In this episode, Marcus Edwardes speaks with Ryan Musselman, who began his career as a recruiter for a regional credit union. For the past 16 years, he has been building content businesses across the digital realm as a senior executive.

As the Founder of Parade Studio, he creates full-service content programs for executives, recruiters, and sellers who don’t have the time to post on LinkedIn, but who do want to build a very strong personal brand with tons of original content.

Listen in as Ryan shares why working on your personal brand as a recruiter is the best way to break out of the perpetual demands of “outbound mode” and how to prep candidates for the interview in advance through a well-thought-out content strategy on LinkedIn.

Ryan stresses the importance of tailoring content around your specific customer, the secret to “stealing like an artist”, and how to use powerful tools like ChatGPT the right way to give you an edge in the market.

To Ryan, anyone can create a strong personal brand by offering snackable content on a consistent basis and engaging regularly with followers. He explains how to establish industry authority and candidate trust by creating educational content for the specific category of job seeker the recruiter is targeting.

Ryan addresses the common hurdle most recruiters face at the beginning of their brand-building journey: the intimidating thought of having to play the “long game”. He also discusses how introverts can get over the fear of putting themselves out there, and offers practical steps to putting together a powerful content strategy today.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• [01:55] Why recruiters should care about building a personal brand
• [05:56] Tailoring content around your ideal customer
• [09:43] Using ChatGPT effectively for content creation
• [10:53] Ryan’s content ideation process
• [13:25] The three components of a strong personal brand
• [17:18] Nailing your job seeker persona
• [21:06] The biggest content mistakes recruiters make on LinkedIn
• [27:45] Staying top-of-mind
• [30:23] Getting over the intimidating thought of playing the “long game”
• [39:19] Strengthening your outbound efforts
• [44:46] Write more powerful hooks using fear rather than desire
• [48:38] Ryan’s advice to introverts
• [53:23] The first three steps to creating content on LinkedIn today

Key quotes:

• “Plagiarism is copy-and-paste. Inspiration is taking ideas from a piece of content and rewriting it in your own words.”
• “You can gain followers simply by commenting really well. A comment can serve as a post.”
• “90% of your content should be give. 10% should be ask.”
• “Your outbound is strengthened when your personal brand has influence.”