IAM2163 – Marketing Consultant Shares on Mastering LinkedIn in the Healthcare Market

In this episode, we have back Angela Myers, a freelance health writer and LinkedIn ghostwriter.

Angela shares her journey into entrepreneurship and how she has niched down to focus on the healthcare sector.

She discusses the importance of understanding your clients' stories and the power of storytelling in marketing.

Angela highlights her strategies for leveraging LinkedIn to generate opportunities and how she balances fiction and nonfiction reading to enhance her writing and marketing skills.

She also offers valuable advice for anyone looking to build a personal brand or business by documenting and utilizing personal and professional stories.

Website: www.angelamyerscreative.com

LinkedIn: angela-myers-creative

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Transcription:

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Angela Myers Teaser 00:00

I think something in general, if someone's ever going to work with someone like their personal brand or their marketing is you really want to make sure that person really understands who you are.

So I think I was always good at this, but I've got definitely gotten better throughout my years running my business of being able to make sure I like talk to the clients and really fully understand their story, understand the way that they speak.

Intro 00:21

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview.

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:50

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. And I have a very special guest back on the show today. I have Angela Myers. Angela, excited to have you back on the show.

Angela Myers 00:58

Yeah. Excited to be back.

Gresham Harkless 01:00

Yes. I'm so excited about all the awesome things that Angela's does.

And before we of course jumped in, I want to read a little bit more about her so you can hear some of those awesome things. And Angela is a freelance health writer and LinkedIn ghostwriter. Her work has appeared in Forbes, AARP, Physicians Weekly, among many others. Along with her writing work, she helps healthcare executives optimize their LinkedIn profiles and utilize storytelling to connect with their ideal audience.

And I love the approach. I was actually re-listening to the interview she had, who's on episode number 1420 of our I AM CEO podcast, and she has loads of great perspective, but just loads of great things that she's been able to do. I think we lucked out because we were recording. She was in Amsterdam when we were recording last time.

So super cool to hear about how she's the digital nomad and gets to make so much impact. But as an English major, she's a part of Sigma Alpha Tau. I'm a member as well, too. So always love having fellow bookworms and English majors on the show. So Angela, love everything you're doing. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Angela Myers 02:00

Yep.

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Gresham Harkless 02:01

Absolutely. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. To kick everything off. I wanted to rewind the clock here a little bit more on what you've been working on. Can you keep us updated on what I like to call your CEO story?

Angela Myers 02:10

Yeah. So I'll just do a general recap and skip a little bit more.

Focus on what I've been doing the last 2 years or so, because I think it's been about 2 years since our last conversation. But I got into entrepreneurship in the 1st place. I originally fell into it and thought it would be a great side hustle on top of working, but then. Quickly realized that my first full-time job after university that there's so much more potential to grow and learn and really take on new challenges as an entrepreneur.

And I was really attracted to that as well as the ability to be able to travel, have a little bit more lifestyle control. And so that kind of brought me to the point we were at two years ago where I was doing A mixture of writing and social media services for back then, a lot of different clients.

I actually didn't niche down and I think the advice to niche down in general is great advice. If you're 100 percent sure about what you want to do, but if you're still a little bit unsure about the niche, it's a great way to explore a little bit more. So about. A little over a year ago, I almost all my, I think about probably 80 percent of my clients then were in the healthcare space.

And I was really passionate about that space in particular. I love that space cause it's so much more about storytelling and education and really just making sure that what you're telling people is really empowering them to take control of like their health and their life. And because of that, I decided to niche down into that, which is where we're at today.

Primarily, I work with healthcare companies on blogs, case studies, white papers, SEO strategy a bit. And then I also work a little bit with healthcare executives over on LinkedIn space. And I've really been loving that work. It actually came about because I was just posting a lot on my own LinkedIn and was starting to get some traction that way.

Also starting to get some leads for the more. Content writing services. And some people just reached out to me and asked if I could help them with their LinkedIn strategy and their LinkedIn posts. So that's been another really fantastic way to be able to use my writing and bookworm skills.

Gresham Harkless 04:19

Yes. I absolutely love that. And especially like hearing your evolution, everything you've been, doing, since we last spoke, but I love that piece about niching down and, you hear so many times you should, or you shouldn't, or what that looks like. I love that you talked about that a hundred percent, but it sounds it was a process for you to get there.

It wasn't just like you started and said, I'm going to niche into this. It sounded like you were a little bit more of a generalist for lack of a better term, and then started to see that not only was it somebody and people that you could serve, but also it was a deep passion for you. It sounded like too.

Angela Myers 04:49

Yeah. And I definitely think, it depends on where you are in your career when you start your business, of course, but it can be really beneficial to have an exploratory period. I know a lot of my clients now are in the health tech space. And the first time I was approached by a company that did electronic health records that was their product.

