Katie [00:00:02]:
Welcome to the AEC Marketing for Principles podcast. This show is designed as a conversation between sales and marketing principles to address trends, challenges, and best practices that are driving growth for professional service firms. Through our collection of discussions with subject matter experts, industry legends, and leaders, we aim to share thoughts and practical tips with our listeners that you can use for growing your AEC brands. Hosted by me, Katie Cash, senior vice president at SmartEgies, the AEC growth consulting firm that’s been developing smart business strategies for design and construction firms since 02/2008.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:00:42]:
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to AEC Marketing for Principles, where we talk about all things sales and marketing within the architecture, engineering, and construction industry. Today, my guest is Ethan Olkavakis. And Ethan is the content operations manager at HGA, who, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know them to be one of the most progressive and respected design firms in the country. And Ethan is passionate about breaking the mold in AEC marketing, especially when it comes to blending storytelling, content ops, and employee driven advocacy. So we’re gonna dig into something today that I feel like a lot of firms and maybe a lot of you listeners are still trying to figure out, and that is this whole concept of user generated content slash employee generated content or EGC as we like to call it in the marketing world. So we’re gonna talk about what it is, how it works, and why it might be the most human thing and the most effective thing that you can do in the world of AEC to reach both your clients and your future talent. Because at the end of the day, we are in a person to person industry.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:01:54]:
We are selling professional services and the human behind those services are so important. So, Ethan, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining me.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:02:04]:
Thank you, Katie. It’s an absolute pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me to be on.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:02:09]:
I really do wanna dig into this, Ethan, but I think first I would miss out on the opportunity of letting you share your story and what HGA is all about and what you do there, because it is pretty special. So why don’t you take a few minutes and talk a little bit about your background, how you fell into AEC and how you spend your days at HGA?
Ethan Olkovikas [00:02:30]:
Sounds good. Well, first and foremost, I’m a wicked proud New Englander.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:02:35]:
Wicked proud. You gotta throw in the accent.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:02:38]:
Have to. Although I am seasoned in the South, I like to say, so you’ll hear y’all every once in a while. But growing up, I always felt like I would work in fashion. But after grad school, I kind of stumbled into the AEC space and found a lot of happy similarities between the fields, the ways in which design could tell stories, cut the scene. And so I’ve really enjoyed my time in AEC. In past roles, I’ve been the catchall marketing person as many of us AEC marketers have been.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:03:06]:
Yep. Jack and Jills of all trade. I think we’ve all had to go through that.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:03:10]:
And it’s great. I it’s a great testing ground, and it’s given me the opportunity to work across a lot of functions from PR to social, RPs to events. And it’s just been really great to, as my LinkedIn headline says, blur the lines between marketing, advertising, and PR. Take a really integrated marketing communication approach. We’re all on the same team. Yep. And now at HGA, I’m part of a team of nearly 50 marketers across 12 of our offices. And we’re a full service architecture, engineering, interior design firm serving markets from corporate to science and tech, education, museums, and beyond.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:03:45]:
So I collaborate very closely with our digital strategy manager, content strategist, and all of our marketing colleagues to tell and amplify our stories online. A big focus as of late has been building out our paid LinkedIn campaign strategy, but I’ve always been really passionate about helping our colleagues flex their influencer muscle, which is what we’re really here to talk about today, Katie.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:04:06]:
And I just want to applaud you and your team at HGA for being somewhat early adopters. The design and construction space is not always known for being super aggressive at adopting new ideas. It astounds me how many firms I still talk to today that their website is nothing more than an online brochure, and they don’t have social media profiles. They’re not advertising. So I really do appreciate that you and your team have taken those steps forward to find the ways to remain professional, but also use the tools that are at our disposal today, like LinkedIn advertising, like some of these other tools that you see used prolifically across other industries. I can only imagine you coming from fashion that’s very fast paced, forward thinking into this world of design and construction that kind of feels like we’re stuck in the past and only wants to do things on a handshake and a napkin. Like, that’s you should hire me because I’m who I am. But, no, you gotta go get it.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:05:08]:
Let’s talk a little bit about this idea around employee generated content. I think it’s a really great idea. I think some firms are finding ways to do it, and they’re doing it really well. I think other firms want to do it, but they don’t know how to empower folks to be content creators. I think there’s people at organizations that might be going rogue in creating content on their own personal platforms that the brand could be benefiting from. So you’ve worked at lots of firms, as you mentioned, and you always kinda have this fresh and human approach. So what first got you interested in dabbling in a employee generated content strategy for HTA?
Ethan Olkovikas [00:05:51]:
Totally. I would say very early on in my architecture and design experience, the first firm I worked at, I kind of really developed the mindset that any firm can deliver a stunning project when they’re given the opportunity. So there has to be something more than just pretty pictures in your response and in your marketing. And it was clear to me that the real differentiator is your people and who a client team will be working with and how they’ll be working with them. And so at that first firm, I kind of developed an unofficial slogan that I used to guide my content creation, which was, we wanna be the architects and interior designers that you wanna have a drink with.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:06:25]:
Okay.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:06:26]:
What did we do to differentiate ourselves that made you wanna work with the people behind the projects?
Ethan Olkovikas [00:06:31]:
I think that goes a long way. At the end of the day, whether you’re selling to corporate buyers, institutional buyers, they’re really wanting to know who am I gonna be working with? Do I like them? Do I trust them? Do I wanna spend the next six, eight, twelve months, two years together? If I had to hang out with them after hours, would I want to? And so the whole concept of, hey, let’s celebrate who we are, and let’s be people that folks wanna hang out with, have a drink with. I think that really resonates with folks.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:07:03]:
Yes. Like you said, some of the products can be end to end of five year experience. So it’s really about building a team more than purchasing a service, a product or a service even.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:07:13]:
Yeah. So I’m gonna pick on my architects a little bit, and you work for them. So I think you can recognize this. But a lot of our architectural friends, they really do prioritize. And sometimes I feel like they over prioritize that perfectly polished magic hour final photo of the job. And they wanna use it everywhere. And they really lean heavy into this design, inspirational corporate speak, but it’s clearly not written for a person to consume. I think we’re observing today more and more in our space, there is starting to be a shift in showing more behind the scenes, celebrating more of the people, celebrating more of the, quote, unquote, sausage making behind that beautiful photo that does lend itself to this employee generated content strategy.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:08:04]:
But there’s so many brands that are like, oh, I don’t wanna show that. It’s not ready yet. Like, it’s not press ready yet. How can you help folks kinda get unstuck from that mindset?
Ethan Olkovikas [00:08:16]:
Yeah. That’s a good question. I have to agree. I think, traditionally, architecture marketing is really focused on the really fun, fresh renderings and that final photography. But as you said, there is so much of the story that happens before, between, and after those milestones. And there’s a ton of storytelling that can be done about the collaborative problem solving or unique relationships that a project team has built or how they engage the community that don’t necessarily require project photography or rendering. Yeah. Yeah.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:08:45]:
And it can be a good gateway into focusing on the people rather than the construction photography, you say.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:08:52]:
I think about some of the engineers whose handiwork nobody ever sees because it lives in the walls. And so absent of having some of that behind the scenes feature, nobody really knows what went into it. And I do think some of the storytelling, some of the things, the moments that are celebratory, the moments that you might look back on in your career once you’re done with that project are probably things beyond just the aesthetics. It’s about how you felt leaving that community meeting knowing that everybody got a chance to weigh in or the way you felt when you finally got the project in budget because you went through that value analysis together as a team, or how you were out on the site and you really determined, okay. This parking issue has got to be solved because we can’t be having all of this whatever happening. Like, I think a lot of that gets lost, and you can’t just tell that in one final snapshot. So finding a way to really celebrate the stickiness between idea to completion is a really nice way to kind of leverage this new type of content generation. One of the things that I see a lot of times is firms that tell me today, hey.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:10:08]:
