Ep 82: Why Higher Ed Leaders Should Show Up on LinkedIn

LinkedIn has become one of the most valuable tools for professional networking and thought leadership, yet many higher education leaders are still using it like a bulletin board instead of a place to build relationships. In this episode of Higher Ed Conversations, GradComm CEO Cheryl Broom talks with Greg Star, entrepreneur and founder of Driven Authentic Branding Solutions (DABS), about how college leaders can use LinkedIn to strengthen their professional connections and support the institutions they serve.

Greg shares how he used his personal LinkedIn account to grow his own company, why personal posts often outperform company updates, and how college presidents, marketing directors, faculty, and development teams can use LinkedIn to share their expertise, tell meaningful stories, and communicate the value of their work. Cheryl and Greg also discuss authenticity, AI, personal branding, and why the best LinkedIn content often comes from the stories leaders are already telling in everyday conversations.

What You’ll Learn:

• How personal storytelling can strengthen a college’s brand and community presence
• Why presidents and senior leaders should be visible on LinkedIn
• How colleges can use LinkedIn to connect with donors, employers, students, and community stakeholders
• Why authenticity matters more than polished corporate messaging
• How AI tools like Claude can support writing without replacing a leader’s voice
  
  

Thanks for listening!

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Higher Ed Conversations is hosted by Cheryl Broom, CEO of GradComm, a marketing and branding agency specializing in community colleges and public education.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Announcer: Welcome to Higher Ed Conversations, the Go-to podcast for higher ed marketers sponsored by EdTech Connect. In each episode, we bring you expert insights and explore the latest trends in marketing, advancement, and student success. All with a focus on driving real results and leading the conversation is someone who's walked in your shoes with years of experience as a community college PIO, now the founder of a higher ed marketing agency and a passionate advocate for student success.

[00:00:30] Please welcome your host, Cheryl Broom.

[00:00:35] Cheryl Broom: Welcome to Higher Ed Conversations, the podcast where we explore the ideas, strategies, and stories shaping the future of higher education. I'm Cheryl Broom, your host, and CEO of GradComm. Today's episode is sponsored by EdTech Connect, a company dedicated to helping colleges discover and implement technology that supports student success, smarter operations and stronger institutional outcomes. 

And we're grateful for their support of conversations that move higher education forward. Today we're talking about something many leaders think about, but are not always completely sure how to approach, and that's how to show up online as a leader.

[00:01:16] For many of us, LinkedIn has become the coffee shop of social media. It's the place where we can have a virtual cup of coffee with almost anyone sharing ideas, learning from one another, and building relationships that might not have happened otherwise. But that opportunity also raises some questions like, what should leaders actually share?

[00:01:36] How personal is to personal and how do you maintain an authentic voice in a world where AI can generate content in seconds? My guest today is Greg Star, an entrepreneur and founder, who helps leaders tell their stories and build meaningful connections through platforms like LinkedIn. Greg believes that when leaders share their experience.

[00:01:57] Their why and the moments that shape their work, they don't just build a personal brand. They strengthen the organizations and communities they serve. Today, we'll explore what that looks like for higher education leaders, how communication teams can support authentic leadership voices and why storytelling may be one of the most powerful tools colleges have right now.

[00:02:22] Enjoy. 

[00:02:25] Well, thanks Greg so much for being on the podcast today. It's such a pleasure having you here and seeing you virtually again. 

[00:02:32] Greg Star: Thanks for having me. 

[00:02:33] Cheryl Broom: I wanted to start off with your background and telling us a little bit about on what led you to this focus on helping leaders tell their stories.

[00:02:43] Greg Star: Yeah, so I originally started a company, I co-founded a company called Carvertise. And it was putting ads on cars, essentially. And so we had the idea of for community colleges, getting students to wrap their cars for the colleges they, they attended and it worked really well. We grew the company from zero, starting out to $19 million.

[00:03:12] It's a big company and I got to know all the wonderful community college marketers and presidents out there. And I really enjoyed that. You know, a big part of growing the company was also how I start, how I used my personal LinkedIn account. 

 [00:03:29] Like I would just add all the people I met at conferences and then I would kind of post, started with like once a week, just like personal observations of growing the company.

[00:03:42] And then I noticed it had all these. All these good touch points with, you know, people I saw at the conferences. And then I started to get more new business from it. And then as the company grew, I started to use it more as a recruitment tool for other people and then to build culture. And I thought, wow, I mean, like LinkedIn is just so helpful, but why don’t more people do it?

[00:04:08] And more people don't do it because one, they don't have time. Everyone's busy. Two, they, they don't have a strategy for LinkedIn. Like, I don't like, I'll repost what the company's doing. There's a, there's a venn diagram that I like to use as a comparison is there's a circle of the company brand, and when you're just posting about the company, you sound very corporate and you don't sound very authentic.

[00:04:36] And then there's a personal brand where if you get too personal, it's kind of like. Not appropriate for LinkedIn. So what you wanna do is, is get that inter, that middle where the circles intersect, where you're building up your personal brand while building up the company and they feed off each other. So there's not really a, a strategy and it's, it's kind of a, a learned specialty.

[00:05:03] And then three, I don't think people realize what a gold mine it can be building an online brand on LinkedIn. It's not that hard. You know, the top 4% of LinkedIn creators only post once a week. So all you have to do to be in that category is just post once a week. And so I was like, okay, more people have to do this.

[00:05:30] How do we get them to do it? And the reality is it's very hard to change people's behaviors. So you'll have people say, I know I have to do more on LinkedIn. So what I do is essentially I decided, let me just take over their LinkedIn for them and write on their behalf. And that was, you know, I, I sold my interest in the last company and here I am.

[00:05:54] Cheryl Broom: Here you are. I love that this company has been founded by your own personal experience, right? You grew such a successful company and in part you did it by having, using the LinkedIn platform for what it's meant to be used to connect to people, to tell your story, to be a professional. It's the way companies should be started.

[00:06:17] Greg Star: Well, yeah you gotta walk the walk. You know, I, I've, I've been an executive, so I understand executive communications. I've also been a salesperson, so I understand the need to get new business. You know, I also went through a very personal health journey. You know, after, in 2023 I was diagnosed with brain cancer, a very rare form of it, and I kind of detailed.

[00:06:38] You know, that journey on numerous social media platforms and it struck a chord. And you know, people were like, oh, you're so brave for talking about it. I was like, one, I don't think you realize how boring chemotherapy is. Like there's just like, there was nothing else to do, but kind of write a little bit.

[00:06:57] Cheryl Broom: I only laugh because, well, it is pretty funny 'cause you think of it, it's pretty terrible to have it go through chemotherapy, but your point of view is like, no, I was bored. 

[00:07:08] Greg Star: Yeah, yeah, 

[00:07:09] Cheryl Broom: yeah, 

[00:07:09] Greg Star: Yeah. So, so I just wrote, and, you know, I, it struck a chord with, with a lot of people and you know, there's a good quote about, you know, a true friend loves helping a friend in need, you know.

[00:07:26] And what I realized when I was talking about it, it was, it was, it was giving people a reason to like root for me. 

[00:07:34] Cheryl Broom: Yeah.

[00:07:36] Greg Star: And neing able to root for someone not only made, it was heartwarming for me. And it helped with, you know, my battle, but also it was good for them. You know, like it's good to, it's good to have something to root for and hope for and you know, follow along, you know.

[00:07:52] So that's kind of also what I realized during that time. 

[00:07:56] Cheryl Broom: So I see, you know, a lot of, I, I'm on a LinkedIn myself and I see a lot of our clients on LinkedIn and, and clients when, and I'm talking about clients, I mean like the institutions, the call institutions, but the marketing directors and the college presidents, and I would say three quarters of them are doing exactly what you described.

