feels authentic? But that's ultimately what thrives. And I think that the more that folks in our space can get used to this, the more we're going to make the folks in our comms teams' lives easier. Because I see so often where the personality gets sanitized out of the brand voice, or we want to work with a collaborator, an influencer, a surrogate, and the process is painful to get to a yes on messaging that feels authentic for them and that you know stays within the brand guardrails. And so the more that executives get used to what it feels like for them to show up visibly in their work, it's going to ease the way for more successful communications because we know that uh diversity in voices and kind of everyone singing in the choir at different uh levels is what is the future of communication, like successful communications.

SPEAKER_04 30:33

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And I think, like a lot of things with comms, I always feel like individual political campaigns are always a little bit of a step ahead around trends in communications, and sometimes in good ways, sometimes not in good ways. But there's been this huge, you know, sector-wide learning around, uh, especially coming out of the last election cycle, about like, hey, candidates need to be real people, they can't just be packaged versions of like the DNC. And when you see candidates winning, and you know, we'll throw out like Mandami. One of the reasons he's been so successful is because whether or not you agree with his politics, like, I believe that dude is legit. Like, I believe he cares about the things he says he cares about, and like he's bringing his whole self into his campaign. And so I think there's this again, political campaigns and political candidates always are a step ahead of social impact campaigns and comms, in my opinion, in my experience. And I'm seeing a lot more of that start to happen for social impact organizations that maybe for a long time were humming along just great. The executive director was not a household name, and uh, you know, funding was flowing, and now we're in a very different ecosystem from a media standpoint, from a digital standpoint, and from a funding standpoint. And I don't just think I don't think it's gonna fly anymore.

SPEAKER_02 31:51

Absolutely not. I am so excited to see the trend of executive directors that are really putting themselves out there and beyond just the ED, right? Um, program officers or, you know, impact uh leaders within, you know, the specific issue areas are, you know, more and more putting some energy and thoughtfulness into how they show up on behalf of their organization, but also just on half behalf of their cause.

SPEAKER_04 32:22

Yeah, 100%. I think another thing I'd like to reflect on as we like work towards wrapping this up, and this is a I'm I'm saying this out loud almost for myself at some level, but also for our listeners. I think LinkedIn especially is a platform that you kind of get into it or you you get out of it what you put into it. And so, like, you know, yes, there's trash on LinkedIn, there's AI slop on LinkedIn, there's negativity and hate on LinkedIn. It's not a perfect platform, but like what you actually interact with and what you put out into the platform is what you're gonna get back. And so, like, I've met incredible people because of like being on LinkedIn that are like dear friends of mine and colleagues and co-workers and and schemers. And um that worked because I posted, I had things that resonated, and I you know slid into their DMs and we got to actually meet and then meet in person.

SPEAKER_02 33:13

There are people out there looking for you. Yeah, they want to find you, and you need to give them a signal to find.

SPEAKER_04 33:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:21

This, you know, humility does not require invisibility.

SPEAKER_04 33:25

Yes, that's amazing. That's our episode title right there.

SPEAKER_02 33:29

So, you know, I like you're just there being your little beacon of you. Yeah. I'm thinking of like sonar, boop, yeah, boop, yeah, boop. Okay, maybe sometimes your frequency goes boop, boop, that's fine. But the LinkedIn algorithm has a longer cadence than all of the other platforms, right? Your post doesn't actually reach its maximum uh impressions or views until about three weeks.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:57

So, you know, it it takes a while to kind of get understand what signals are working, and your post has a pretty long lifespan. If you are commenting on other folks' posts or, you know, your friends are commenting on your post, that is going to extend the timeline for the reach of your post up to I've seen about two months. Yeah. Right? Some posts that come up in my feed are about two months old, and I'm always like, oh, hi. Yeah. This is actually not topically relevant to the world that we live in anymore because we're in a new war. Or, you know, or whatever tragedy is happening or something else has happened, but oh, cool. Okay, good to know. Because and then I see, oh my gosh, the comments are alive and happening. That's why this has happened. And LinkedIn absolutely uh prioritizes your profile based on your comment activity as well. So if you're afraid to get out there and be putting yourself out there at first, maybe just dip your toe into the comments.

SPEAKER_04 34:59

I think that's a great place to start and uh for the episode, I think a great place to end. Yes. Uh, Sarah Lynn, this has been awesome. We could go on forever about posting on LinkedIn, but hopefully this inspires some people. It's inspiring me to get back in the game a little bit. Awesome.

SPEAKER_02 35:13

In a way, can I offer to your to your viewers and your audience? We are doing a um like LinkedIn peer support learning kind of group that I'm leading and helping to facilitate, kind of based around our workshop that we did at the forum. Um, and hopefully Eric can like put it in the show notes or on the web page or something. And I'm happy to have your your folks jump in to kind of you know get some support on this. We've all been, you know, boosting each other's uh experiment.

SPEAKER_04 35:44

Awesome, very cool. Well, that sounds like a great way for listeners to get started. Um, but yeah, Sterlin, thank you so much. It's been awesome.

SPEAKER_02 35:50

Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 35:54

If you enjoyed today's video, please be sure to hit like and subscribe, or even leave us a comment. It really helps. Thank you. And thank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.