We’re so busy. We need people more than we need projects. And the experienced person, whether they’re an architect, engineer, contractor, are probably gainfully employed right now. We hear that all the time. We’re strapped for resources. We’re trying to find someone. And then if they are approached by someone to consider a new opportunity or making a move, one of the biggest ways that kinda helps to sway them is understanding who they’d be working with. So I don’t know if you’ve seen this or not, Ethan, but just kind of a way to bring in some of that employee generated content that really does showcase day in the life.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:10:47]:
This is what it’s really like. This is roll up your sleeves moment. This is how celebrate together as a team. This is how we become that firm that people wanna go get a drink with. Maybe talk a little bit about that in the sense of building your employer brand and being a place that attracts people to be a great place to work. Yeah.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:11:06]:
I think it certainly can serve both functions in in of itself. I don’t think it’s a separate kind of employee generated content that targets recruiting efforts, but I think any kind of employee generated content that’s giving a behind the scenes look tells that story about what it means to work for your firm and can oftentimes provide a more technical perspective into some of the more innovative efforts that your people are moving forward within and that really make your firm unique. And so it can show that you trust your employees to pursue interests beyond the role and that you’re empowering them to tell those stories and to be a part of the team, but also kind of their own thought leader.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:11:49]:
I like that. So we’ve kinda talked a little bit about what this employee generated content idea is. We’ve talked about some use cases. We’ve talked about some business cases on how it helps pursued work, position the brand, help recruit. I wanna switch gears a little bit, Ethan, and I really wanna pick your brain. You’ve been doing this. So let’s talk a little bit about, like, how you build this into your overall content strategy, what you’re doing to build those kind of internal advocates for the program and so on and so forth. So we all know that sometimes it’s hard to separate the corporate brand from the people and trying to find a way to get the people to be part of the overall corporate communication structure.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:12:34]:
So how are you really doing that? Tell me what’s your playbook? What are you doing over there? Because it’s working. What are you doing?
Ethan Olkovikas [00:12:40]:
Yeah. I would say it’s really about nurturing the employees who are and really want to be advocating for your firm online. I promise if you look, there are people who already are making a name for themselves on LinkedIn and building that personal brand. So rather than mandating it or really, like, rolling out a really hard strategy for people to follow, it’s capturing that attention where it’s already been building, tapping them as internal champions for that kind of effort, and then sharing their success stories with broader firm populations to get other people interested in participating in a similar way.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:13:18]:
I love that. Like, let’s lean into who’s already doing it, because clearly they care about it. They’re doing what we want. Let’s celebrate that. I think it’s really smart of you to showcase and celebrate those victories with a broader audience because it does two things. One, it kinda shines a light on who’s doing it really well so they get a moment in the sun, but it’s also showcasing what you’re wanting others to do. And I think in our industry, when you have marketers communicating to technical staff, examples go a long way. Early in my career, I would ask my construction teams to send me photos from the job site.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:13:53]:
Well, you know what I got, Ethan? I got a bunch of punch list photos that I couldn’t use anywhere. I’m like, okay. Well, I don’t really wanna showcase all the things we did wrong and the bad installs, and it seems like our number one employee is a orange ladder that’s in every photo. But when I started showcasing things like, hey. I want more of this is really great. It shows our team, like, working together. Everybody’s got their equipment on. Like, let’s do more of that.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:14:19]:
Then I started getting more of what I wanted. So I think that’s a really good tactic that our listeners can use is lean into who’s already doing it, celebrate them, but showcase it in a way so that others know that they could do it too and kinda what you’re looking for.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:14:32]:
Yeah. Rolling up your sleeves, going out there in the field with them, helping them. This is the shot that we wanna be taking. Think about the rule of thirds. Think about maybe not facing the sun with the camera. Right?
