Lance Glinn:

From Lake Las Vegas here in Nevada, welcome into another episode of the Inside the ICE House Podcast. Today's guest is Tina Beaty. She is the CMO of SHRM. Tina, thanks so much for joining us Inside the ICE House.

Tina Beaty:

Thanks for having me.

Lance Glinn:

So you are on a panel, and I want to start there, titled Why Everybody Needs to be a Media Company. And I think increasingly we are seeing companies understand and adapt to better echo that message, that you need to have some sort of media included. But for those who haven't, in your opinion, how should companies reshape or rethink their internal and external communications to mirror the mindset of a media company and to really integrate that into what they do?

Tina Beaty:

Well, it's all about knowing and then owning your point of view. And every company, every leadership team should already have that intrinsically figured out. They know why they exist, what they think they're there to deliver to the market. And so they need to tell that story. And the best person to tell the story is you. Don't defer to only third-party voices. You have to put your story out there consistently. You've got to build that narrative and then tell it again and again and again and again. It used to be 7-11 times before someone started to really understand your brand. Now they're saying it's upwards of 18-24 touches before someone will recognize your brand and most importantly, your brand story. We're not here for people to say like, "I've heard of that company or I've seen that logo," but they need to know what you stand for and why they should consider becoming a customer or someone loyal. And that goes for B2B and B2C. This is really universal truth about brand storytelling.

Lance Glinn:

Do you think that that rise in the number of times it takes to really have a brand stick with you is because of just the mass amounts of media that people are taking in these days?

Tina Beaty:

Oh my God, yes. And it's not even the media that we're taking in. It is every single distraction. So it is how busy we are in our daily lives, our community. Then it's the media and the news cycle that has intensified tenfold over the last few years. It is the fact that we're all carrying around computers in our pockets and we are addicted to them. You go out into a mall or a subway station and people are not standing, they're not talking to each other, they're not reading the newspaper. They've all got their face in a little screen, which means they're reading alerts and emails and everything else that's coming in there. So you have to cut through all of that at any given moment. It's a tall order.

Lance Glinn:

I've been there, done that as I take the path from New Jersey to New York and the Stock Exchange on a daily basis. Now, it's incredibly important, I think, to obviously put the audience first in content creation because that's ultimately who you want to interact with your content. That's who you want to engage with in content. More oftentimes than not, you're not creating it to have an employee like it. You're creating it to have someone who is outside of the organization like it and thus want to engage with whatever organization you are part of. You want to get to a place where it really resonates. From either a personal experience that you've had or what you've witnessed other companies do, how do you get to that place of really meaningful impact where you can change how someone thinks and how they feel?

Tina Beaty:

That is why brand storytelling is so powerful. You can truly get someone to change their behavior, their mindset, or what they're willing to consider even in a product set capacity. It really starts with why are you telling your story? Why do you think you have permission to play in that space? If you're just talking about yourself, then you're just talking to a mirror, and that's the only person, your reflection, that's going to want to listen to that story. Snoozefest. No one is stopping to be like, "Oh, that person's talking to themselves. Let me see what they're saying." No, we have to pull in other humans. We have to be willing to engage in a way that they stop their busy doomscrolling or day-to-day life and say, "Tell me more about that story. Why should I care?"

You have to know all of that. You have to know your RTBs, your reasons to believe, before you start crafting your narrative. Once you have all of those pieces, then you build the story and start to tell it externally. Although, to your point about employees, I advocate we really should remember our employees. They are one of our most important audiences. They don't just show up at work for a paycheck. They chose to work with you and for you. They are your brand ambassadors. They're a field force right there. So let's make sure we're telling our story to them too.

Lance Glinn:

So does that include employee... I'm trying to think of the right word... integration and what that media is, bringing in their ideas, bringing in their thoughts, bringing their opinions, that type of thing?

Tina Beaty:

Yeah. Communications is best when it's two-way. So the best companies are dialoguing with their employees and not just their corp comms team, but their entire employee base to get a pulse. What are they thinking and feeling? And is the story you think you're going to put out to the market resonating? Let's test it with the folks who already know you. If they have a gap in the story, then by sure the people who have never met you are going to have that same gap amplified.

Lance Glinn:

And I think to making sure that you really get your message across, it's become more and more important to have the leaders of said organizations, whether it be a small one or a Fortune 500 company have their own brands too. Obviously brands that represent the overall business and that's ultimately what they're trying to tell or the stories that they're trying to tell, but it is important for them to be out there as well. How do you at SHRM and how do you see other companies really taking advantage of that and making sure that their leaders are also not necessarily in the spotlight. They're not out there for themselves, but they're definitely putting the message out across all these various platforms.

Tina Beaty:

Well, there's one universal truth that, regardless of what industry you are or what size company you are, your buyer is going to be human until the robots totally take over.

Lance Glinn:

Sure. You say that now. And what's it going to be like in 2030?

