Creative Social Media Marketing: When to break the rules (episode #129)

Sometimes we overlook the ends, because we’re so focused on the means.

Today in marketing, that means can be algorithms and machine-built lookalike audiences and automations.

But as our latest guest explained in her podcast guest application, all that technology doesn’t matter if you don’t focus on the right ends: “It's all about the story – and it needs to include empathy.”

To hear the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories, I sat down with Carmen Collins, director of social media, Generac [https://www.generac.com/].

Generac is a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange and reported $4.3 billion in net sales for 2024. Collins manages a team of three at Generac.

Stories (with lessons) about what she made in marketing

• Sometimes, you just do it. Consequences be damned. 
• Your network is your net worth. 
• It's all about the story – and it needs to include empathy.
• Speaking of breaking rules, that's her biggest learning, and it's taken her a long time.
• Metrics are the best sword and the best shield when it comes to social media marketing
• Have your own Fabulous Personal Advisory Board
• Advocate and champion for each other

Discussed in this episode

AI Guild – Want to boost your conversions and collaborate with top marketers? Claim your free 3-month AI Guild scholarship [https://join.meclabsai.com/] (from MeclabsAI, MarketingSherpa’s parent company).

Social Media Marketing: Educate your executives (podcast episode #123) [https://marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/social]

Substance Over Style: Good work has to speak for itself (podcast episode #111) [https://marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/substance-over-style]

CMO-CPO Collaboration: Bridge Marketing and Product for collaborative growth (podcast episode #95) [https://marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/CMO]

Innovative Marketing Leadership: It is okay to think outside the box but make sure you don't create surprises (podcast episode #82) [https://marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/innovative]

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Transcript

Carmen Collins: And we had a sort of blurry picture. It wasn't the greatest picture in the world, but it was the story. It was the story that caught everybody, not just people who lived in that community, not just people who lived in and North Carolina, but in California and Texas and Oregon, saying, I've been there. I know him, and thank you for helping.

And we didn't do it for us. We were telling his story. But it really is the it's it's humor and heart. It's what it's worth. Every human being gravitates to. And I, I get a little frustrated at companies are like, well, we're B2B, we can't be funny or we're B2B and B2C. We can't be serious and be heartfelt and know we're all human beings.

We all react to the same thing. It's an moment. It's humor or it's heart, and it's that story that gets you every time.

Intro: Welcome to how I made it in marketing. From marketing Sherpa, we scour pitches from hundreds of creative leaders and uncover specific examples, not just trending ideas or buzzword laden schmaltz. Real world examples to help you transform yourself as a marketer. Now here's your host, the Senior Director of Content and Marketing at Marketing Sherpa, Daniel Bernstein, to tell you about today's guest and.

Daniel Burstein: Sometimes we overlook the ends because we're so focused on the means today in marketing, those means can be algorithms and machine built lookalike audiences and automations and on and on. But as my next guest explained in her podcast guest application, all that technology doesn't matter much if you don't focus on the right end. It's all about the story, she says.

And it needs to include empathy. Joining me now to share the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson filled stories, is Carmen Collins, the director of social media for Generac. Thanks for joining me, Carmen.

Carmen Collins: Thanks, Daniel, for having me. I'm excited to chat with you and your audience today.

Daniel Burstein: Yes, and as I mentioned, we're both very into stories. So there's gonna be a lot of stories today. So keep listening. All right. Let me just tell you guys about Carmen first before we jump into it. Some of her background, she's had a long stint of career. She said she started very early in her career as a journalist.

She was a sports editor at the University Journal at the University of Virginia. She got rolling in her career. She was a program manager at AOL, an e-commerce manager at Nextel, social media consultant for Careerbuilder.com, digital content strategist for Mozilla Firefox, senior manager of Sass Social Media Center of Excellence at Citrix, senior social media content marketing and brand leader for We Are Cisco Head of Social Marketing for QuickBooks at Into IT and for the past year at Generac.

So basically, no matter where you're working right now, Carmen might have some similar expertise. Generac, as I mentioned, she's been there for the past year. Generac is a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange and reported $4.3 billion in net sales for 2024. And Carmen manages a team of three. There. So, Carmen, give us a sense.