Ethan Olkovikas [00:14:42]:
Maybe not. Think about maybe cleaning the lens first. Little thing.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:14:46]:
A little swipe of the shirt. And in my experience, I’ve really found that the best time to get the technical staff, non marketing colleagues engaged in marketing activity is when they have an idea or something that they’re really excited about, but maybe you need a little bit of help acting on it. So really making yourself known as a resource, as someone who can help them to tell those stories and being able to respond to even to messages of our team or set up a quick call to talk through some ideas or problems that they’re facing can be a great way to start the conversation when they’re eager for it.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:15:19]:
It sounds like you might have done this a time or two. Do you have any example stories you could share on how you helped your non marketing teammates get unstuck and y’all came to the solution together?
Ethan Olkovikas [00:15:32]:
I would say whether it’s as simple as who should I tag in this post about this groundbreaking event that I went to, or how do I tag on LinkedIn? Just being able to hop on a call and talk them through those sometimes simple steps that seems simple to us, but can be a barrier to a more technical staff member, builds a lot of goodwill and keeps them coming back for more, and I think helps them take you more seriously when you do maybe present on the topic of employee generated content or building strategies around that.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:16:08]:
So okay. What about a situation where you have employees like, their intention is really, really good, and they are sharing and they’re posting online through their personal profiles. But maybe they’re not tagging the company or they’re not tagging others in it, and they’re leaving opportunity out there for, say, increased in awareness or visibility. What can the marketers do to be a mentor and support agent there without being critical? It’s sensitive waters. You don’t want to stifle them from doing what they’re doing, but you wanna help them maybe do it a little bit more strategically. Some advice there.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:16:48]:
Yeah. Totally. Sometimes you’ll see a post and someone leaves that symbol in there and then make tag happen. And I think that’s okay. I think some of those beautiful imperfections can help people realize how authentic the content is, and it’s really can be a conversation starter again, or you can set up time to connect to that person or even shoot them a quick message offering to talk about recent posts on their page or not a predatory way, of course, but really thanking them for the work that they’re doing, telling them what was great about it, and offering more tips for improvements or ideas to try on the next iteration. Yeah. Rather than take that down, take that down and repost it. You wanna be thinking about what’s next.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:17:30]:
Have you ever seen scenarios where you did have to tell someone to take it down?
Ethan Olkovikas [00:17:35]:
No. But I can certainly imagine some. Of course, you do wanna be cautious around any client confidentiality concerns on a project.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:17:43]:
I know. We unfortunately had a construction client of ours who had a young professional out on a job site. It was his first job site. He was so excited about it and was really documenting his day. And from a marketer’s lens, it was fantastic. He got the job site shut down because he posted not knowing because he was young and didn’t realize it. But there were so many OSHA violations on that job site that day that they got shut down through his social media posts. And so what I’ve seen some of the other firms be really mindful of is as they start encouraging these types of programs, giving a few guidelines around what to look for and things to be concerned about.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:18:26]:
And if in doubt, who to ask to help them be a little bit more protective, but still supporting folks to be mindful of. We still want to encourage everybody to share, but, hey, maybe not showcase someone at the top of a ladder standing on a paint can trying to reach something without a hard hat or any not tied off or anything. Maybe don’t do that. Some things happen, but we don’t need to amplify all of that. So, Ethan, I think you shared with me as we were gearing up for today’s conversation. You’ve been experimenting with some tools, maybe some tools that help make this content curation a little bit easier, a little bit more organized. How’s that going? What are you doing? What are you learning? What advice do you have listeners as they’re starting to set out on this new road of content curation? And how do you keep everything organized and decide what’s been used where and all that good stuff.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:19:19]:
Definitely. One of our most powerful tools for this is employee advocacy by Sprout Social. So we use the Sprout Social publishing platform to manage our corporate content calendar, but they have a sister product called employee advocacy that allows our team to curate brand stories and create these copy and paste moments that allow employees to amplify HTA content with really the click of one or two buttons. And it’s been a great entry point that kind of helps prove the concept of sharing content on personal LinkedIn pages for the individual. And I think as people show up there more consistently, it’s been like, hey, I think I can take these training wheels off a little bit and start creating some of my own content. So it’s been great as a motivator, and then it also helps keep pages consistently active and fill the gaps between some of that employee generated content as people are getting started out there.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:20:14]:
Oh, I like that. One thing I noticed is a lot of times in my role at Smarteries, one of the things that we are often brought in to do is some audits as we’re preparing different strategies and so on and so forth. And one of the things we do a lot of are LinkedIn audits, both of the brand profiles as well as of the employees there. And one thing that I really do appreciate with the profiles, including yours, is how personal they are. You talk in first person. Like, your bio sounds just like we’re talking right now. It’s very authentic. There’s a lot of personality behind it.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:20:47]:
It makes me wanna get to know you. It makes me wanna have a conversation. And now that we are talking, it feels so real. And I think that’s carried across a lot of your individuals, and that probably comes into play a lot as you turn in these proposals and these owners are sitting there looking at the pages and they’re looking your teams up online and they’re trying to get a feel for them, and they can absorb their voice and they can start seeing what they’re talking about. And then they have active profiles because you’re enabling them with these tools. That’s really, really great. One other thing you shared with me is this whole idea, which I think is brilliant, and I think all of the AC marketers listening today, you should do this, or the principal’s listening. You should ask your marketing teams to do this.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:21:28]:
You shared with me that you started a social media office hours program. Tell me more about that. What inspired it? How are you doing it? How often are you doing it? Who comes? What are you talking about? Tell us all about it because I think it’s brilliant.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:21:43]:
Yeah. So the social media office hours, program started out of that first message I shared about being a resource to our technical staff and kind of creating a relationship with them to understand that you are someone they can come to for help with these kinds of initiatives and really formalizing that into something that we do every week. So it’s on my calendar on Thursdays from 01:30 to 02:30 Eastern. And it’s really meant to be just like a drop in style moment where people can come in with a quick question and learn from others that may be in there as well, asking other kinds of questions that might be top of mind for them too. I do bring a learning moment that’s really meant to be kind of a conversation starter that changes every week. So if someone pops in without a real specific question, we kind of have a place to start the conversation from.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:22:36]:
Okay.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:22:37]:
But it’s really open to anybody in the firm who’s interested in participating online, showing up for their personal brand and to support HGA. And it’s really a great way, again, to initiate the conversation around employee generated content to expand it and to really keep it going with individuals from across the firm.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:22:55]:
Have there been, like, conversations that you’ve had in those sessions even that maybe have been pulled forward as you’re developing other strategies for the organization, like a little incubator moments, I guess?
Ethan Olkovikas [00:23:09]:
Yeah. Definitely. And it informs some strategies for, like, more formalized training that we might wanna do during onboarding processes or ongoing principal training and has helped to establish a baseline of where we need to educate our employees on their social literacy. So it’s been a great kind of think tank for everyone involved.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:23:31]:
That’s awesome. So you’ve been doing it for how long now?
Ethan Olkovikas [00:23:35]:
We are a couple months in Okay. And looking forward to continuing to amp it up and keep it going for sure in the long run.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:23:44]:
Well, good luck with that. I think it’s really great. I know we’ve helped other firms launch internal social squads with that same intention of helping to educate and get everybody on board of this idea of social media and marketing as a team sport, and you all have a role to play. And if it helps you, it helps the firm kinda idea. And sometimes it it’s a slow role, but then you start getting some momentum, so stick with it. I’m excited to see what it looks like six months from now and who all is part of your advocacy program then. It’s a really nice way to build community, though. Some of these technical folks, just letting them know they’re not alone and not knowing how to tag or how to correctly crop a photo that they want in the social media platform is helpful.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:24:29]:
I wanna stick a little bit longer into how you’re doing things. So you’ve been doing this for a little while now. You’ve got some tools for amplification. You’ve got an internal resource. You yourself are making yourself a resource. For listeners that maybe wanna start this now, kind of this idea now, what’s the best first step for them to take?