[00:08:18] They are posting things like look at our groundbreaking and then resharing it, or our college president spoke of this event and then resharing it. When you talk about building a personal brand on LinkedIn, is that what you're talking about? Or do you think it needs to go deeper? Are you, what kind of advice to actually build a brand would you give to college administrators?

[00:08:43] Greg Star: Yeah, so first off, you get eight times more engagement from a personal post than from a company post on LinkedIn. So the whole strategy I find is, is is wrong. Right? A lot of people think, how do we get our LinkedIn page up and running? And that makes sense for other social media platforms, but not for LinkedIn.

[00:09:08] Like if I was running a LinkedIn strategy for a higher ed institution, it would all be about how do we get the president posting, how do we get the VPs posting, how do we get the professors posting? Right? How do you become familiar with the business community. So if you do post on LinkedIn and not everyone does, right?

[00:09:29] So I think some of your clients are a little more progressive than what I've seen is that they're actually on LinkedIn giving updates, which is good 'cause it shows visibility, but that's only a small part of what you can do on LinkedIn. So I call that the update track, which is had a good time at this networking event.

[00:09:51] Had a good time at the ground opening, and maybe you're doing those posts once every two months when there's an event happening, but to really move the needle on LinkedIn, you want to, you want to talk about, well, why are you in higher ed? What does running a college mean to you? How have you changed students' lives?

[00:10:17] There's all these stories. What's a, what's a fond memory you have of someone coming into your college and leaving a different person? Like there's just, there's so many stories and what that does, it makes you interesting and it makes your college interesting and it makes you top of mind to the business community.

[00:10:37] And I think, I think that's severely lacking in this industry. Community colleges are so important. They do great work, but they, they don't do a good job of show of, of telling a story of the good work they do. Mm-hmm. They tell that story offline where, you know, meeting with legislators and, you know, they're once a year galas, but they need to be telling the story to the business community.

[00:11:14] Like once or twice a week about all the great work they're doing, all the importance they're doing. So if any legislators think of cutting their budget, you know they're gonna have the business community say, no, no, no, we need them. There's also a big opportunity, sorry if I'm rambling, but there's also an opportunity for development on LinkedIn, which I see, you know, development is typically.

[00:11:43] It's sales. It's why are we raising money for the college? And they have their once a year galas, they raise money and they try to network, but they should be actively using LinkedIn to prospect to talk about what their money, if donated can do for students. And LinkedIn is the business platform. So, it's a sidebar, but every foundation and development director, you know, should be also on LinkedIn to talk to the business community about why they should be donating and partnering and things like that.

[00:12:22] Cheryl Broom: These are such great ideas. I, I've been on LinkedIn myself for years and I had something interesting happen maybe like a year ago. I, I think this, I just wanna tell this story really quick because it a, it shocked me. Absolutely showcases what you're saying about like telling a story. I had volunteered a, an event at my son's school and at the event the woman in charge had wanted us to like hand out these giveaways, like put 'em on tables and she said, don't tell marketing, but I did a different color on the water bottles because I don't like our school colors. And I'm like a, I'm like, run a mar, a branding firm. And I'm like, I've heard that so many times.

[00:13:06] So I like went back to my desk and I wrote it up. I'm like, don't tell—I heard today don't tell marketing we didn't use the school colors 'cause I didn't like 'em. And I like wrote this little rant. It went like crazy, like within like a day I had like 1600 likes, like 800 shares. All of these comments, and I've been posting on LinkedIn forever and something completely random that was just a story, just boom, took hold and somebody on my team said, Cheryl, you should turn that into a series about like.

[00:13:41] You know, like how marketing always gets like the short end of the stick or like people go around us and so I have like over the last year now, whenever something happens that I get irritated with, I'll turn it into this don't tell marketing series. And I've gotten so much engagement. I've gotten people writing, asking for advice, connecting, asking for proposals, all off of sharing one story.

[00:14:06] So, and it was shocking when it happened 'cause I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm going viral. I'm going viral for a rant about colors. 

[00:14:15] Greg Star: No, it's right. 