I was like, Oh, that's really not my niche. Like I'm not a very tech person, but I just took it on anyways. And now that's one of my favorite. Types of clients to work with. And I have multiple clients who have like healthcare technology that I write for nowadays. So I think sometimes there's a lot of beauty in being able to explore with entrepreneurship and being able to explore the many different opportunities that are out there.

Cause sometimes what you really like, isn't necessarily what you think you're going to like before you try it.

Gresham Harkless 05:35

Yeah, that makes so much sense. Because I think so many times when you learn more about sometimes the looking from the outside versus being inside, you start to realize that maybe the thing that you thought you love, you don't really love as much or vice versa.

And I think they be able to have that kind of exploratory or just being open to different opportunities and trying those things out. I think it speaks a lot to you, but also to many people that might be listening to this on how they can reach their not just what we define success as, but success from your own perspective.

Angela Myers 06:03

Yeah, for sure.

Gresham Harkless 06:05

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to hear a little bit more on that, that LinkedIn part as well, too. Do you find because you were able to niche down, you were able to find that, that more opportunities started to open up, like maybe that happened as a result of that? Or was that something you were already doing before?

Angela Myers 06:19

So I niched down before I started really getting serious on LinkedIn. Yeah. I was getting a decent amount of opportunities in general, but I really saw on LinkedIn that I did this exercise. I forget where I heard it from, but it was this idea. It was definitely not my exercise, but you write down your last 20 clients and then you write down where you get them from.

And that can show you a pattern. And so I realized from that, that I was getting a lot from LinkedIn, but I've never, at that point, I had never actually created original content of my own on LinkedIn. So because of that, I decided, Oh, like there's a really big opportunity here. It's very underutilized.

I think it's really natural when you start posting on LinkedIn, it feels a little bit more vulnerable than posting on like Instagram and TikTok, which I in the past had a following on Instagram and TikTok. So I was aware of like how to do that. But because LinkedIn, it's basically everyone you've ever worked with and anyone in your professional network who you're posting for it can feel a little bit scarier.

But at first I just said, okay, I'm just going to post two times a week. See what happens. Those posts went really well. I started getting more opportunities for my primary, like writing services, as well as people asking me about LinkedIn strategy because they were really enjoying the post I was making and then very recently in May of this year, I challenged myself to just post every single weekday in May primarily to get a bigger data set for both my clients and I have what works, what doesn't work on LinkedIn.

But that's been another fantastic opportunity. And it's brought about a lot of opportunities, but another hidden benefit I think of posting content on LinkedIn is that a lot of people in calls who have never engaged in my LinkedIn content will reference something that I've written on LinkedIn. And I even got an email the other day from a potential lead who was like, Oh, I just saw your latest LinkedIn post.

It reminded me to respond back to you about this project that we were going to work on together. So it's a really good way to also just stay top of mind, even if the engagement rate is low. Is lower than it is on Instagram and Tiktok.

Gresham Harkless 08:21

Yeah, I appreciate you breaking that down. Would you consider that to be a little bit more of what I like to call your secret sauce? It could be for yourself. The business are a combination of both. But is it your ability to see that forest for the trees to understand that brand piece? Because I feel like you look at LinkedIn.

That's not just LinkedIn. You just go there and post. It's a culmination of the ability that you can share to serve and impact your client. Do you feel like you're able to see that in LinkedIn and probably other platforms and different ways that people can market their business self?

Angela Myers 08:49

Yeah, I would definitely say so.

I think something in general, if someone's ever going to work with someone like their personal brand or their marketing is you really want to make sure that person really understands who you are. So I think I was always good at this, but I've got definitely gotten better throughout my years running my business of being able to make sure I like talk to the clients and really fully understand their story, understand the way that they speak.

I'm fully invested behind their values, their mission, Because you need to have that storytelling piece. You need to have that sort of understanding from anyone you're working with on your marketing, on your branding, or else the content is just not going to land because the landscape, as in 2024 is extremely competitive.

And so you really need to have that nuanced understanding of what you're talking about or who you're representing online.

Gresham Harkless 09:38

Yeah. And that is a, being a big thing because as there's, easier ways to create more and more content, it gets noisier and noisier and noisier. So I almost feel like you have to lean into that, lean into who you are.

Ultimately you'd be able to communicate that in different ways so that you can quote unquote break through the noise and reach out to those people you want to attract.

Angela Myers 09:57

Yeah.

Gresham Harkless 09:58

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or even a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Angela Myers 10:09

Yeah. So something I've done recently that is definitely controversial and will not work for everyone, but I actually have stopped reading nonfiction books and really doubled down on how many fiction books I'm reading. I found for when I first started my business, I was like, Oh, I need to read every single business and self-development book out there.

I think it served a purpose at that point in my business. But after a while it started to make me a little bit more anxious and a little bit more influenced by other people's thoughts. And I recognize though, as a writer and as a marketer that it was really important to keep reading. So I just doubled down on my fiction reading and when I read fiction, I read it from the perspective of like, why is this working?

Why am I engaged with this? Which can then directly, not directly, but indirectly transfer over to like health writing and healthcare marketing. And so I guess that's like my secret hack is read more fiction books.

Gresham Harkless 10:59

I love that. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget, it's a little bit more word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell your favorite client, or if you hopped into a time machine, what might you tell your younger business?

Angela Myers 11:12

Yeah. So I think going off that storytelling element a really good exercise that I would recommend to anyone who's looking to grow either a personal brand or their business's brand do is sit down and write a bunch of different stories from your life.

They don't necessarily have to be. related to business, but it could be things that you just feel like make you, you. So for example, if you were doing like a healthcare business, it could also be the story of how you started to lift, or it could be the story of how you got certified to be a yoga teacher.

But write down those stories. You can make a list a personal stories and then maybe a personal story. Business stories of different wins that you had, even different losses that you had throughout your professional career. And then keep those stories either like on notion, on a Google doc, on something that you can refer back to.

Having those stories written down is going to make writing that content more engaging. More easier because you can just look at this list and let's say, for example, you want to write a post about your business's newest feature. You can go back to that list and see is there something here, like a story that I have written down that I could connect to that feature in a LinkedIn post or on a blog post.

And so it's just much easier. Cause I think sometimes with the pressure of being like, Oh, I need to tell a story and my content is a lot to deal with in the moment. So if you have something you can refer back to and its make it easier

Gresham Harkless 12:31

And I almost feel like sometimes what draws people into, LinkedIn or blogging or podcasting even, it's I need to do it this amount of times because this person did that.

And,they're successful, so I need to be successful. But that pressure is such a huge thing. I almost feel I feel like some of the things I feel like I've heard consistently from you is we sometimes want to jump into the thing that we, Should be doing but we sometimes get more value by taking a step back, whether it be writing down those stories or being able to get that space to be able to understand who we are and how we're going to show up in whatever way we hope to imagine.

Angela Myers 13:00

Yeah, that's so true. And I also think with that. If you do want to show up, for example, every single day, you should definitely reframe it. I don't think, for example, you need to show up every single day to be successful or write even a blog post every single week to necessarily be successful, depending on what your goals are.

So just reframing it. And thinking about, for example, like maybe for me, when it comes to posting every day on LinkedIn, I started posting five days a week because I wanted more data so I could figure out what worked so I could re-engineer a better solution faster to reach the right people.

And so thinking about it and reframing it that way. So instead of what should I be doing, what's, what should I do to reach my goal and how can this give me useful data that I can use to improve?

Gresham Harkless 13:42

Nice. I absolutely love that. So wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO and our goal is to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show.

So Angela, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Angela Myers 13:54

Yeah, so I think to me it means. Really being able to see, like we were talking about that big picture and being able to reflect on the direction that your business is going and being able to make start smart and strategic decisions with that. And I think also to an extent, it also means Being willing to grow and willing to try different things.

If you're truly a CEO, you're not going to be in your comfort zone for long because you're going to want to jump into the next challenge. You're going to want to jump into like the next area of growth in your life and business.

Gresham Harkless 14:28

Yeah. And that's such a huge thing, being uncomfortable. Being comfortable being uncomfortable, so to speak, is such a huge thing.

Do you feel like that's something that you've always had? Cause I think even last time we were talking as well to you, you mentioned like trying out these different things and just all these things. But I almost feel like people can get stuck in that comfort. And it, Doesn't allow them to grow.

Doesn't allow them to make the impact they ultimately want to do.

Angela Myers 14:52

Yeah, I definitely still feel very uncomfortable getting outside of my comfort zone, but like you said, I think I've been doing it almost my entire life when I was in high school, I was a debater and so I would go around the country doing like Lincoln Douglas debate.

And so every single weekend I was getting up in front of people and talking. And I think that that's, That experience really formulated in me like this desire to like, want to get outside my comfort zone or wanting to share my opinions. And so, yeah.

Gresham Harkless 15:19

Yeah. Angela, truly appreciate that. Of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know.

And of course, how best people can get a view, find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

Angela Myers 15:34

If anyone's interested in learning more about personal branding join me over on LinkedIn, I'm basically building in public right now, so I'm doing reflections on what is working and what isn't working for me which I think could be extremely valuable to anyone at any stage of their career.

I also have a website with a blog that has more content strategy-focused blog posts, which is extremely useful. Could be extremely useful to people as well.

Gresham Harkless 16:01

Absolutely. And of course, to make it even easier, we're going to have the links and information in the show notes as well, too, just to make sure everybody can, follow up with you, connect with you, do all the awesome things, but truly appreciate you for hopping back on the show.

So thank you so much for doing that and remind us how important that is.

Angela Myers 16:15

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me back on the show.

Outro 16:17

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Don't forget to schedule your complimentary digital marketing consultation at blue16media. com. This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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