Ethan Olkovikas [00:24:50]:
Yeah. I would say it really is taking a moment to look into your employee’s social presence, do a content assessment of where you’re at, and see if there are some of those internal champions that you can identify and partner with to prove the concept with other employees as you grow it. Really taking the time to weave it into conversations that you’re having with product teams during the RFP process, during the content development process, and then making sure that they’re engaged in not only the creation of the content or the completion of the request for proposal response, but that they’re able to support it through bigger picture storytelling and through showing up on their personal pages. Because as you said, we’re hearing that a lot of clients are kind of validating or deepening the information that’s included in our peer response by looking into individuals’ profiles.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:25:44]:
Yeah. I hear that across the board. Prolific buyers of design and construction services across North America, no matter what vertical market it is, they have information at their fingertips. We’re naive to think that they’re not doing their own research. And so making sure that you show up in their searches and that you’re representing your best professional self for those pursuits. Social media plays a big role in that. LinkedIn in particular for our space.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:26:08]:
And not just showing up professionally and polished, but showing up at all if it a blank profile is almost worse sometimes than Yeah. A little a slightly messy one.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:26:19]:
Yeah. We just want something. I wanna know that you’re real and that you’re there. I think part of your strategy that I’ve been observing and watching as an audience member is thoughtful uses through this program, through social media, where you are positioning your internal teammates for the subject matter expertise that they possess. And you’re doing that through some, what I’ll call, like, little micro thought leadership campaigns. So how do you help them do that? A lot of times, what I experience is these technical folks, they’re so super smart, but they’re not always gifted at communication. And so how do you partner with them to really celebrate that they’re super passionate about the water runoff ratio for whatever it is, something super technical, and then help them elevate using their profile as a platform to communicate those unique points of views and those ideas.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:27:17]:
Yeah. I think it’s about providing the inspiration. So to go back to having kind of examples at the ready, some internal success stories to be able to say, look how we’ve done this before, like how we partnered with other thought leaders, that you might respect within the firm, and let’s talk about how we can replicate this kind of effort for you. And then I think it’s really about collaboratively establishing a framework, giving them some soft guidelines, like you said, and then really letting them run with it.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:27:44]:
Okay.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:27:45]:
It’s not about creating the next viral post. Sometimes we wanna get that really niche content into the corners of the Internet where people will be really interested in it and take action. Yeah. And personal profiles are a great place for that because they have networks that are much more in tune with the work that they do than a larger national account that might have people following it from all spectrums of the industry.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:28:08]:
Yeah. And I think it it’s funny that you mentioned we’re not trying to create the next viral post. I mean, in our world, a viral post may have four unique engagements, but it’s the right people engaging. Right? Because we’re b to b. We’re very niche. We know exactly who our buyers are. And even when you start breaking down individual vertical markets, sure, you can have education, but then there’s k 12, and then there’s private k 12, and then there’s the elementary school, middle school, high school, and there’s charter school. There’s all these little nuances where you can super niche down.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:28:42]:
And the more and more I see is, like, the more and more specific you can get, then the stronger that community engagement is because it feels almost like cherry picked and handwritten for them versus trying to be so general that you’re trying to appeal for everybody and be the next viral TikTok trend. That’s not what we’re doing here. We’re really trying to advocate for expertise that’s for a very specific audience.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:29:08]:
Yeah. And it should spur a conversation is really the goal to incite someone to send a message or leave an insightful comment that you can follow-up with and to really get a conversation about the work started. Yeah. And that’s the kind of content that does that, converts.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:29:24]:
Let’s talk a little bit about that convert idea. So as marketers, one thing I love about AEC marketers is we’re willing to try new things, and our role is always evolving. Right? Like, we had to go from I’m gonna date myself here. But, you know, when I first came into the industry, I was doing proposals in Word and cursing at my computer when the file would crash. And then we learned InDesign, and now there’s all these automation tools. And then we started doing social media. Then we started doing email camp. We’ve been doing all of the things.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:29:53]:
But I see a lot of times firms will start something, and then they don’t really know, is the juice worth the squeeze. Like, am I getting enough ROI out of this to continue investing in it and build a team around it? Do I continue asking my technical team who’s billable to allocate time each week to doing this? So what are some KPIs you look for? Quantitative, qualitative? What are you looking for to know whether or not this is working and something that you wanna continue building your advocacy groups around?
