597. Building Trust + Credibility on LinkedIn to Attract New Corporate Partners and Donors - Brynne Krispin
9:05PM Jan 15, 2025
Speakers:
Jonathan McCoy
Becky Endicott
Brynne Krispin
Keywords:
Social media strategy
LinkedIn
community building
empathy
personal connection
nonprofit impact
video content
AI in social media
authenticity
trust and credibility
social impact leaders
engagement
storytelling
content creation
networking.
Yo, Becky, what you know? Our friend is in the house. I'm so excited she's here. Yes, so long overdue. Y'all. If you do not know Brynne Krispin, just buckle up, because this episode is gonna be so good and so true to what is happening in social media, how we can cut through the noise and really drive like engagement that we're all looking for, and new partnerships and even donors. So we're talking to the founder and CEO of cause focus, and that's focus with the K which I'm so obsessed with too. But let me tell you a little bit about Brynne. She's a social media strategist, and she spent her career really working with hundreds of different social media campaigns. I mean, she has taken us all over the map. For us, policy makers, govern, government agencies, international nonprofits, small businesses, professional athletes, music artists and various members of Congress. I feel like you got a lot of stories that we're gonna show the band. Get out of you a little bit. That's a wine on those Exactly. So she helps C suite leaders, though, ever leverage their expertise and personal perspectives to build relationships with partners, ones that they only have probably dreamed about before, but that's not possible through the power of being on social media and especially LinkedIn. She's so proud also of her Swedish ancestry, and so you might hear her talking a lot about quality over quantity, some FICA moments that afternoon coffee break and spending lots of time outdoors, which is definitely a shared connection with our friend here. And so, I mean, we're so excited for this conversation, Brynn, because to us, we're talking a lot about community building. We're talking about a lot about multiplying our impact, and we just believe and see the power of what is happening on social media. And you are going to be our guide today. Thanks for being here.
Thank you so much for having me. I've been looking forward to this for a long time, and just love both of you and everything that you've built with We Are For Good. I' m just honored to be here
All ours. Yeah, and we've got a lot of rapid mutual friends too that I know are going to be excited to see this episode dropping. But would you take us back? I mean, tell us a little bit about your story, because we're so fascinated in the journeys that people take to be able to focus and pour in on this work and impressive background, my friend, take us back to growing up and some of the formative experiences
Absolutely well, I am in the DC area. I got started my very first social media manager job was out here in DC in policy during just a really heightened political time. I was just thrown into the ring, and had to learn quickly just how to use these platforms. What are they capable of? What are they the harm, the good that comes out of them? And thankfully, was just blessed with a lot of opportunities to just run and experiment and try things out. And one of the things I started to notice, both in policy and then I was also working at a human rights organization in house out here in DC, and I started to notice that the content that really took off had two main things. One was empathy. So it came at it from more of an empathetic standpoint. And then two, it came from a personal point of view. So it was typically shared by a person with a face and a name, or if it was from the brand, we had a person with a face and a name on the content. And so I really started to just chase that and figure out, okay, what is that? Where is that going? What can we do more of with that? Which then led me to take the leap and start cost focus, where we focus primarily on building strategies for thought leaders, for subject matter experts, and using the empathetic angle in everything we do to try to bring out that human side in our social media content, nonprofit friends, impact friends. This moment was made for you, empathy slash personal connection. I mean, we have literally built a sector based on doing that authentically. So I'm really excited to just, it's such an interesting backstory. And I do want to hear about little Bren, 22 years old, in DC, navigating all of that at some point when we are off and not recording any longer. But I do, I do want to talk about this concept of building trust and credibility through your social post, because we're seeing this advent of sorted, truncated relationships where we're not physically in person as much anymore, and we're struggling with that authenticity of connection, you know, digitally. And you have figured this out, my friend, and you have figured it out on LinkedIn. And so today we're going to talk about, like, how do we attract new partners? How do we attract donors in like, really, just using what you've talked about here, this empathy and this personal connection. So let's talk about LinkedIn, because it is having a moment right now. Why do you think that LinkedIn is such a powerful platform for social impact leaders? And what kind of opportunities or do you see that exist for today's leaders?
Yeah, well, we really started to see LinkedIn take off after the pandemic, when everybody was home and we couldn't go to our happy hours anymore, we couldn't be seen visibly by our boss. So people started to turn to LinkedIn. In to say, like, Hey, I'm here. I'm doing this cool work. It still matters. But especially in the last year or two, we're seeing a boom on LinkedIn. They surpassed over a billion users. Now people are starting to experiment with this platform more, and two reasons, I think, why it's really taken off is one, they've really protected the algorithm so that it favors education and learning. So you're not going to see a lot of trending audio, trending videos. You're not going to see what the Kardashians are up to on this platform. Look at videos. So they've really done a great job, I think, of just protecting the algorithm and making sure the kind of content that takes off is the kind that is teaching people which I love, and then second, they're real people who have again, faces and names. So you have to verify that you're a person when you sign up for a LinkedIn account versus Instagram, where you get like user at 52431,
you have no personalization, yes.
So because of those two things, people are realizing like, oh, I can come to this platform. I can actually connect with real people and build relationships, and then also see in my feed content that's actually relevant to me, teaches me it adds value to my life in a way that some other social media platforms don't
so good, I mean, makes a lot of sense, because I think when you go on you you have a different experience than other social media platforms. And I'll say, I've come a long way, and because, I mean, for years, I think I had a LinkedIn profile, maybe had some of my resume on it, but it's I never viewed it as like a platform for engagement, maybe when you're trying to change jobs or something, and I think there is, if you're listening today and you haven't checked out what LinkedIn is happening, it really is like a community, like we've met some of our dearest friends in the world through LinkedIn post at this point, which is bizarre to say, but it's so true. So would you help us break down other you know, what are some of their misconceptions that people may have right now about using LinkedIn, and especially like thinking about, how could this lead to more partnerships, or more donors, or just kind of these deeper relationships,
absolutely, yeah, and I I piggyback off of that. I mean, some of my best friends now are people I met on LinkedIn in the last year or two. I built my entire business on LinkedIn like I didn't have a huge ad budget to market and or even be out in person. I'm a single mom. I'm home a lot, so I didn't have the opportunities that a lot of agency owners have. So link, I just turned to LinkedIn and really started investing in it. But we're also seeing just, I think, this trend in social media as a whole, of people wanting to dive into more meaningful content. We're starting to get tired of the brain rot content that's happening out there, and just becoming more aware of what it's doing to our minds. And so that's where I think LinkedIn has been just kind of a safe place and an encouraging place for a lot of social impact leaders, especially, to come in here and feel like, okay, these are my people. They They are here to educate, they're here to connect. They're here to better people's lives. And so that's a huge opportunity for social impact leaders to really lean into this platform right now. And Jon, you mentioned misconceptions. And one thing I see a lot when I work with social impact leaders is that they come to LinkedIn and they feel like they have to prepare to post here like they would prepare for a live interview on CNN or something. So they have like that's real. They're polished points that they can't veer from that legal has approved, and they come with their button up suit and they're ready to talk, and they have to stick to it that way. But LinkedIn is the complete opposite. People want to pull back the curtain. They want to hear your real thoughts and your real ideas, maybe the things that you wouldn't say on a live interview, or the things that you just say over coffee with somebody. So when we work with clients, we're often asking those questions just to pull that information out of them, and it can be hard, because they're trained in a way, especially these subject matter experts we work with in DC, they're trained in a way to just filter, filter, filter, but that's not what works on LinkedIn, and it's so important to just pull back the curtain and just be authentically you and share your story. And that's really what people want to connect with.
Okay, so can I double click on this for everyone who may have missed it, being a robot is not going to work on LinkedIn, holding control of your talking points and not deviating is not going to work on LinkedIn. Bringing your authentic, messy, beautiful self to LinkedIn is what's going to cut through. And frankly, I think we can all kind of tell on LinkedIn if you use talking points or if you've used chat GPT, it's pretty obvious at this point. And I, and I want to get back to this question brand that I that I think you're going to be so knowledgeable on, which is, how can people really start that process of prospecting, of connecting? How.
Can they flex LinkedIn as a way to find new partners, connect with new donors. What do you recommend and what are some steps people can start absolutely
well. First, you want to come at it from thinking about it, from what I call the three P's. So you want to clearly define your purpose, your passion and your personality, and you want to make sure any content you produce has those elements greatly integrated into your posts, your content, your conversations, that you're building and framing it that way. So if you're having a hard time coming up with those yourself, you could even just think about it of like, what do other people describe me as, and how does it fit into these categories, or just start asking friends and Jon and down some of those keywords, because it can be hard for us to get out of our own heads and describe those things for ourselves. And so once you have that kind of frame of mind, coming on to LinkedIn and treating it more like a happy hour versus just a keynote at a at a conference, so you're not on stage, you're not you don't have 30 minutes of uninterrupted time to talk about whatever you want. This is a place of community and connection, so come into it, treating it like a happy hour. You might grab a drink and talk to someone, ask them questions before you just dive in and talk about things that you're that are important to you or that you're working on, so build that relationship first. So it's really that one two punch of creating really high value, good content that's genuine to those 3p that I mentioned, and then having those conversations alongside your own post and your own content, and reaching out to people who you know could potentially move the needle forward within your organization or just help you, even if it's just a conversation, and getting advice on how a new initiative that you want to try, just asking those questions and being curious is going to go a really long way here. Okay,
Can I ask you to because as somebody that tries to have a consistent presence on LinkedIn too, I think I stare at a blank screen a lot, and you're like, What do I want to share? You know, like, how do you get people off? You have lots of ideas, lots of things going on, lots of things that you could talk about, but like, how do you really start to put some motion behind that? Of like, getting a cadence and deciding what topics that you're going to share and when, what's some framework that you would share about that?
Yeah, that's a great question, and even I have that problem, and I post three times a week, I've been doing it for almost two years, and I still get stuck. But one thing that helps me, and we try to help with our clients as well, is just thinking about the things that naturally come up in conversation in your day to day, the conversations you're having over coffee, the things that people ask you a lot in the meeting or in the board room, and how do you respond? And those are the kind of questions that, odds are, your LinkedIn audience would care about and is really curious about, too. So oftentimes they're the things that you don't even think is real advice or real expertise, because it's so second nature to you, because you are an expert, right? So when you get to that expert level,
Sometimes the ordinary things don't seem extraordinary, but for your LinkedIn audience, they are, and that can be really, really helpful. So just getting in a good habit of being aware of those questions when they come up, and approaching your content of like, Is this helpful for somebody? Is it true? Does it add value to their life, and then share it so you don't have to feel like you're on a soapbox all the time and preaching again like a like a keynote at a conference, just approaching it in a way that's like, How can I share something today that might help someone think differently or approach a problem differently from my own personal experience and thinking about it more from that frame of mind versus just I'm an expert, and I'm here to teach you, to teach the world.
Jon, do you feel better now? Do you feel the way coming off of you? You mentioned something brand and I and I want to go back to it, because I think it's really interesting. We're such fans in this community of habits and building habits consistently, because it really does help with me as someone who's ADHD. It helps keep me in alignment, keeps us grounded, but also that repetition is something that people get used to, and I want to translate this to our friends in the impact sector, because they may be dropping social posts on Mondays and Thursdays, or people may be looking for something like that, but I want to know what happened with your business when you started posting three times a week like you said. You've been doing this for two years, talk to us about the evolution that you've seen grow you as a brand, you as a business, you as a human being. Like what are some of the things that have stuck out to you. Wow. How much time do we have?
