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Virtual Thought Leader Communities | Becca Bycott
Maintaining and growing virtual communities using technology.
An interview with Becca Bycott about her work at Fiscal Note using technology and social media to create virtual thought leader communities.
Today’s guest is Becca Bycott, the Director of Thought Leadership and Engagement at FiscalNote, a technology and media company that provides information services and software that connects the world to their governments.
Becca started her role at FiscalNote during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic working remotely and developing virtual event. These programs are tailored to give executives an exclusive and interesting experience driven by thought leadership. It allows them to interact with others across various roles and industries to identify issues and solve problems together. Also, the programs include events where speakers provide unique experiences about different issue to the virtual audience.
Creating Virtual Communities
We discuss the challenges of creating virtual communities that have a sense of togetherness that face-to-face meetings do. Afterwards, Becca shares how she helps participants to go beyond attending a meeting to making them active participants. She discusses how these personal interactions build solid relationships for years to come.
Finally, our conversation tackles common issues like Zoom fatigue. Becca explains how to move your social media away from being a one-way street of information into meaningful conversations. Plus, Becca shares some great advice for anyone looking to develop thought leadership for their company or organization.
Three Key Takeaways:
- Thought leadership aimed at executives needs to help them put the current news into a larger context. It should explain how they can be more proactive in their leadership.
- Building virtual communities for thought leadership should create a sense of belonging. In addition, it should allow people to share the ideas and problems that mean the most to them.
- Using social media to spread thought leadership is great but you need to be engaged in conversations and not just talking at your audience.
Join the Organizational Thought Leadership Newsletter to learn more about expanding thought leadership within your organization! This monthly newsletter is full of practical information, advice, and ideas to help you reach your organization’s thought leadership goals.
And if you need help developing your thought leadership, contact Thought Leadership Leverage!
Transcript
Bill Sherman Hello. You’re listening to Leveraging Thought Leadership. I’m your host, Bill Sherman. And today we’re talking about thought leadership within organizations and organizations. Thought leadership work can’t be a one way monologue to a target audience. It’s about creating the space for conversations, nurturing community, and building a movement. While that idea fits neatly into a single sentence, it really takes a lot of work to make all of the stars align. So I want to dig deeper into the effort that’s required to create conversations and build community through thought leadership. I asked Becca Bycott to join me. She’s the director of Thought, Leadership and Engagement at Fiscal Note. Before Becca dove into the world of thought leadership, she specialized in social media and communications for a number of organizations, including the U.S. Department of State. Therefore, I also planned to explore the intersection of thought, leadership and social media with Becca. Ready? Let’s begin. So Becca, welcome to the podcast.
Becca Bycott Hi, Bill. Thank you. I’m so thrilled that you’re having me on here. I appreciate it.
Bill Sherman I want to start with a question. You’re in the role of leading thought leadership for fiscal melt. What is fiscal note? Help us, help our audience understand a little bit of what the company does and then what you’re doing at fiscal note for thought leadership.
Becca Bycott Absolutely. So fiscal note is a technology platform that combines award winning journalism in the form of CQ Roll Call, which a lot of people have heard about. Along with products and services that provide access to lots and lots of data and news and analysis for all levels of government. And it’s what most people might call a lite, a late stage startup. And it’s a fantastic company based in D.C. with offices around the world. And the particular role I have here about a year ago, the chairman of the Fiscal Note Executive Institute, he founded it. And the idea is for high level executives to have a community where they can come together, attend events on pressing issues. They’re defining how companies are responding to risk and uncertainty. And he founded the institute about a year ago. He still remains the chairman and he’s now moved on to a terrific law firm. But they brought me on board in July 2020. And it was funny, Bill, I started during the pandemic working remotely. And not surprisingly, a big part of my job is developing programs that are now virtually offered as virtual events. But in my role, fiscal note has tons and tons of great companies we work with. And the idea is to give them give executives with these companies a really exclusive, interesting experience through thought leadership, both by meeting people across industries and their different roles and kind of solving problems together and defining what those issues are. And again, maybe also inviting them to events where we have interesting speakers who can provide context and unique perspectives on different issues and issues that tends to covers. We look at something called ESG, environmental, social and corporate governance and sustainability. We look at global affairs, diversity, equity and inclusion and also tech and innovation. Because we are a tech company and there are so many fascinating things happening in the tech space when it comes to government regulation and legislation. And our audience is we tend to have, like vice presidents of government affairs, senior general counsels at global companies around the world.