Ethan Olkovikas [00:30:24]:
Definitely. Our employee advocacy platform has a great set of tools for tracking potential reach of stories that are curated and shared through the platform, which we include that data in our quarterly data reports. And sometimes the potential reach from the employee generated content through advocacy is almost double some of our organic impressions on our national accounts. Yeah. So that’s a really powerful metric for sure. But a lot of the KPIs in the employee generated content space are that dark social we hear about where those analytics are really separate from your firm’s page and mostly private to the individual. So it is really important to monitor employee post activity, not to police it in any way, but really to develop that qualitative understanding about what things are performing and why they’re performing well. And the most powerful k KPI, if you wanna call it one, has for me always been the anecdotes from employees who say, oh, this person at so and so networking event knew who I was when I walked in the room because they’d seen my posts on their feed.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:31:26]:
Or this person I’ve worked with for years messaged me to say they’ve loved seeing me show up more on social. And so a lot of it is that qualitative anecdotal storytelling that you hear around these efforts. But, of course, when there are analytics that you can grab onto, you should. And if you’re doing more of, like, a longer term campaign with a particular thought leader, working with them to pull the analytics from their account and kind of track performance over the last months in comparison to before and after, Their kind of thought leadership campaign can be really powerful indicators of success as well.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:31:59]:
I like that. I think sometimes we get a little too close to it and we forget all of these social media platforms. Sure. They’re social media platforms, but they make money by selling advertising. So the algorithm isn’t always in the favor of the brand. You may have 13,000 followers or whatever that number might be, but that doesn’t mean a % of those are gonna see your post when you go out as an organization. And more than that, most people, like your audience you’re trying to communicate with, those decision makers that hire and recommend design and construction firms, it’s more likely that they’re connected with your staff than they are following your company page. And so without the employee advocacy, you’re missing out on even reaching them as a whole unless you’re doing advertising, unless you’re paying to get in front of them.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:32:47]:
And so I think it’s really smart to find ways to compare. Hey. This is what the brand can do. This is what the people can do, and really understanding where the people are stronger. And I think the other piece of it is my in house marketers. They usually sit in one of two camps when it comes to social media. There’s the one side that is so thirsty for content. They don’t have anything to post.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:33:11]:
So you see these big dry spells between their posting calendars, and it’s not consistent. Or it’s just the same thing over and over again. We’re hiring. We’re hiring. We’re hiring. Or it’s the flip side where they’re a multidisciplinary firm with multiple locations and multiple vertical markets, and they have content abundance, or they’re gonna cannibalize themselves if they post everything. And so finding a way to balance it between, okay, this is really what the brand needs to say from our platforms. Platforms.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:33:39]:
This is where employee advocacy could really come in, and we can help build professional individual credibility and move forward there. I think it’s a really nice balance.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:33:48]:
Absolutely. That’s where we’re sitting these days. It was our national LinkedIn account. We have 40,000 followers from across the country that all sit in different regions, all work in different verticals. And so the content that goes there has to be able to speak to all of them or runs the risk of hitting the wrong people first and then not going very far. So employee advocacy has been a savior there and allowed us to really maximize some of that more local or market specific content and make sure that it’s going to the right people at the right times.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:34:20]:
So is there any, like, one post, one campaign, one moment that you reflect on and you’re like, okay. Yeah, this is it. This is what we’re trying to do. This is why I do what I do. I’m gonna tell everybody. I’m gonna show everybody this. Is there something that stands out in your mind?
Ethan Olkovikas [00:34:38]:
Yeah. There’s one that’s probably was, we worked on four years ago at a former firm at this point, but it remained in the back of my mind as a big motivator and guide for this employee generated content strategy. But I had been working with my manager who was a business development director to elevate their LinkedIn presence for a while. And one day, they were telling me about an opportunity they had to read to their child’s kindergarten class. And they had shown me a couple pictures, and I was like, you know what? This could be great LinkedIn content. And so I encouraged them to share the anecdote, and we worked together on a caption that was pretty personal, but tied back to the firm’s flexibility and how the hybrid work environment really enabled them to show up as a parent and an employee.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:35:21]:
Okay.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:35:21]:
And the response was outstanding. Tons of engagement and comments from across the industry. And one that really stood out to me was from a managing partner of a national brokerage firm that had shared that they had recently had the opportunity to do the same thing and how it was so meaningful. And it just really showed me that big conversations can really spur from seemingly unrelated stories and that when employees show up really authentically, it can move mountains.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:35:45]:
I’m gonna ask you this direct question. Is LinkedIn now Facebook for work where you share all of that or is it still a little bit more curated polished?
Ethan Olkovikas [00:35:57]:
Sure. I mean, it’s still curated for sure. I think you wanna tie it back to the work and you want there to be some relationship between the story that you’re telling and how you do what you do. But I think there is a little bit more flexibility in the ways in which you show up there these days, But you still wanna certainly follow a line. You see those, like, joke posts about what waiting in airport security taught me about sales, which are really, really probably irrelevant in a stretch to tie. But there are personal stories, I think, that show who you are as a professional as well.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:36:33]:
I think that’s the piece of it is it’s not work life. It’s personal. It’s we have this integration now. It’s not so much this balance and separation, but people consume content on LinkedIn seven days a week. But it’s not just for the five day work week, and people wanna understand what your life looks like. And so connecting, being able to be present and be mystery reader at school and highlight your firm’s flexibility in allowing you to do that, I think that plays really, really well. Without that context, probably not. It would be like, Okay.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:37:07]:
Cool. But I really like the way that it was framed so that it it makes sense for the platform. And I think that’s just important for marketers to remember that it’s not a say and spray across everything. Like, the posts need to coincide with the platforms and the intention and the strategies behind each of those platforms.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:37:27]:
Yeah. And that sweet spot’s gonna be different for everyone depending on the stage of the career they’re at, what exactly they do every day. And so I think that’s a decision that people have to make that’s between the professional and polished or personal kind of approach, but it should really mirror how you show up in person too. So if you’re gonna talk a little bit about your family at a networking event or in an interview and kind of set the tone that way, I think it’s totally fine and you should feel empowered to show up that way on social as well.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:37:54]:
Yeah. We want you to be your best authentic professional self. Right? You’re not two different people. You’re still your yourself. So, Ethan, this has been fun. It’s been insightful. I always love talking to a fellow marketer and talking to someone that’s doing things a little bit more progressive than others and being able to spotlight that. I’m gonna ask you one last question.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:38:14]:
For any of our listeners today that might be a little bit skeptic on whether or not they could actually pull this off in their organization, What advice do you have for them to give it a solid college try?
Ethan Olkovikas [00:38:28]:
I would say you rely on your employees to represent your firm on sites at networking events and client interviews. And this really is an extension of those efforts and it can accentuate them and really accelerate them. So I would say there’s no way to fail, save some of those more safety oriented discussions we had earlier, Katie, but play around with it, encourage your employees to have some fun in the storytelling. And I think anyone can accomplish a really robust employee advocacy program when it’s made a part of the conversation.
Ethan Olkovikas [00:39:03]:
So for all the listeners, if you wanna see what Ethan and his team are up to, make sure you check out HGA’s social media feed, give them a follow, connect with Ethan on LinkedIn to stay up to date with what he’s doing. And thank you all for tuning in and listening. And until next time, keep up with your smart marketing.
Katie [00:39:22]:
AEC Marketing for Principles is presented by SmartEgies, the AEC growth consulting firm that has been developing smart business strategies for design and construction firms since 02/2008. The show is hosted by me, Katie Cash, senior VP at Smartages. I would love to hear from you. If you have a question, a guest request, or a topic request for a future episode, send an email or a voice memo to [email protected]. And if you’re looking for past episodes, be sure to visit our podcast page at smartergies.com/podcast. We hope you’ll tell your friends and colleagues about our show and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out on future episodes. Thanks for listening.