[00:14:15] Cheryl Broom: It did a strike a nerve. Yeah. 

[00:14:17] Greg Star: I'd say you, that story seems like it went viral. 'cause it's, it was, it's authentic and it's relatable. Yeah. 

[00:14:24] Cheryl Broom: Yeah. 

[00:14:24] Greg Star: And then that's the key is when you talk like a higher ed institution, it doesn't resonate as much when.

[00:14:34] You know, I say LinkedIn is like a professional diary, not a personal diary, but a professional diary where you're, you're letting people into how you think and how you react and how you observe and things than you've noticed, and that's authentic. And then, and that's what resonates. 

[00:14:54] Cheryl Broom: So much more than like, look at our groundbreaking, right? It's 

[00:14:59] Greg Star: No, if I… 

[00:14:59] Cheryl Broom: Were, tell me, telling the story behind that. 

[00:15:02] Greg Star: Exactly. If I were to say, here's a groundbreaking, I'd say, okay, why? Why did you build this building? How long did it take? Who is it gonna serve? What's the vision? You know. Not, I had a great time. We're about this groundbreaking. Excited for 2026.

[00:15:20] Thank you for coming. Tagging people, right. I'd say lame like… 

[00:15:26] Cheryl Broom: Yeah, boring. Boring. It's boring. 

[00:15:28] Greg Star: Doesn't do it justice. 

[00:15:30] Cheryl Broom: So we're talking a little bit about authenticity and what I wanna do next is I wanna talk about the role of AI in some of this. But before we do that, let's take a little break and let's hear a little bit from our sponsor, 

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[00:16:28] So visit EdTechConnect.com and set up your free profile to get a pulse for what's happening with higher ed technology today. 

[00:16:38] Alright, we're back. So before, before the break we were talking about authenticity on LinkedIn and storytelling, and I wanna jump to AI and see what are your thoughts of using or experimenting with AI tools for content creation, and how do you make sure that you still keep that authenticity?

[00:17:02] Greg Star: Well, here's, here's what I say. I think the first thing to do is publish like five or 10 posts of your own writing, and some are gonna hit, some are gonna miss, but you just gotta click publish. You just gotta get started. What you can then do is I recommend using Claude. Claude is the best for writing that I found, and then you submit your last 10 posts into Claude and then it gets a feel for you and then what you can do.

[00:17:36] That you're still writing the post, but you're sending it to Claude and it's giving suggestions or different phrases, and then, you know, maybe you can come up with something that it's like a partner for you. So that's how you can use it as like a partner, but not as, it's not gonna come up with posts for you, you know?

[00:17:58] So that's what I recommend, but again, it, it requires commitment. It requires, requires focus and, and intent. To be consistent. And I often find that's the hardest part for people mm-hmm. Is that it's kind of like working out. It's kinda like a New Year's resolution. Like, yep, I'm gonna post on LinkedIn by March it’s like, ah, it's been three weeks, crap. You know, I gotta think of something. And life gets in the way. So I also also tell people if Claude recommends something and you, you have an idea, always go with your idea. Like always, always err on the side of No, I like what I said better. 

[00:18:42] Cheryl Broom: So the work that you do in helping colleges and executives and leaders build their presence on LinkedIn, do you lean on AI or are you working with them to help pull out stories?

[00:18:54] How exactly are you intersecting with leaders? 

[00:18:58] Greg Star: You know, I've had thousands of cup of coffee meetings. In my career, as I'm sure you have, and I find once, once you get someone to like have a lunch with you or have a drink, have a cup coffee, you know, I would find, I'd be like, wow, this person's awesome. You know?

[00:19:19] But I didn't, if I didn't get the meeting with that person, I would never know they're awesome. And so that's what I look at LinkedIn as. It's like having a cup of coffee, meeting with thousands of your connections. So that's the approach I take for my clients is I interview them for like an hour, hour and a half, where it's like, imagine I'm a potential donor.

[00:19:43] Imagine I'm a potential grad student. Imagine I'm a potential, you know, community stakeholder. 

[00:19:51] Cheryl Broom: Yeah. 

[00:19:51] Greg Star: What's what, why should I get involved with your college? And you talk about it, but you don't just talk about the college. You talk about your values, the stories you've had with the college. Why it means a lot to you.

[00:20:05] You know, mentors who've worked there and have helped you along the way, colleagues you work with. So you just, you're telling a story about why it's worth investing mind, space, and money into. 

[00:20:20] Cheryl Broom: I just love the idea of having a coffee. Like I'm gonna think about that when I'm writing my LinkedIn post myself, like.

[00:20:25] This is like if I wanted someone to have coffee with me and talk business, what are some of the things I'd wanna talk about? That's such a great way to think about how to get yourself posting. 

[00:20:36] Greg Star: Yeah. Well I, I also say too, like any story you find yourself repeating when you're talking to clients or teammates or whoever, that's usually good LinkedIn posts.

[00:20:51] I've gotten to that, but I'm kind of annoyed now where like I'll talk to someone, be like, you should write about that. And I'll say there like two or three times to them over the course of the meeting. But it's true. And odds are if I enjoyed that story or I found value in it, a lot of other people would as well.

[00:21:08] So I get most of my motivation or ideas, which comes from just talking to people and being active and a lot of people are like, how do I jumpstart my LinkedIn? I've been trying, it's not really catching on. Well, I'm like, you gotta get out from behind your computer. You gotta talk to people. You know, LinkedIn is not a sole channel for you.

[00:21:39] Like LinkedIn is a force multiplier, so it takes your offline relationship currency and your reputation and the network you built. Multiplies it online. But if you're not doing stuff, you're not gonna have a good LinkedIn presence. 

[00:21:59] Cheryl Broom: Yeah. You're not gonna have anything to talk about. 

[00:22:02] Greg Star: Not gonna have anything to talk about it.

[00:22:03] You're not gonna have people who know you and want to hear what you're saying. So, you know, sometimes I'll have clients, I'll be like, look, I'm not a magician. Like, yeah. You have to do stuff. 

[00:22:15] Cheryl Broom: That is, that is great advice. Get out there in the world, have something to talk about. And our clients community colleges have so much to talk about so much, and I think that the hard part for them is making this adjustment from speaking from this institutional perspective to speaking from a personal brand voice, and I think the marketing directors that listen to the show, you are like, they're perfectly primed to be that a brand voice for their college. 

I mean, you don't have to, you don't have to just post on the happenings, but you can post on your reaction to them, your thoughts about them, your feelings about them, how they inspire you, even struggles.

[00:22:58] I mean, I, I find like I find some of my posts that get a lot of attractions are things that I'm struggling with and people are out there wanna help, you know, they wanna give guidance. 

[00:23:07] Greg Star: Totally, my company's called DABS. It's like the dab. So the logo Driven Authentic Branding Solutions. So you gotta be authentic.

[00:23:15] Yeah. And authenticity is what, and you know, it doesn't necessarily mean being vulnerable, it just means being authentic. So sharing what's happening, community colleges have a huge opportunity on LinkedIn I see in the, in their community where like there's a professional worker who's on LinkedIn who wants to go back to school and right now I get all these DMs, these like messages.

[00:23:41] I dunno if you've got them, where it's like, come join our executive pro— our executive program. And I'm like, you're doing it the wrong way. What really wins is organic content been that is promoting why the school can boost your career, and examples of other people that have in your programs have learned new skills and have doubled their income.

[00:24:07] Like there's stories out there like that and LinkedIn is very underutilized. Where it could be for, for that kind of thing. 

[00:24:18] Cheryl Broom: And so I am in such agreement with you about this because I've been on this soapbox myself, that community colleges, higher education have always presented themself as a service.

[00:24:30] You're gonna come to us, you're gonna get a great education. They're not a service anymore. This is a product. People are buying an outcome. They are buying a better career. They're buying more money, they're buying freedom, whatever it is that they're after, that's what they're buying. They're not buying your service of education, and this is such a great way to show the outcomes that they're investing in to show that product and other people who have.

