Newsletter Blueprint
Hannah Williams is the founder of Salary Transparent Street, bringing pay transparency and equality to the work place.
AND, she built it in an extremely fun and engaging way.
I'll be breaking down Hannah's unique Signature Series and the psychology-based marketing levers she hits on within her content below.
Hannah has added in some super fun layers to her business like market research guides, salary databases, quizzes, student loan refinancing resources, and so much more!
I'm excited to break it all down for you to show you how she leads with her unique Signature Series and has used it to gain over 2M followers across platforms!
Salary Transparent Street Breakdown
In an interview with CNBC Hannah and James (married and owners of Salary Transparency Street) shared that the business brought in $600,000 and paid themselves a salary of $200,000 by January of 2023, and shooting for $1 million in revenue by the one year anniversary in April 2023.
Salary Transparent Street leads (and always has) with short form video content.
Hannah's niche is obviously pay transparency, but it goes a bit deeper than that.
She's also niched into helping people get better jobs and earn more at those jobs!
Which is why all the resources she offers tend to lean in the direction of guidance towards a better and higher paying career.
Let's get into some stats:
- TikTok Followers: 1.2 Million
- Instagram Followers: 766,000
- Facebook Followers: 450,000
- YouTube Subscribers: 155,000
And you want to know the best part about this?
Hannah's short form video was leveraged the same way we leveraged my brother's short form video with his business The Restaurant Launch - reposting short form content from TikTok to IG/FB Reels and YouTube shorts - allowing her to grow on all of them at the same time!
Salary Transparent Street Signature Series
When you land on Salary Transparent Street's social media, it's pretty hard not to know exactly what Hannah's Signature Series is!
It has been working so well she has been able to keep the same exact series running since it's early days, with some bonus additions (collaborations), and minor tweaks here and there for optimizing.
What Is Salary Transparent Street's Signature Series?
Salary Transparent Street's Signature Series is based around interviewing people about their careers, their salaries (obviously) and how they got their career (and if they like it or not).
Hannah sometimes switches it up and asks specific questions pertaining to the person she's interviewing (like the great interviewer she is), but there isn't TOO much variation outside of a few different questions (or lack-thereof, if Hannah chooses to cut when needed).
Signature Series Deep Dive
For the Signature Series deep dive I want to jump all the way back to one of the earlier videos that racked up 23 million views, dating all the way back to April of 2022.
After, when we get into some optimization and tweaks I'll jump up to a more recent video so we can see both sides of what Hannah toys around with in her Signature Series.
The video from April 24, 2022 starts off with Hannah interviewing a young woman in Alexandria, Virginia (we know they're there and that she's an attorney because Hannah has labels right on the screen for us in text).
Jumping right into it the video starts with the young woman stating "I'm an attorney" with the camera centered on her, allowing us to see Hannah holding the microphone in front of her, but only half Hannah's body to start.
From there Hannah says "And how much do you make", to which she answers "$134".
Hannah then says "And how many years of experience do you have", to which she says "8...ehhh I should say 9."
"And any tips or tricks to break into this?" -> "Make good connections!"
The video then cuts to another young girl who explains she's a teacher making $53K, a couple making $150K together, and a political researcher and risk assessment consultant making 50K and 60K.
Hannah expands on questions with a couple of them, and leaves it at the pay transparency with a few, but we get a lot of information in that quick 48 seconds!
Signature Series Optimization and Tweaks
Hannah also sometimes switches it up and does one "longer" interview with just one person, instead of jumping around to many different people.
For example, she did one popular video (that she even reposted as a throwback because it was so popular) where she interviews two union electricians.
In a 90 second quick interview they explained their hourly wage, overtime, how they work their way up to yearly salary, their retirement, how you can get into it and more!
Psychology Based Marketing Levers and Signature Series Layers
I already told you about one of the tiny tweaks Hannah does with her videos that we could consider a layer, but there are a few more things I want to add to help inspire some signature series layers for you.
We also have a few other psychology-based layers to cover other than the signature series, including borrowing authority and even leveraging familiarity.
Let's start with a fun layer Hannah and James add to their videos..
Since they're out there interviewing so many different professions at different times they also came up with the idea of compiling all of the same positions together that came from different locations.
For example: How much do teachers make? How much do nurses make? And then they have a compilitation of each profession, talking to different people from all different areas working in that profession.
Genius repurposing to add another awesome signature series layer.
Borrowing Authority
Hannah didn't start as an authority on pay transparency, career advisement and salary negotiations tactics when she came into this idea, but because of her signature series she is now positioned as one.
We generally see people borrow authority from people we instantly view as an authority (like how I borrow authority from large creators when I do breakdowns on the psychology based marketing levers they use), but in this case the authorities are actually the people working their "regular" jobs, because Hannah is gaining tons of valuable information on pay transparency, how they get their jobs, what jobs pay well for the work, how people recommend getting those jobs, and much more.
Hannah is positioning herself as the authority by making these videos, and also borrowing authority from each and every one of the people she interviews.
Leveraging Familiarity
Borrowing Authority and Leveraging Familiarity are very closely related, and we generally see Leveraging Familiarity used more-so as a way to hook your audience (we've seen Jeff Nippard do videos discussing how other fitness influencers ideas are "OVERRATED!"; which wouldn't be borrowing authority, but he IS leveraging their familiarity to other people who are familiar with his niche).
All that to say, this next psychology-based marketing lever could be a bit of both.
Once Hannah began getting her bigger brand deals she also was able to interview larger authorities like Mark Cuban and Barbara Corcoran at different events.
The reason why this is really leveraging familiarity more than it is borrowing authority is because this may help with the views, and it may even build Hannah some authority being in the same video as them, but in reality the knowledge she gets from knowing how much Mark Cuban and Barbara make don't build her knowledge of pay transparency and helping her target audience get better careers (and/or raises in those careers).
How To Replicate Salary Transparency Street's Success
I love that Salary Transparency Street comes in from a completely different view on our borrowing authority lever.
Being able to show you guys these different psychology based marketing levers from different perspectives helps to hopefully give you guys inspiration to inject them in your own signature series and content - and Hannah and James found an extremely fun way to do theirs!
That said, here are some clear takeaways from Salary Transparent Street's Creator Case Study:
- Simple Layers
- Borrow Authority
- Leverage Familiarity
- Repurpose for Different Layers
- Cross-Post To Different Platforms
Signature series and psychology-based marketing levers have allowed Hannah and James to completely change their careers while helping thousands and thousands of people all over the world with their own careers.
And guess what: they love it.
So remember: Build a business you wake up excited about, to live the life you dream about.