Tina Beaty:

At the moment, your buyers are all human.

Lance Glinn:

Sure, sure, sure.

Tina Beaty:

And so as humans, as consumers, again, rather you're B2B or B2C, you want to listen to another fellow human. That's what storytelling is. Logos can put out great content, but until you actually form a relationship with someone because of their podcast or because of the thought leadership articles you're reading on LinkedIn or whatever platform they're using, you haven't really hit on the magic that can be a relationship build for then that company. So at SHRM, we have obviously a large ecosystem and a lot of content that's quite valuable. Most of our content is all data-driven. So it's big rock research reports and things like that. But what we have transitioned over the last few years is to humanize the insights and the stories behind or driven by that data.

And so we use our CEO as our main spokesperson essentially, Johnny C. Taylor Jr., who makes my job easy because he's such a great spokesperson.

Lance Glinn:

That helps for sure.

Tina Beaty:

It does help, right? Lucked out there. But we ensure that he's in front of the camera, that he is talking because he's the person, the leader of that brand, that company. And so it's not a faceless logo. It is putting him there to humanize it so people can build the relationship with the guy who's making the decisions behind closed doors. And so a company, again, of really any size can do that to find that human representation of your company ethos. Who really stands for what you believe in as an organization?

Lance Glinn:

And for SHRM, would you say that that really, having Johnny out in front of cameras really allows there to be a certain authenticity to the brand, having a human face right in front of the logo, not just the logo talking to people?

Tina Beaty:

Yeah, absolutely. And then it goes past our channels as a company that we're pushing out our content. If you want to have then someone on a podcast, you want to have someone keynote an event, an industry gathering, that's got to be a person. And so, if you've never heard of the people behind the logo, it's a weird disconnect. And so it is critical to build up... And we've just been really fortunate to be able to build up Johnny as part of our brand portfolio, but we also use our head of knowledge because you have to have different voices for the different storylines that you're looking to put out there.

Lance Glinn:

So I want to pivot to the role of AI and content creation because I think that that's something that's been talked about a lot. And I think also points to the authenticity question I just asked, obviously wanting to make sure your content is authentic. And I would think people believe that AI content might not necessarily have that same level of authenticity for obvious reasons. But I do think it has a place. So in your opinion, how do you think you can balance the need for authenticity while still taking advantage and using this technology that has shown, in just the last few years, that it can really revolutionize efficiency, your day-to-day speed and put out a good product too?

Tina Beaty:

I don't think it's about balance. And here's why, because when you think of balance, you think of a scale. And so it means that these things are going to be on opposite sides of the spectrum. I think right there, that's a falsehood. We are in a world where you use computers. People aren't turning to typewriters anymore. And so AI is here. It's embedded in everything that you're using. If you're using Grammarly to check your spelling plus the Word embedded tool, you're using AI. So AI has also become this very amorphous word or label we're applying to things, but it's here. Everyone is using it and should be using it. Now it's in the how you use it, what you do with it. And do you allow it to lead you? Which could be an instance, I think what you're talking about when it comes to the authenticity question is, did you put in the most basic prompt, you got an output from a ChatGPT or that type of tool.

Lance Glinn:

Is it whatever platform you're using?

Tina Beaty:

And then you cut and paste and you took it. There you've lost all authenticity because you allowed the tool to lead you at that point. As long as you're out in front and you are leading it, you are giving it the data, the insights, you're shaping the story, then using the tool for speed of curation of an article, that's a great usage of the tool, but the human has to use the tool, not the human is following along with the tool.

Lance Glinn:

So I want to pivot the conversation now to focus specifically on SHRM's content strategy. It's one that has, just from looking and following it, that has evolved and turned into, I think, a really powerful engine for the organization. How do you think about content today, not just as marketing, but as really a part of the overall ecosystem of a business specifically with SHRM?

Tina Beaty:

So as soon as we set our business strategy and we do it in about three-year clips, the content plan is an immediate next step. It is not, as you're saying, down the funnel and just into the content marketing hands. It is about who we are, how we articulate it, who we will articulate it to. That's business strategy around your audiences and your value prop brought right to a content strategy. So it is embraced by the entire company, which I think is one of the biggest shifts that we've gone through. It no longer is church and state and an editorial team over here or the syndication team running some ABM plays up over there. It is something that all executives embrace, all teams understand and they feel like they have an ownership of our brand story so that they can see the content touchpoints even if it is coming from a membership team or a knowledge center team member, we can all have a role to play in bringing that story out to our audiences.