What is your day like as director of social media?

Carmen Collins: I like to tell people that social media is not always doing social media. I would say if you had a pie chart for the amount of time I actually spend doing social media things, you would be surprised at how small that piece of pie is, which is what's the fun part about, you know, social media jobs. But a lot of my job is spent educating our business on what social media is, why we have a strategy, why I made a LinkedIn post yesterday that the nemesis of every social media pro is these five words.

Just put it on social. It's explaining what the power of social is. A lot of people think of it as an announcement channel. It's really a storytelling channels, a content beast. And a lot of my day is sort of explaining the unique role that social plays in the marketing mix. It is definitely part of a whole. What is so unique and how you present the stories.

And the rest of my day is spent coaching my team, helping them succeed. I think that one of the best things about being a manager is watching your team shine. I still have a group chat with almost every team I've ever had throughout my career. I really enjoy watching them grow. I tell them they're going to be my boss someday and I be happy to do their bidding.

And yeah, the rest is keeping track of what's happening on social, trying to make sure we're up to date on the trends, the culture, the topics of conversation in the platform and trying to find unique and creative ways to tell our story.

Daniel Burstein: Well, today your job is to coach the how I may in marketing audience, right? So so you're going to be our coach today. We're going to hear those stories and let's jump in and look, I like to say that I haven't worked in other industries. I haven't been a pediatrician or an actuary or something. But we get to make things.

That's an exciting thing that we get to do. So let's see what we can learn from some of the things you made, which was often on social media. Your first lesson, you come out with guns blazing here. Sometimes you just do it, consequences be damned. So what did you just do? What is the story behind this lesson?

Carmen Collins: Well, this was when I was working at Cisco. And to give the audience a background, I managed social media for Cisco, but I managed social media for the talent brand at Cisco. So, you know, we had a social team handling the Cisco corporate brands and all of the subbrands underneath of that. But our chief people officer at the time realized that talent branding was important and that social was a big part of that.

And so when I came in, I was leading essentially social for HR, which doesn't really fit anywhere. And I think that's what made it really special. And we built something really great at Cisco. I basically, Jay Baer, who I'm sure your audience is very familiar with, he and I have a joke who invented the term employee generated content.

He says he did, I did, and we joke and say we both did at the same time. But, you know, I really built that strategy there with the we our Cisco program. And one of the places we started in social was on Twitter. And I will forever call it Twitter. I'm sorry. And, it was one of our first platforms.

It was real time. It allowed us to really have a brand voice, and we focused a lot on our employees, and we had some super ambassadors already sharing on our behalf, and we just figured out a way to make them. Our VIPs rolled out the red carpet for them, filmed content with them, and we had a little fun.

One year. It was the year that Justin Timberlake released Can't Stop the Feeling, and it became a social media trend and people were doing dances to his songs, right? Fire firehouses and emergency rooms were all dancing, so it just brought that feeling to the whole song, right? You can't stop feeling. And, we had a little fun just to have some social content where the employees basically filmed a little video to, Can't Stop the feeling.

And we had done that six months before, and then he announced he was performing at the Super Bowl. I didn't think anything of it because we weren't advertisers in the Super Bowl. We didn't really have a place to play. And as we all know, and social media, the Super Bowl is a big game, right? You don't, you know, mess with IP around the Super Bowl and the Olympics and things like that.

And so I was watching the game and realized, Holy cow, I totally forgot Justin Timberlake was performing. And we have this video that, you know, speaks to the moment. And it was 9:00 on a Sunday night. You know, I couldn't exactly send an email. Our team's message to my boss and say, is this okay? And I, I did my level set best, and I tried to make sure I had permissions to do what I needed to do.

But when I finally did get her via text, she said, why are you asking? Just do it. And, we did. And I don't know if this audience remembers, but, back in the day, the brand bowl hashtag during the Super Bowl on Twitter was also a big thing. Who has the best advertisements? Who's doing the best social during the game?

And so we posted the video with the hashtag brand bowl and halftime show. And, it was our one of our viral moments. We had a lot of people like this. This is how you do social. This is how you make yourself relevant in a situation where you might not be relevant. You know, a lot of brands do performative relevance, and this was our way in and we had industry leaders and sports leaders reposting what we did and saying this.

This is how you approach a moment like that. And, you know, was I nervous? Yeah, I'm nervous. Any time I hit publish on social media, did I spell everything correctly? Do the hashtags work? You know, I think we all have that anxiety, but it paid off and it was just one moment and a series of many that allowed us to get metrics and go back to our leadership and get more buy in and more budget for the things we wanted to do.

And it was just one of those moments that stood out. And sometimes you have to take a chance, and I think you have to be smart and strategic about it. I don't think you should just be reckless. No, I think we have a lot of unhinged brands and social these days, and I'm not sure you know exactly how that pays off for some of them.

Some of them it makes sense and others it doesn't. But that was just one of those times where it was like, yeah, sometimes you got to take a shot.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. So that brings up what can marketers learn from entertainers? Because I know in your experience, when you were at Cisco, you were a backup dancer for Usher on Jimmy Kimmel Live! And I wonder what you learned from seeing Usher and Jimmy up close that marketers can use, because I'm always looking for what can we learn from other industries?

The story you just told Cisco, you know, we don't think of it as it's a B2B company that does networking. We don't think of it as Justin Timberlake. We don't think of it as a Super Bowl day bear. You mentioned we used to have DJs speak often in the early days of marketing. Sure, but our summits and he gave good information, but people loved him because he was entertaining, right?

And so B2C, B2B, it doesn't matter. These are people. At the end of the day, we're trying to reach with our social media. So what can we learn from entertainers and what specifically did you learn seeing entertainers like Usher and Jimmy Kimmel up close?

Carmen Collins: Well, that specific example. So we had done a blog post on some engineers that had worked with Jimmy Kimmel to do his Wall of America. That was powered by Cisco technology, WebEx technology. And part of that was meeting the producers of the show. And the producer said, you know, if you ever we do skits all the time, and we're always looking for real people to participate in the skit.

So sign up for this email if you're ever interested. And I would get emails like, we're looking for someone who has their X is name tattooed way, that's not my right. But one day they're like, look, usher is coming to perform and he really wants to bring our studio audience and our home audience along for the ride.

And so we're looking for backup dancers to perform on the Wall of America board behind usher in the studio. I'm like, well, yeah, I can do that. Sure. And by the way, if you see me on, I still have the clip. If you see me, it's clear that I'm not a professional dancer. I'm good enough. I was a cheerleader in high school, so I have rhythm, I have some moves, but I'm clearly not the level that a lot of the other dancers were.

But it was just a fun example, and I think it's a great example for us, the social marketers. Usher wanted to bring the audience in. It wasn't about him performing it. I mean, it was what it was about. What does it mean to the audience? How can I be a part of it? And you and I had had a conversation earlier.

Most people wouldn't know this, but I have an air tour poster behind my desk because I went last year to see Taylor Swift. It's the same thing with her. I was recently reading her book about the air tour, and I still, in my mind, have this blog that I'm going to write about it in relation to social media, but she is so specific with everything she does in the marketing field, and it all revolves around her fans.

Her fans built that tour. Her fans added. You know, we had shout outs and call outs and here's when you hold your light wristband up and you know, I'm a super fan and I didn't even know all of the things. It's just a way to bring your audience with you. And I think as marketers, we forget that we don't have a megaphone.

We're not here saying what we want to say, how we want to say it, because audiences today are so keen on what is ad, what is an ad, what's advertising? What are you trying to sell me? They don't want to feel like they're being sold to. They want to feel like they're being brought along on your journey. And I think those two examples are really key to what we can learn from entertainers.

Daniel Burstein: And to build on that, since you mentioned Taylor, I've had my own experience in the past and in like one thing that she's very good at and her people are good at, is is noticing your fans, noticing that people. And so a long time ago when my daughter when I think was like 17, she's pretty young, she was opening for Rascal Flatts and my daughter was about five and she was a huge Taylor Swift.