[00:24:58] Realized it, which builds up credibility. So yeah, think outside just yourself and your own professional experience on LinkedIn and, and share these stories, these success stories, these outcomes. 

[00:25:10] Greg Star: And it's got, it's gotta start at the top. Like the presidents have to be the ones, and if you're a marketing director, like you gotta convince your president they've, they've gotta be on LinkedIn and they've gotta be on LinkedIn the right way.

[00:25:24] And they've gotta really be intentional about twice a week talking about all the good work the school's doing, because once the president sees the value, he's gonna push it down to the rest of the organization. Community colleges are big, right? They might have like a hundred employees or so. That's if a hundred employees just talked about why they think the work they do is important and they all posted it.

[00:25:49] It's like a hundred thousand views on LinkedIn going to the local community that they're serving. 

[00:25:56] Cheryl Broom: Yeah. 

[00:25:56] Greg Star: That's a real value. You'd have to pay, like, I dunno, $50,000 for that kind of exposure from other channels. And you can do it, you know, it's free essentially. So yeah, if you're, you know, it's, I say it starts at the top, but it's also an opportunity to be scrappy.

[00:26:16] You know, colleges don't have as much money as they used to, which is a chicken and egg thing. Like funding is decreasing, but they're also not talking about their value as much as they should be, you know, and they're helping even more people than ever. So it's a, it's a bad cycle to be in. 

[00:26:36] Cheryl Broom: Well, before we wrap up, I'm gonna say, I bet everybody out there is nodding with you right now.

[00:26:41] I'm like, Greg, a hundred percent. You're right. You're right. We're right. But we don't have the time. That's, I can, I can already hear it. So what's your advice? How do you find time to do this? 

[00:26:52] Greg Star: Well, that's where like, okay. You could hire someone like me. I don't want to, you know, but that, that's the reason I started the company is 'cause I write for people who don't have the time to write for themselves.

[00:27:05] But if I were a marketing director and just thought like, how do I get my staff to start writing? I would just invest in like a workshop to get their employees some ideas to start posting. And I would try to gamify it where, hey, whoever posts the most wins X and it's gotta be something intentional for the marketing director to try to get in their organization because with, without it being intentional, it's hard to follow through.

[00:27:36] But candidly, what I found is like once you get someone to start posting on their behalf and they start to see the value, it's kinda like riding a bicycle. Like once they're taught and they see it, then they could ride themselves. But, they need that ability of like, hey, here's three to six months of posting.

[00:27:58] Oh, I'm seeing the value. I think I get it. Let me start doing it myself. And that's how it typically catches on. 

[00:28:06] Cheryl Broom: Well, that's great. I, and I say from my own experience, 'cause like you, I can't underestimate how important LinkedIn is to my own business. And clearly it was such a help for you at Carvertise and now you have a whole company around it.

[00:28:22] It does take a little time, but once you get going, it's not that much of a time commitment, and it does make a huge impact. So if people wanna connect with you, I'm guessing they can find you on LinkedIn, 

[00:28:35] Greg Star: Greg Star on LinkedIn, make it easy. Send me a message or whatever. But I'm around. 

[00:28:42] Cheryl Broom: Well, great. Well, I am gonna have to make sure that I'm connected with you.

[00:28:45] I think we are. I know that we've connected on NCMPR, so I'm bet we're connected on LinkedIn and I'd highly suggest everybody else listening, check you out, follow you for more tips, and yeah, get get going on that LinkedIn strategy can make a huge difference. So thank you so much, Greg. It's been such a pleasure having you on the podcast.

[00:29:06] Announcer: That's a wrap on this episode of Higher Education Conversations. Thanks for listening. We hope you found value in today's conversation and maybe even walked away with a fresh idea or two. Want more episodes like this? Be sure to follow higher education conversations so you never miss a story, and please consider leaving a five star review on your platform of choice.

[00:29:27] Until next time.