Bill Sherman And so you’re looking to equip them not with necessarily the latest information on policy and legislative affairs that’s going on, but getting them to think a little bit more broadly through the institute. Is that a fair summary of how the institute fits with the mission of fiscal not as a whole? Or how would you describe that?
Becca Bycott I think that’s a good way to put it, Bill. It’s more like they already know a lot of the news and, you know, recent developments. It’s more like putting it into a larger context, being more proactive in their leadership through their companies and reactive. I think when you think about, you know, news and updates that happen on a day to day basis, that’s kind of more maybe what their teams are doing and the people who are part of this institute. They’re looking for almost like a look ahead of what’s coming down the pipeline so that they’re actively ready with their companies, how they’re structured, how they’re conducting public affairs, how they’re doing, responding to litigation, and just being really well positioned to define how those issues that are coming down the pipeline are going to shape their companies and how their companies are going to present important stories about the work they’re doing and being sort of creatively nimble and responsive in that space, but with the right analytics and insights to equip them to do that well.
Bill Sherman And you’ve got a very specifically defined sort of audience, like you said, in terms of governmental affairs at these companies around the world. And my sense is at the leadership level, there’s the need to create a sense of community among these folks, because what happens is when you’re in an organization, if you’re looking at the world through your lens, there are probably only a handful of people within your organization who know what you’re talking about. Right? And so can you come together with peers? So talk to me a little bit about the community aspect that you’re approaching through the institute.
Becca Bycott Absolutely. So initially when the institute was founded, there were these incredible conversations that Dave Curran, our chairman of the institute, curated, and they were closed door after record again, where people could just sort of speak freely about the different things they were experiencing. Now, since we’ve pivoted and we’re in the pandemic, we’re trying to think of innovative and creative new ways to keep that community going. But with virtual events and some of the things that we provide, we have what we call reads. There are articles that we put together before a program happens so that if I’m a busy executive, I can glance through like 1 or 2 articles and maybe even think of questions I want to ask the speakers that are going to be a part of an FDA program. So we do things like that. We have events for our board. We have an advisory board that also is a community within the community that we’ve already created. And we also invite people to stay connected through LinkedIn. A lot of our speakers that we pull together, they’re often executives from these places that our audience is already, you know, working. For example, we’ve had a great series of programs that have involved Stephanie Childs. She’s head of global government relations for Kimberly-Clark Corporation, and she’s an incredible example of a leader in government affairs. And she uniquely came to our one of our recent events to talk about her experience with diversity, equity and inclusion, like how she brings that to what she calls lobbying with social good, like taking what she is passionate about and bringing it to her work with Kimberly-Clark, but also as a very successful black woman in industry, an area where, you know, sometimes you’re the only black woman in the room, so to speak. To your question about community, where we’re giving her a chance to tell her story and then also give other high level government affairs executives a glimpse and a personal connection to her insights of that particular topic. And I.
Bill Sherman So you pointed towards. And since we’re recording in the middle of the pandemic where, you know, in-person events and like you said, those informal dinners and get togethers where you sit down over a meal or a glass of wine and talk candidly, how are you creating the opportunities for community when people can’t break bread together, when they can’t grab a drink and speak their minds as clearly? And we’re all inside little Zoom boxes in the Brady Bunch world, right?
Becca Bycott Yeah. No, I think it’s a real challenge for a lot of people right now, whether you’re leading thought leadership or just general event planning. And I think it’s interesting. It’s kind of been an evolution just within the past nine months. Like, I think initially there was this big rush to do a lot of I don’t want to say gimmicky things, but kind of just very basic digital engagement strategies, like a pull ahead of time or, you know, getting everybody to scan a QR code and then like a word cloud popping up. And I think those are still really valuable ways to get the audience excited to be in the moment to share their personal take on things. But what I am increasingly turning to, honestly, just a general icebreaker where you ask people, you know, to tell them, tell their name, where they’re from and their favorite city in Europe that they hope to visit as soon as the pandemic is over. And that seems like such a tiny basic thing. But I think creating this sense of human connection and just getting to know people, even if it’s just through a quick icebreaker at the beginning of the event. The other thing we really try to do is, you know, we’re doing more videos actually, where we’re filming a speaker, you know, sharing their perspective on the topics that we’re doing. But not just that after the program is over. Turning to a participant who attended and asking them if they want to share their thoughts. So kind of just giving more faces and human experiences to the typical virtual event experience. We’ve also really re-energized the LinkedIn page for Institute, and that’s where we share these videos, that’s where we take polls and things like that. But just again, kind of moving beyond almost these like one off digital engagement. I don’t want to say tricks. That’s not what they are, but like really giving people a chance to talk. Another thing that’s inherent to most of our programs is we really encourage everybody to keep their camera on, to unmute themselves and ask questions. So it’s not just like streamline to a side chat, but they actually get to talk. And most of our programs are you know, the first ones I did were about 40, 50 people. So you have a small enough group where people have time to do that. But I think we want to feel human connection and we want to chime in and, you know, do a poll or whatever, but we also just want to feel present. And then our executive summary is those give people a place to review the top points from the discussion. But then after the fact, you know, just really encouraging people to stay in touch. The other key thing that we’ve done that I should definitely bring up is starting in 2021, rather than just doing a program topic here, a program topic there, we’re trying to build more continuity and community around how we present our programs. So we’re doing a thought leadership series around a specific topic. For example, we’re in the middle of wrapping up a global affairs leadership series. The first program focused on the EU U.S. transatlantic relationship, and this program we’re doing next week on February 10th features Kevin Rudd, the 26th Prime Minister of Australia. But then getting the awareness of those events together, we really encourage people, if you’ve come to this program, definitely come to the next one. But we’re specifically to just getting back to the human element. I spend a ton of time doing a lot of one on one outreach, like I see where our executives are working, obviously, but doing a deeper dive into what are they paying attention to on a place like LinkedIn in terms of what they’re responding to? Articles, they’re sharing articles. They might be publishing themselves as authors. And just really getting down to what’s on their minds. And when I send them emails about our programs, it’s not just an email blast. It’s me being like, Hey, you know, I saw that you’re really active and responding to things about this issue. I wanted to tell you, we have this program coming up. It’s also how I find speakers like I find where people are really passionate about a certain topic and I give them a space to talk to their peers about it.
Bill Sherman And I want to double click on a couple of things here because there’s a thread that’s going through what you’re talking about that I think is absolutely critical. It’s creating the space and curating the space for conversation. And by establishing that and saying, we talk about this here. I know we’re now in February of 2021, Clubhouse’s become a place where curated conversation. Has also been something that people are intrigued by and saying, how do we come together to talk about these things? I think there’s an absolute hunger of how do we have conversations when we’re not gathering in the face to face events, the dinners, the conferences, etc.? And you mentioned something that really stood out to me was. Instead of just making it presentational, getting the voice of the participants back in and weaving them into a post-event video and creating that record of the event as a conversation rather than a presentation. Because I think we all have fatigue of just seeing people talk to us at Zoom all day. We want to be present. We want to be heard as well.
