When Pres­i­dent Oba­ma was try­ing to get the word out about his health care ini­tia­tives, he faced a prob­lem famil­iar to many mar­keters: How do you get a brand mes­sage out so that it is actu­al­ly heard by con­sumers?

Lucky for him, Oba­ma has bet­ter con­nec­tions than the aver­age mar­keter and was able to book an appear­ance on Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis’ Fun­ny or Die series, “Between Two Ferns”.

And, to date, the video has 10.4 mil­lion views.

“It def­i­nite­ly seemed puz­zling to a lot of peo­ple,” said Dan Roth, exec­u­tive edi­tor at LinkedIn, dur­ing the recent Ad Age dig­i­tal con­fer­ence. “Here was the world’s most pow­er­ful man, typ­i­cal­ly flanked by world lead­ers, now with two ferns and a guy from ‘The Hang­over’.”

How­ev­er, Roth said he spoke to for­mer White House Press Sec­re­tary Jay Car­ney, who con­firmed Oba­ma appeared in the video because he was hav­ing trou­ble get­ting his mes­sage out about despite Red­dit AMAs and LinkedIn posts.

“That leaves one indis­putable fact,” Roth said. “If the pres­i­dent has this much trou­ble get­ting his mes­sage out, what hope is there for the rest of us?”

But it’s not all actu­al­ly gloom and doom if you can’t get your brand on “Between Two Ferns”.

But, first, brands have to relin­quish a lit­tle con­trol. In order to be heard, brands have to be on a relent­less mis­sion to not just cre­ate con­tent, they also have to be com­fort­able that they will lose con­trol of their mes­sages because con­sumers will take those mes­sages and turn them into their own and they will change what the brands intend­ed to say in first place.

“If you want your mes­sage to get out, it’s not about accept­ing the new real­i­ty, it’s about embrac­ing it,” Roth said.

Jour­nal­ists used to be gate­keep­ers who con­trolled media and brand mes­sages, but, Roth notes, “There are no gates any­more.”

But, iron­i­cal­ly, thanks to the rise of social, “sud­den­ly every­one can be heard all the time, which cre­at­ed the same prob­lem we start­ed with – it’s very hard to get a mes­sage out,” Roth said. “Because there’s so much noise, it’s incred­i­bly hard to get heard.”

So what’s the secret for brands try­ing to cut through the clut­ter?

Sim­ply put, Roth said: “Know your mes­sage, know what peo­ple are talk­ing about already, know who you want to reach, and be pre­pared to stoke con­ver­sa­tion.”

But, more specif­i­cal­ly, Roth notes he sees over 100,000 posts per week on LinkedIn and it’s real­ly the brands/users who “keep at it” that are the ones that “win.”

Here are a few of the best exam­ples and why their con­tent ris­es to the top.

Write What You’re Passionate About

For exam­ple, Roth points to Bernard Tyson, CEO of health care provider Kaiser Per­ma­nente, who had writ­ten a num­ber of posts on LinkedIn about top­ics like health­care afford­abil­i­ty, which had mod­est views and engage­ment, but he want­ed to cre­ate more engag­ing con­tent like Vir­gin Group Founder Richard Bran­son does.

“We asked what he was pas­sion­ate about and he said what’s going on with Ebo­la. [He said,] ‘We don’t have answers, but we don’t know what to do and it reminds me of my time in the ear­ly ’90s work­ing at an AIDS clin­ic in San Fran­cis­co and we didn’t have the answers and we had to tell them we didn’t have the answers, but we’re try­ing to fig­ure it out,’ and while telling sto­ry, every­one was lean­ing for­ward because we want­ed to know what hap­pened,” Roth said. “We said, ‘This is what you need to be writ­ing about. That’s what peo­ple want to lis­ten to.’”

Short­ly there­after, the deci­sion in Fer­gu­son, Mis­souri was hand­ed down and Tyson respond­ed with the LinkedIn post, It’s Time to Rev­o­lu­tion­ize Race Rela­tions, which, Roth said, talks about what it is like to be a black CEO in Amer­i­ca. The post has since gen­er­at­ed over 440,000 views, 6,000 likes and 2,600 com­ments.

“He went from just writ­ing posts about health care to start­ing con­ver­sa­tions,” Roth adds.

Be Open & Honest

There are also times when start­ing a con­ver­sa­tion means chang­ing con­ver­sa­tion, Roth said, point­ing to Tar­get, whose CEO, Jeff Jones, was fac­ing not only a major secu­ri­ty breach in 2014, but also employ­ees on Gawk­er talk­ing about how ter­ri­ble it was to work for the brand.

Then, Roth said, Jones respond­ed with The Truth Hurts.

“In this post, he talks about the fact that what every­one says is true: Tar­get is a mess, the cul­ture is in real trou­ble, they didn’t have con­trol of data and he wasn’t sure how to pull it all back,” Roth said. “It was an open hon­est con­ver­sa­tion that sound­ed like he wrote it at 3 AM after a cou­ple of scotch­es.”

But even though it must have been dif­fi­cult to write, it gen­er­at­ed over 300,000 views and, Roth notes, the “com­ments were amazing…by own­ing it, he helped Tar­get change the con­ver­sa­tion.”

What’s more, Roth notes, “This strat­e­gy works whether you’re a CEO of a multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny or a rel­a­tive­ly unknown per­son.”

Get Employees To Share Their Own Content

One exam­ple of a rel­a­tive unknown is Melanie Curtin, senior direc­tor of mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions at ecom­merce wid­get Opi­aTalk.

Per Roth, “She writes posts about what she’s pas­sion­ate about…she’s clear, author­i­ta­tive, approach­able, and writ­ing from the heart.”

What’s more, her posts have over 1 mil­lion views in total, which Roth said is “huge for a non-celebri­ty/no­table fig­ure.”

Even though Curtin is not writ­ing about Opi­aTalk specif­i­cal­ly, she’s help­ing build the brand thanks to a halo effect, he adds.

Anoth­er exam­ple of a com­pa­ny embrac­ing this is Dell, which told its employ­ees to write about what­ev­er they’re pas­sion­ate about, Roth said. That includ­ed a midlev­el man­ag­er who wrote about lessons he learned about busi­ness from his father and he earned more than 250,000 views and 1700 com­ments. His pro­file also went from one of many at Dell to one of the most viewed.

“The HR depart­ment loves this,” Roth said. “By hav­ing peo­ple write, they have a much eas­i­er time recruit­ing because it human­izes the brand and shows there are humans work­ing there.”

What’s more, Roth notes employ­ees aver­age 10 times the social fol­low­ing that their com­pa­nies have and have high­er engage­ment.

“Get­ting employ­ees to share is how you get your mes­sage heard,” Roth adds.

But some­times it also means con­nect­ing with a narrow/specific audi­ence that is pas­sion­ate about what you’re pas­sion­ate about, such as the per­fect RFP for a shop­ping cart or the state of mod­ern but­ler­hood.

“It’s not, ‘Can I cre­ate con­tent?’ It’s: ‘How do we cre­ate con­ver­sa­tions?’” Roth said.

“The key is not to get dis­cour­aged. If you get only two com­ments on a post, don’t get dis­cour­aged. Con­tent is a hits-dri­ven game. Some works, oth­er [con­tent] doesn’t, but the only thing you can do is not write or write too infre­quent­ly,” Roth said. “You have to think like Oba­ma on ‘Between Two Ferns’. When sell­ing Oba­macare, he had to get in front of his audi­ence, so you have to think about the ferns you want to get between.”

Are you try­ing to spark con­ver­sa­tions with con­sumers as part of your con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy?