Do you have a case of content narcissism?

Benjamin Ard (00:28)
Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Katherine. Katherine, welcome to the show.

Katherine LeBrun (00:34)
Thank you so much for having me.

Benjamin Ard (00:35)
Yeah, Catherine, I'm excited. This is going to be a fun conversation. We were talking shortly before we recorded and I started to get off on a tangent. I was like, wait, we need to start recording before we can do this. So I am really passionate. You're passionate about this. We're going to introduce some new terminology that you have and all sorts of great stuff. So it's going to be a good episode. But before we dive in, let's get to know you. Tell us about your career and work history.

Katherine LeBrun (00:58)
Yeah, well, so I have what I've always referred to as a very eclectic marketing background. I've done a little bit of everything and actually a lot of everything at this point in my career. My experience has kind of got its kickstart in more.

larger companies. worked for Boston Consulting Group, specializing in marketing consulting, and then spent about five years at Amazon leading various marketing teams across their retail department, including a failed startup business within Amazon, which was effectively a version of Amazon's Geek Squad that didn't quite pan out. And then I moved over to Meta back when it was known as Facebook and

did product marketing for Facebook and Instagram, helping them launch their e-commerce business. So Facebook shops, Instagram shops. I did some employment branding. I led the global employment branding team at Wayfair for a stint. And then most recently I entered into the startup world and I was VP of marketing at a VC backed startup that specialized in ed tech.

So very different from the e-commerce side of the business. And in between there, I've sprinkled in a lot of marketing consulting for various companies, branding consulting, content marketing.

Benjamin Ard (02:12)
love it. Catherine, another question we'd love to ask all our guests, what do you love about content and marketing? I feel like everyone has a different answer. Would love to hear what you love about that space.

Katherine LeBrun (02:22)
so I'm a person who is very right and left brained. I, you know, major in economics and minored in English, for example. And so I love that content marketing is a blend of the creative and analytical. You can't have good content marketing without having a mix of both. And I just love how it challenges both sides and you have to flex in the both sides of your your brain.

The other thing I'm going to add a quick bonus is that marketing at its truest form helps to reduce asymmetric information. It helps to allow customers to make an informed decision, which at the end of the day should benefit both the consumer and the company selling because you'll get more happy customers because they've found the right solution for them.

Benjamin Ard (03:10)
And it's true. think your econ English major split, you're probably one of one at your university doing that. That's a pretty fun one. And I love that answer. The whole brain, you get to use all of the different parts. And I do think that that's a great part of marketing. And honestly, why there's so many different backgrounds when it comes to marketing, I think it's people who want both the art and the analytical all mixed into one. So I love that.

Katherine LeBrun (03:16)
Hahaha!

Benjamin Ard (03:35)
Catherine, we were talking before about the subject for today and you came up with this really cool term I've never heard anywhere else. And if you stole it for somewhere else, I'm going to give you full credit. It's documented. This is your term, but content narcissism and talking about that versus authentic, valuable relationship building content and how there's kind of a big contrast in kind of the content world today.

Katherine LeBrun (03:50)
Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Ard (04:01)
What do you mean by content narcissism? What does that actually mean to you?

Katherine LeBrun (04:05)
Yeah, and apologies if I, you my subconscious picked it up somewhere, but I had never heard it either until it came out of my mouth.

What I mean by content narcissism is that so many companies churn out content because they know they have to, but the content that they put out is all about themselves. It's, know, we are so pleased to announce that we have done this amazing thing or, you know, here's our happy customers. Look at that. That's all again, very focused on themselves. And in the process, they lose the customer. They lose the connection that they could make to a customer to say,

Hey, we're here actually for you, not for us. And the content we're putting out should be to benefit you, not to just pat ourselves on the back or feel good about some posts that we made or a blog article that dives deep into what we do on our half-day Fridays or something like that.

So that's what I mean when I say content narcissism is, you know, just focusing so much on yourself and thinking that others will care to read about it.

Benjamin Ard (05:08)
love that. Yeah, I think it's a great term and honestly now that you've shared that term, I can see it. Like I can kind of pick it out. I know a lot of people say, I can find chat GPT written content in a second. I feel like I could probably pick out content narcissism a little bit quicker than I could AI content. I think it's really true.

Katherine LeBrun (05:25)
Absolutely.

I actually thought about quizzing you a little and giving you a couple snippets of some narcissistic content to see if you could even guess what even what category that company operates in based on the content they put out. But I didn't want to shame anyone.

Benjamin Ard (05:30)
you

You know, we

have looked at some websites and I'll be honest after looking at their whole homepage, number one, I'm like, I have no idea what you do. But second of all, like it all is about you and it's kind of fascinating. So I'm glad you didn't bring the quiz to the table. The power of editing. may have cut it out anyways, so I think that's a good thing. So when we're looking at content narcissism, obviously we recognize it's not the right way of doing it. I don't think anyone's looked at the term narcissism and said, yeah, that's a good thing. Right.

What does authentic content look like? What in your opinion does that need to be? How can companies shift from talking about themselves to actually using content to build relationships?

Katherine LeBrun (06:21)
Yeah, it's a great question. Would authentic content...

really looks like is, and this is a term I did not make up, it has been as old as marketing itself, show, don't tell. If you are truly an expert in a certain area, which hopefully you are if you're putting out products and services and offerings that claim to solve a pain point in that area, show that passion. Talk about it. Talk about the problems that your customers

are facing and talk about all the various solutions that could be out there, not just your own. Show that you're an expert and that you have a reason that you are putting content out there. And it's a value for people to consume your content in addition to potentially one day consuming your products and offerings. The vast majority of companies I've seen, love to tell how expert they are.

so honored to have won this award, or we're so honored to be recognized, or look at our most recent press release we wrote about a new product launch we just added. That's If you show regularly and talk about the area that you have built your company around.

Then you start to become that thought leader. You start to add value to people's days as they're scrolling through their LinkedIn feeds or they're perusing, you know, Substack or something like that. then you start to build an awareness, brand awareness in the minds of your potential customers or your existing customers that you are the number one place they should go to if and when the time comes that they need a solution like yours.

Benjamin Ard (07:57)
I love that. And the saying often goes that 95 % of your market isn't actually in market at that moment. So the 5 % of people are the ones that care about the content about you, but the vast majority of people looking at your content have no desire to hear about you. They just want to build a relationship with you and learn about what you have to share and offer. I think that's really cool. When you look at it, I feel like there's a trend that's happening.

where businesses are posting less from a business account and it's coming from the employees. Does that play a role in the authenticity side of things and why are people doing that? How should we do it? Should we do it? What are your thoughts there?

Katherine LeBrun (08:38)
100 % plays a role. You know, people are so much more authentic than companies. They just are. If you think about going to a networking event, you're meeting people. You rarely go talk to the mascot of a company. Companies are these, you know, just faceless giants. And most people don't want to...

spend their time interacting with a faceless giant, but they do like to interact with people. And so, you I personally follow a number of CEOs, VPs of marketing, VPs of sales, know, whoever, VPs of products, whatever it might be. I don't follow hardly any companies, mostly because their posts are so narcissistic. If you don't work for that company, you're probably not that interested in what they have to say. I absolutely have seen that trend that

especially leaders within a company are starting to post their own content that benefits their company, but it's done in a much more raw, real, authentic way. And it conveys the passion that they have about the subject area more than the passion they have about how awesome their company is.

Benjamin Ard (09:46)
I love that. So one thing though that I think businesses kind of struggle with is they lose control when they let their employees start to publish. It maybe may not be unified as much. People may not be the incentivize to do it. At a business, how would you encourage this kind of content creation, distribution, just that mentality? How would you kind of build a culture around that kind of authentic content?

Katherine LeBrun (10:09)
That is the crux, right? It's a challenge. If you work at a company that doesn't value that, it's gonna be really hard to change that culture. best companies I've seen that do it well are the ones where the CEO or the CMO or whoever it is that...

is willing to put that content out, it's almost a self-starter. They want to do it. Whether they can do it is another question, and that's where content marketers can come in. I've ghostwritten LinkedIn posts that have done way better at my previous companies than any company post has ever done, especially at drawing in new customers and increasing engagement.

the best thing that a marketer could do to try internally, know, gain some, some support in doing this type of content marketing would be to do a couple case studies of other companies who are doing it well. Look at, know, there's, mean, the first one that comes to mind is Sam Jacobs at Pavilion, who has posted specifically about posting and how, you know, he started it as an experiment. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but

he, you know, in a year's time, can attribute an incremental several million dollars of revenue to his company based on his organic LinkedIn posts. So there's, you know, data out there that a marketer could take to their internal company and say, Hey, this is worth at least trying.

And then my second recommendation would be to start small. Start with just one person. Don't open it up and say, hey, can everyone start being an influencer on LinkedIn? Because you will lose control very quickly. But part of the authenticity comes from a bit of a lack of control. So if it seems overly engineered, it won't be that different than your company's own company account.

you might not get as many people engaged with your content if it does seem like it's just, you know, the person's a puppet.

Benjamin Ard (11:58)
Yeah, I love that. So we're running out of time. So one final question. You mentioned it when it comes to tracking. One of the main reasons I think that companies post so much about themselves is they have this weird desire and marketing teams have this where everything I do has to be trackable. Dollar in, dollar out, campaign to revenue, everything along those lines.

Content that builds relationships and just adds value really marketing to the 95 % who may not be a market One of the number one reasons people can't get buy-in is the lack of tracking How do you address that what do you track? Or do you just operate entirely off of faith when it comes to this idea of we're here to build a relationship

Katherine LeBrun (12:42)
That is a great question, especially in this day and age. I think it's a struggle. The best advice that I have that's worked for me is

actually siphon off a part of your resources, budget, time, know, headcount, whatever it might be, to kind of longer term bets and give yourself a longer timeline to track because there are lagging indicators when it comes to this type of brand building relationship building to your point about the 5 % versus best companies are cultivating

that

95 % rather than just trying to milk that 5%. And if you're not, you have to do both, right? But clearly separating it, having separate separate timelines for when you're expected to measure those will start to give you a better signal as to whether your content strategy for the authentic content is working.

well or not versus the content around, you know, kind of the narcissistic content we talked about.

Benjamin Ard (13:49)
I love that. love it. Well, Catherine, I think we could talk about this for days, but to keep these episodes short and easy for people to consume, we've run out of time. Thank you so much for the insights. I'm guessing there are going people that want to continue the conversation with you. How and where can they connect with you online?

Katherine LeBrun (14:05)
Absolutely. LinkedIn, that's everyone's favorite social platform these days. So please reach out to me on LinkedIn. And yeah, I would love to continue this conversation. I'm clearly very passionate about it.

Benjamin Ard (14:16)
I love it. And for anyone listening, all of Katherine's information will be in the show notes below so you can click and connect with her there. Katherine, again, thank you so much for the time and insights today. I really appreciate it.

Katherine LeBrun (14:27)
Thank you, Benjamin. I appreciate it as well.

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