Becca Bycott And, you know, you just noted something that I wanted to emphasize, and that is. So we had zoom fatigue. And then I think to supplement that, everybody was like on demand content polls, blah, blah, blah. And again, those were valuable tools that still have a place in virtual events, but shifting things even more and just getting people to share something personal about themselves as a way of introduction, asking them to show their faces if they’re comfortable doing so on a zoom when they get the invite. It’s not always this automated blast, but it’s me, somebody like me, and it’s a thought leadership position saying, Hey, I just noticed that, you know, this company happens to be doing a lot of work in this space. And I saw your update on LinkedIn that you’re working on this particular part of that project. I’d love to hear your thoughts about that. And also, we happen to have this program coming up that would maybe be a great fit if you want to talk more about this issue. But we call it, you know, that kind of I guess some people call it the white glove like high level thing. But I think it’s deeper than that. I think it’s just saying I know we’re scattered across the world right now. You’ve got a lot on your plate. There’s not a lot of breathing room between all the meetings you’re attending, virtually. How can I have a moment of human connection with you and how can I produce something through thought leadership at fiscal note that will be the right information at the right time for you. That also helps you form an emotional connection to what we’re doing and what we’re discussing.
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Bill Sherman Well, and there’s so much there. That emotional connection is essential. That’s the curatorial. You have to be passionate about creating that space because if you’re not passionate about creating the space, no one else is going to be more passionate than you are about the space, right? So you have to bring that desire and invite people in. And I think being able to say, Hey, we are human, let’s connect here. We’ve had to learn new skills of how do we be authentic, vulnerable, present real through a camera that a lot of us haven’t had to do unless we had extensive media training or film or television. Right. And so these are new skills that lead to fatigue for a lot of people and that you have to keep inviting and encouraging people to come to participate, to be present. And you talked about social media, and I know that’s partly your background as well. And there’s this really interesting intersection between the world of getting content out on social media. And then, like you said, that high touch, sort of personalized, almost version of thought leadership where you want to reach certain people and they feel like you’re in the room talking to them and reaching out to them like they’re the most important person in the world.
Becca Bycott Yes. So a big thing that I always was passionate about was social media, which I did for many years before I pivoted more into like digital engagement and marketing in general. And then finally, you know, my role at fiscal note is it’s not a one way broadcast, you know, like you see on social media accounts, just pushing things out and not encouraging that conversation, whether it’s constant links to press releases, it’s really about just getting people to talk to you and tell your story for you. And so I took that mindset a lot into this role I have now with fiscal note. If you want to combine those two things on our LinkedIn page, we actively tag people, obviously, and some of the news we share. But then if they come back and respond in a comment, they’re thrilled we feature them somehow. I’m thinking of Fun Giver. I think her name is. She’s the CEO of I think it’s like the first black owned whiskey distiller. I might. Check my facts on that. But we just shared a an article about that company. She chimed in on LinkedIn. I tried to invite her to our D-I program. We had 13. She was busy, but she just replied today saying, you know, I’m sorry I missed this. And I was thinking and I responded to her as me, you know, and I was like, Hey Von, no, no problem. Here’s the executive summary from the discussion. I’d love for you to check it out. And through even just that incremental, tiny bit of engagement, I’m now thinking, wow, how cool would it be to stay in touch with Fine. I mean, she just met me, quote unquote, on LinkedIn and sort of discovered our institute through LinkedIn. But that’s sort of a very specific example. But that’s kind of the.
Bill Sherman That’s a perfect example because one of the things that really makes the difference is if you put the white paper out there, right, and you can have the best thought leadership in the world, you can have the white paper, whatever, but it doesn’t have the personal touch and thought. Leadership often requires that personal touch, that human to human connection, where the other person feels seen for who they are and they see you or the organization for what you are and what you stand for. Right? And those moments of connection you’re looking to manufacture and thought leadership one on one, but also to equip the organization to create them more effectively.