Lance Glinn:

How do you balance the short-term wins aspect of content versus the long-term value? And what I mean by that is, someone can post something, let's say, I don't know, pick a platform, let's say Instagram, for example. Someone could post something on Instagram, gets X amount of likes, but that's as far as it goes. It doesn't really resonate further. And that's great. That's some engagement, that's eyes on the page, but that's really all that it is. While a long-term win is something that maybe doesn't get as many likes, but it really resonates further along the road and people come back to it and people view it more than once. How do you balance those short-term wins of wanting to get that engagement, that instant gratification type of thing versus the, "This might not get the same amount of likes, but this helps our business or has helped our business more in the long term"?

Tina Beaty:

Long-term goals all day long, which can be really hard if you feel like you're going through a dry spell of that not instant gratification, but those vanity metrics are, they're just a flash in the pan. And the worst is if you over-index on that, spend a lot of team time or resources and then six months, 12 months down the line have really nothing to show for it, that's not going to hold water for anybody. So yes, you do want a little bit of balance, but the ideal state is that the short-term wins are driving towards that longer term engagement. So it is more about the quick consumable piece of data, but then says there is a full report behind this, which has an executive summary in case you want to get into the full report.

But once you've done the executive summary, now you might be interested to read the full report and it doesn't stop there. Then there's worksheets, then there's toolkits. And so we really do look at a consumer journey to say what could someone touch or engage depending on how much time they have where we are in their discovery of a problem and/or a solution? And we want to be there offering our types of different content on the same topic wherever they need us to be whenever they need us to be. That's where we've found success.

Lance Glinn:

And then when you bring data into the picture, data is something I think that is obviously at an abundance right now more than ever before, but if it's not used in the correct way, then what good really is it? It's just numbers that are there. How do you really implement that data into SHRM's content creation strategy to make sure that you're taking it, using it the right way, and thus using it to dictate how you're doing your strategy moving forward?

Tina Beaty:

So we have data that powers our decisions. We also have what we call Research for Inc. It is data that we have gone out to the marketplace, surveyed, done qualitative, quantitative studies, and then can actually share that data out with the market to help them make a decision. So that Research for Inc. is where we really maximize our content strategy, I think. But we also know that anyone can come up with a stat. ChatGPT can give you stats at this point, and so we have to offer context to that stat. We also have to offer the insight or the human story that goes along with it. It's one thing to say X percent of CHROs do not feel like they have enough time to fully put an AI strategy together.

Okay, but how did that compare to last year at this time? What is the one thing that CHROs should do to afford themselves more time, because we all know AI is really critical? And then are there three actual steps that they can take or who could they call at SHRM to walk them through it? That kind of ecosystem around a single data point is where we have found a lot of success and people continue to turn to SHRM because we give them that context and that story.

Lance Glinn:

And how do you ensure, because the media landscape is evolving, content creation is evolving, what people want is evolving, how do you make sure you adapt with that and that SHRM's content strategy adapts and is able to adapt really at a moment's notice because things are changing really quickly and what might've worked yesterday may not work tomorrow?

Tina Beaty:

It is crazy how fast it is changing. It is a willingness to accept the data and the results. And it's hard. This is something that we've spent about the last two years really building this muscle of flexibility and agility within the teams because it's really hard when, "Wait, I just spent three months putting that entire plan together, putting all of that content together, and then we started the rollout and, oh my God, it is not landing the way that we wanted it to." Well, you could just say, "But we have a plan and we have all this content, so we're going to keep going." Or you make the harder decision to say, "Pause, stop. We have to pivot. If this is not what the audience needs or the news cycle has completely eclipsed us, we now need to go back to the drawing board and re-engineer how we can be helpful in that moment to our audiences."

And those are tough. Those are tough mornings and tough afternoons of, "But you want me to put my prized possession project in the parking lot?" And the answer is, yes, we might come back to it. So it's never in the trash can, but a lot of projects get put into the parking lot just because things are moving so fast and we can tell those real-time engagement metrics as a signal of how it might perform long-term. And so we have to go with that.

Lance Glinn:

I like that. Don't put it in the trashcan, but put it in the parking lot. Because you might need to go back to it.

Tina Beaty:

Yeah, you might need to find that car seven rows deep one day.

Lance Glinn:

Whenever that might be, you may need to go back to it. So I really like that phrase. So Tina, as we now wrap up our conversation and you look at obviously, and we've talked about the future of content creation and how it could evolve and what it could look like moving forward, for SHRM's specific content strategy, what will that look like moving forward? What does the next chapter of that look like?

Tina Beaty:

We are going to strive to be continuously relevant for our audiences. We know that they need a business decisioning partner. Content for content's sake, they can get that anywhere. So our information has to help them make an informed decision at any moment during the workday. That's what we'll be doing and why we'll be creating our content in pursuit of that.

Lance Glinn:

Tina, I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you so much for joining us Inside The ICE House.

Tina Beaty:

Thanks for having me.

Speaker 3:

That's our conversation for this week. Remember to rate, review and subscribe wherever you listen and follow us on X @ICEHousePodcast. From the New York Stock Exchange, we'll talk to you again next week Inside the ICE House.

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