I mean, first of all, I think it helped me truly bring out my own expertise in a way that I didn't really see myself as an expert before, but just getting in the habit of getting things out of your head. Ed and out on paper or on the screen, and again, just teaching people what you have found valuable. So some, one thing I do is just try to think of what did I want to know as a 22 year old as a social media manager in DC who had no idea what I was doing and probably had way too much power at the time, just thinking through, how can I help that person who is just like knee deep, overwhelmed with all the decisions and just Yeah, trying to think about how to help that person. But then also, one thing that helped was just finding one place to record all those ideas. Because a lot of these, these post ideas, will pop into your head random, random times, like as you're picking your kids up from school, or again in a board meeting, and so just other on your phone, or if you have a laptop, or, you know, some sort of app that you can just record all those in one place and just have a rhythm every week to check that place and just see if you can at least develop one or two posts per week from those ideas has been really helpful. And I would say it took time. So it wasn't like immediately I started seeing all these new clients coming through, begging to work with us, right?
All about it,
and it still does. And I tell our clients this all the time, this is a process, especially when you're building an organic community and you want the people to come to you who you actually want to work with, it takes a lot of time to get the messaging right, to reach out to those people and start those conversations, but the habit and the rhythm of just being super clear about what's important to you, what do you want the world to know about your work, and how do you talk about it in a way that's really relatable. Adding that emotional piece in with storytelling can just really help move the needle forward, and it gives people this this really tangible way to when they reach out to you, it feels like they already know you. So I get on calls with people now who I don't have to spend a lot of time explaining what we do or how it works, they get on the call and they're like, Yeah, we saw this. We want that too. Let's get started. And so same thing with social impact leaders, with our clients, who are, you know, working all over the world, doing, solving really complex problems, and before, they were spending multiple meetings with partners trying to get them to understand, like, get a corporate decision maker to understand what's happening with a well in Indonesia, like there's a big knowledge gap. So LinkedIn has kind of helped, just like, consistently tell those stories and show the world how this works, why it's important. So that way, when they get on the call and have these meetings, there's a really strong foundation to work off of.
Yeah, I mean, I just love how it's evolved, how we like think about companies too, because employees voices like matter so much now, and it's like, you can't, you can't hide behind this veneer anymore, and to create that engagement, like really getting your team active, especially your visible fundraiser, the CEOs out there, like, is helping shift a lot of narratives, creating a ton of organic engagement. These aren't even things that you have to boost. It's just like it's naturally creating this connection. And that compounding effect is so much stronger than just trying to go through your typical company page, you know. So I think just a lot of opportunity here, and it gets me excited too, because it is a place that's generative. It's kind it's helpful, like, I think it's adding a lot of positive energy
into the world. Sorry, can I piggyback on you? I just want to say it also, I think builds so much trust, and I think that's what I was trying to get at, even with this consistency, is once you show someone who you are over and over and over again, one you're going to be a magnet, and you're going to attract like minded people who share your values, who share the things that you believe in. But if you have a heartbeat of posting over and over, people are going to be able to see that. And even if you they aren't following you, let's say you have a new prospect or a new donor that you're looking at, they could come and find you after. I mean, maybe after you connect with them, they could look at all your posts, and who you are is literally right there. So I just think in an era where we don't know who or what to trust online, this could be such a beacon of credibility, of trust. It builds your brand for yourself. It builds your brand for your organization. So, okay, stepping off my soapbox. Jon, please go ahead. I didn't mean to interrupt you.
I was. I love those, those thoughts too. I mean, Bryn, I'm just kicking it to you to say, Who do you see out there? You know, who are some examples of leaders that have shared their story and you've watched, kind of the impact and trust building just really magnify through it.
One example that comes to mind is a client that we're working with now who was in corporate America. She was working in the wash industry, which is water sanitation. I. Hygiene, and then she took the leap to start a nonprofit that helps build community led, women centered solutions for safe drinking water and sanitation all over the world. And she's just, she's amazing. Every time I talk with her, I'm like, How can I be more like you? And so I we had a unique challenge with her, because she has two different audiences that she has to keep in mind to build trust and credibility with through her content. So one was the corporate partner based in the US that she wants to work with and and really come into this work and support her. And then the other one is the communities on the ground in Indonesia and India who she, you know, she's really big on empowering the local communities and training them and letting them take ownership of these projects. So it's a unique line to balance where you have to build content that appeals to and attracts this corporate donor and corporate partner, while also, you know, positioning her as a leader who understands these communities all over the world and their cultures and and not just the the US based thought leader who's coming in to tell these communities what to do. So through her content, we've been able to kind of weave through her stories, truly being able to weave that through and showcase her expertise, while also showing how much she cares and understands the cultures where she's working. And so it's created this really great dynamic where community partners now are reaching out, saying, hey, like, can you come to our community? We'd love to hear about what what this looks like for us. But then she's also getting messages from people at like Salesforce and Coca Cola who are like, this is really cool. And we, we, we want to learn more about what what this could look like as a partnership. So a unique challenge, for sure, of like, those very different audiences, but building that trust and credibility just by her sharing. You know, this is very authentic and unique to her. It's not like we're creating this fake persona for her, but she, yeah, she is really able to shine through it and connect with these unique audiences in that way, just from sharing her stories on LinkedIn.
Wow. I mean, such a good example. And I feel like it's tenable, like we could, anybody can do this, and that's what I think is so great about LinkedIn, and we're watching it evolved. I mean, all of us who came up, I'd say We Are For Good. We came up during the pandemic, and LinkedIn was having such a moment of rebirth then. And I'm curious in your insights, since you spend so much time on this platform, how you see the platform evolving specifically for impact leaders, for Nonprofit Professionals. How do you see it growing with us? It's
a great question. There's two things that we're starting to see on LinkedIn more of so one is this big push for more video, and you all have probably seen that we dread it, but yes. So this big push for more video is, I think it's challenging leaders to find unique ways to just make direct eye contact with their audience, is what we say. So you look directly at the camera, you talk to them, have a direct conversation with them, try to create that one on one relationship in a way that a text only post has a hard time doing. It is more challenging for busy leaders to get them to sit down and record a video so fully recognize that that's also a challenge as well as an opportunity, but being able to sit down and talk to your audience is breaking through and just helping them understand who you are and what you're passionate about. The second one, of course, is AI. Of just, I think we're gonna see a bigger gap between high quality content and low quality content with how much people are using AI to develop their content. And I mean, we use AI every day. We're transparent with our clients about how we use it to my friends every day, great, amazing tool. But there are way too many people out there who are just relying on it 100% to just copy and paste directly into LinkedIn. And we all have seen that, and it's, I think we're going to get tired of it, and it's just going to become it's going to help these leaders who have true expertise and true knowledge, who can create this really beefy, wonderful content, they're gonna be able to stand out even more now, just because the platform is just gonna be filled, I think, with, unfortunately, a lot of low quality AI created content.
Yes. I mean, it's like we talk so much about storytelling and people are like, Why do you keep talking about storytelling? And it's like, this is like, something that's transcendent, you know? I mean, our ability to communicate, to find the moments that that that bring you into the story, is everything. And so I love that that can be a great disruptor still on the platform. So I think it's a call for all of us. To become better storytellers. Brian, I want to ask you for some pro tips as we start to round out. I mean, what are some of the things top of mind that you maybe see a lot of people do that you're like, hey, here's some things immediately we could take action on to maybe optimize our LinkedIn experience
absolutely so I mentioned earlier. Just record your ideas in one place. Please don't let those great ideas go off into the abyss. So record them, put them in one place. Schedule your post. You don't need to be trying to tether your schedule around when you should post, or even just what time you should be posting, like we recommend early mornings, Monday through Friday, but some posts do really well, posted in the afternoon, some on the weekend. So don't try to, like, limit yourself, just try to get into a good rhythm. Is the most important thing. I also recommend trying to add at least 10 new connections per week, which is lower compared to what a lot of lead gen experts would say. But again, we're trying to build really authentic, genuine relationships here. We're not just trying to get a mass following. So try to add 10 new people who you would either like to partner with or learn from, or just be friends with, truly, and add them every week. And then also try to hop into your platform and engage for at least 10 minutes a day. So I call this the 1010, 10 before 10am so you hop into your platform before 10am just try to do 10 minutes of engagement. Because, again, this is a platform for community and conversations, not just to post and then leave and hope for the best. You have to be engaging in those conversations. You have to be having some dialog there in order for you to start seeing some success here, yes,
no posting and ghosting. And I will also piggyback and say, when you go find those 10 connections, use that function that says, send a note, even if you don't know them. This is a way to human li Connect. We do this all the time where it's like, I really value this. I saw that we're connected to this person. I enjoyed your post about this. I can see we value a line, I mean, just whatever it is that is such a great way to have a first impression of human connection. And I have a very tactical connection that I or tactical question Bryn, that I think people are going to want to know, how do you what schedulers do you recommend? And are there any schedulers that allow you to pre tag people? Because We Are For Good. Totally wants to know that. We have not found one yet.