Becca Bycott Absolutely. And I mean, this is another side effect of the pandemic, right? Like people are bombarded with information. They’re bombarded with invites to virtual events. They’re bombarded with too much social media time, whether it’s like monitoring what’s happening in the world or just, you know, doing their job of like seeing what’s happening with their companies. And you really have to take that time to just break through the noise and do something more personal and more authentic. Always like it’s just a no brainer that if you’re not really genuinely reaching out to somebody and how you conduct thought leadership, it’s not going to work. And you have to be really strategic with it too, right? Because most people who work, whether it’s in thought leadership or another aspect of working with high level executives, people’s time is so short and you have to think of a really personal, powerful way to make sure you know that you want to give them the best information possible, the best experience possible. And that’s what I try to do every day at Fiscal Note. I also should say that everyone I work with on my team has that same mindset. My supervisor, Crystal Putman Garcia, who’s our chief marketing officer, she’s a big advocate of just incredibly personal one on one outreach with all these executives I talked to. And I think that’s an element, too, just to speak to like, what do you how is this happening with digital engagement and personal community building? Like, you have to have people in your wheelhouse, in your role, who are wanting you to achieve that kind of success. They understand why you need to spend time responding to a comment on LinkedIn or researching a company so that when you talk to someone at that company’s very high level, you know exactly why you’re taking their time and attention.
Bill Sherman Well, and there this is this is sort of the paradox of social media, right? If you look from pure social media perspective, you put out a post and say it only got three likes, you’d look and you go, okay, that’s kind of a failure. We didn’t get reach. We didn’t get much engagement. But from a thought leadership perspective, if those three people are high value individuals that you were trying to reach and they engaged with a like or a comment, that may be a raging success because you’re building a relationship with someone that you’ve been trying to connect with or you’ve deepened a connection. Whereas from the standard, you know, content marketing or social media metrics, you look and go, Well, that was a waste. Don’t do that ever again. Right?
Becca Bycott Yeah. And I want to mention one other thing, and this is something I’ve gotten gradually better at in my role, but I’m now just very actively thanking everybody and sharing on my own profile on LinkedIn. Like I, I think showing gratitude and acknowledging the relationships that made something so valuable. It seems like, again, a simple household item. But I think sometimes people on social media who are and who are expressing something about thought leadership, they’re pushing things out. You know, they’re just posting, posting, posting. You really have to say, who are the real who were the people who brought this together in like a symphony of knowledge and ideas sharing? So when I, for example, shared our Diversity Equity and Inclusion program, our executive summary from that event, it was at the end of January and I was like, I’m just going to be really very real for a second. And I think I shared something about how, you know, January was such an emotional roller coaster of a month between, you know, the inauguration and what happened at the US Capitol and everything. Just like I said, it felt like a year and a month. So when I shared the executive summary, I said, you know, all this stuff has happened in January. It’s felt like a roller. Acosta, One anchor for me was being able to help support an event on diversity, equity and inclusion and these incredible speakers who joined us. And at the end of it, I think I said, you know, I’m just so grateful to have the opportunity to help play a small part in elevating these voices right now, because during the chaos of January, that felt really good. You know, it felt like meaningful, purposeful work. And I think as someone who also has got leadership, that’s like why we love it so much, right? Because it feels very heartfelt, very timely and very useful. And it’s hard to experience that in many roles. And I think it’s both the challenge and the opportunity of thought leadership.
Bill Sherman It truly is. It can be both exhausting and incredibly rewarding because part of it is you’re looking at a future that could be you’re keeping an eye on today and saying, how do we shape today into the future that collectively we want need that will be better for us, the world, our community, etc. and. Those are the things that you wake up at two in the morning and you’re still thinking about and you’re saying, Who else do I need to bring into this conversation? Either because they’re a voice that hasn’t been heard before or because they can influence and get other people to hear this message if they adopt the idea. And so there’s this process of always looking at the chessboard and saying, where next? How do we build this movement together?
Becca Bycott Yes, I think that’s really eloquently stated and it can be very tough to get those stories to line. You know, like you’re planning, for example, in the event space, like you want to have the this great blend of, of speakers right from different industries from different backgrounds. You can we’re great talking you know like sometimes somebody can be an expert in something that maybe they’re a little shy about even talking on a zoom. Although sadly I think all of us are not shy anymore about zooms because we’ve.
Bill Sherman Had to get over that real quick.
Becca Bycott But absolutely. Like it’s always it’s always an important goal for me that every event we organize for the Fiscal note Executive Institute, whatever curated conversation I’m creating, I want it to be super representative. I want it to push the envelope a little bit. Maybe somebody who someone hasn’t heard from before but is a valuable voice in that space. And the reason why, as I mentioned, the stars aligning people’s schedules, you know, is everyone who’s like partnering with you on the event, are they going to be excited about the same assortment of speakers as as you are? Luckily, you know, we’ve worked with tremendous partners on our program so far. But it’s a it’s a unique challenge for sure. Yeah. I mean, if you want to get really specific, like I want us to always try to have a woman on every, you know, program every I don’t want to say panel because I think of it more as like a online dinner party of people sitting around sharing ideas less like structured, you know, I want always to have that representation of a woman, you know, someone from an industry that we don’t normally dive into but would be really resourceful to the audience. You know, people of color. That’s important to me with the events we organize. And that’s always a goal with what we’re putting together.
Bill Sherman So you’ve now been in this role about eight, nine months.
Becca Bycott So but it’s like 2020. But who knows what day it is right now? Yeah, yeah.
Bill Sherman Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So as you’ve settled into this role, there are many people who are starting out, you know, so. They’re launching thought leadership within their own organization. Is there a tip or a piece of advice that you would give to them that you wish you had heard back in July of 2020?
Becca Bycott Yes. First of all, whatever your organizing, it has to be intrinsically aligned with the goals of your company, Right? Like what is agnostic to your company? What is relevant to the audience you’re trying to create? You can be personally passionate about a topic, but if it doesn’t work in the space I just described, it’s not serving the goals of your company. But secondly, and this is a big one and something I learned at the State Department and other places where I’ve worked. You have to be really good at building bridges across teams because part of finding out what is agnostic to your company with the thought leadership you want to create is getting to know a lot of different people across your company or organization. Taking time to do those brief meetings and really listening about what projects they’re working on. So definitely that reading and being aware of tons of things happening in your particular company or organization space. I’m obviously a super nerd on LinkedIn with how much I follow there, but I also subscribe to some terrific newsletters. I happen to love The Hustle, which is like a newsletter that is really brilliantly written, very witty and kind of silly, but it’s great, smart, quick takes on what’s happening in different industries, and I think just finding where are those places where you can kind of keep your ear to the ground on topics. But those are probably the biggest things. And then, this is another one. When you reach out to people to create your thought leadership experience, meet them where they are. Like a lot of executives find out, you know, are they zoom people? Do they prefer an old fashioned phone call? Do they want to hop on Microsoft teams? But I proactively say, you know, here’s how we could have a discussion. By the way, if this option doesn’t work, I’m happy to also do a phone call because I think, again, speaking to that exhaustion of being online all the time, a phone call can be really great.
Bill Sherman Sometimes you can actually talk while walking in away from your desk, which is so refreshing sometimes. Yeah.
Becca Bycott Yeah. And also just little things like who’s their executive assistant who manages their calendar, you know, always having them on the email. When you’re talking about logistics for an event, just being super mindful of where people exist in their day to day and how busy they are is a very important piece of advice.
Bill Sherman Yeah. So Becca, this has been a great conversation. Thank you for time to talk about the intersection of social media and thought leadership and community building. Really appreciate you stopping by.
Becca Bycott I appreciate the opportunity, Bill. It’s good to see you. Thanks so much.
Bill Sherman If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please join our LinkedIn group. Organizational Thought Leadership. It’s a professional community where thought leadership practitioners talk shop about our field. So if you’re someone who creates curates or deploys thought leadership for your organization, then please join the conversation in the organizational thought Leadership LinkedIn.
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