I have not found one yet either, and this is it's frustrating like we've been looking for the last six months, we've been testing out new tools. We've tried almost every single tool at this point. So we do a hybrid approach, where we have something called plannable, which I love, and it's very intuitive, very easy to understand. Even our clients are in here approving content, providing feedback. So I we use plannable Primarily, but then we also do some native scheduling in LinkedIn. So if there are functionalities like the tagging the individual, we'll have to do that native scheduling. So it's a bummer and it's frustrating.
It is nice to know you can schedule because I think it's a buried feature in LinkedIn. So Google this and like you'll see the steps to do it, but it is nice to have that, because then you can just hop on and engage. So I love that advice.
Well, Jon, you mentioned earlier how much we do value story on this podcast and bring you've listened to us long enough to know we want to know a story from your life of generosity, of philanthropy, kindness, whatever it is, what's a story that stays with you?
Hmm, well, the moment that came to mind for me was this shift of seeing a non profit that's local here in DC. It's called Jill's house. And I did a tour at Jill's house. It's a wonderful organization. They provide short term, overnight respite care for families raising kids with intellectual disabilities, and some of these disabilities are so complex that these parents haven't even had to have a night off or a weekend off from caring for their kid. And I'm going to get emotional, but being able to go on this tour, and it's truly like a state of the art facility. They pulled out all the stops to make sure these kids felt like it was a retreat. I mean, it felt like a spa center, truly, and just seeing how this community rallied together and provide this excellent care for these kids, so that these parents could finally just have some rest and take care of themselves, was huge. And so it was also at a time in my life where I was working for large international NGOs, and seeing the huge impact that they're making. And so it just opened my eyes to the immense power and impact of a small, hyper localized community. And just the change that they can make in these families lives like truly saving marriages and saving saving mental health crises from these parents, just by being
like, shout out to all the people over at Jill's house. Yeah,
go donate to Jill house.
It's beautiful. To hear, my friend. I mean, as we round out, what's a one good thing that you would leave with our community? It could be a secret to your success, or a habit or a mantra. What's bubbling up for you today?
Get more sleep. That is, thank you. Yes, you need more sleep. We all need more sleep. We gotta take care of our brains and our health in order to serve our communities well, and that was something I prioritized. Last year I got this aura ring. I don't know if you've heard of this, yes, the aura rings catch your sleep. I'm obsessed with it, and I feel like my productivity has gone up. I mean, I'm happier. I'm just more available for people in my life, and it's all because of sleep. So please get more sleep. That's my my takeaway. I've
been telling Jon this for almost 20 years, yes, but I am also someone who needs a lot of sleep, and I get at least seven hours a night. So thank you for saying that. I mean, Bryn, people are going to want to connect with you. They're going to want to know how to connect with your company. Maybe get some help for their social media. I mean, we were high into being a change maker and a thought leader this year, leaning into it. Where do you hang out online? Where can people connect with your business?
Please find me on LinkedIn. Of course, I'd love to get worse. Send me a message. Mention this podcast, and I'd be happy to send you a free framework I use to help you decide which thought leaders, if any, at your organization, should be posting on LinkedIn, and just a decision tree to help you kind of sort that through with your organization, to figure out if it's worth investing. And so I'd be happy to send that to you if you had me on LinkedIn, and send me a message. And then you can also go to our website, cause focus.com and that's focus with a K an
ode to that Swedish roots that we love so much. You are such a bright light, my friend. I'm so grateful that you continue to lean into this sector such wise counsel today, so we'll see you on LinkedIn.