Them and my wife, we just had another child. I was home with a newborn baby. She couldn't come. So I went with my daughter and we got to meet Taylor Swift backstage because they, you know, they do this big thing for the fan clubs and all the different things on these people. And so there were a lot of people that my daughter was so excited.

And then when she had the chance, she just got nervous and shy because she saw Taylor Swift in real life, I think, and then, you know, conceptualize. And so I just kind of pulled her back, was going to leave, and Taylor Swift's mom was actually there on the couch, and she called us over and she just started talking to my daughter and like, was playing with her bracelets.

And so then at the end, she kept us there. And then at the end, everyone else left because there were there are a lot of people backstage in those green rooms, even back when she was an opening act and she was so sweet. I remember to this day she called Taylor over and said, hey, Taylor, I want you to meet my new friend here, Rebecca and and Taylor, and she, Taylor Swift and Rebecca got to have that moment.

I got off the couch and she sat between them and we got a little picture. And it just struck me as, you know, again, this was early in her career and she I think she might have even just been 17, but just saw how composed she was and how she had the right people around her, in that case, her mom, to notice her fans and to make sure that she had a good experience for everyone and just a blew me away.

I loved it.

Carmen Collins: But now I'm jealous.

Daniel Burstein: It was a fantastic moment, and so to actually see the success that she's reached, it's, you know, it's it's a good thing. And one of my previous, interviews we did, when my guest was talking about meeting Michael B Jordan early in his career, doing some, some, commercials with Adidas. And one of his lessons was easy to root for because he had a previous, commercial with, he didn't want didn't mention the name, of course, but the rapper who was rising in his career and was just acting like, you know, the the crew was lucky to have him there and all that said, you know, he didn't want to be there versus

Michael B Jordan, who just came in very humbly and was like, how can I serve you? And so I think it's a great lesson for each of us in our careers. But as our brand is easy to root for, are you one of those brands that all of our brands make mistakes on social media and everywhere? Are you actually really trying to help the audience or are you just promoting your thing?

And as you mentioned, that's what it comes down to. I want to get into this next lesson. Your network is your net worth. This is, of course, a famous Porter, Gayle, saying, how did you learn this lesson in your career?

Carmen Collins: It's another story from when I was at my Cisco days. I have been very conscious over the years, especially on LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn is an underrated social media tool. I think brands are just now figuring that out, but I had spoken at a conference or written an article I can't remember right now what was the impetus for this.

But the CEO, who is now the CEO of Nasdaq, saw what I had written or spoken about and reached out via LinkedIn saying that she thought that she would love to have me meet with her social media team and just chat about, you know, she just thought it would be a good networking opportunity for both of us. But she also said, you know, Cisco is a Nasdaq listed company and maybe there's something there.

Let's just say and at the time, you know, I know that we just talked about how jealous I am that your daughter and that Taylor Swift, I mean, you know, I've had a couple of celebrities reach out via social media and chat with me, but this was a business celebrity to me. You know, it's a it's a woman who's risen through the ranks and is doing some great things.

And, you know, I feel like I don't know if that was something she thought through, but she was helping another woman in the space. And I can tell I had a little geek out moment. And so I reached out, said, absolutely, let's let's chat. And it ended up in one of the best moments of my social career to that date.

It was the opportunity to partner with the Nasdaq for free. We were we were a listed company, so we did this. It cost us no budget because as you can imagine, leading HR social doesn't have the same budget as leading corporate social. Right. And so, we had this opportunity. The only thing it cost us was to go to New York, you know, the travel cost to go to New York.

And we did a May the 4th. So if you're not a Star Wars fan, it's May the force be with you. And we had asked our employees at Cisco for the few weeks before that to share their photos and videos of their nerd dome around Star Wars, and we even had a job description where we were hiring a Jedi Knight, and we're like, full disclosure, this is not an actual job here.

We're not actually looking for someone who can move things with their mind. We're just looking for smart people who can come and make a difference at our company. And we took those employee images. We took that job description. We went to the for the Nasdaq. We did a Facebook Live, with the social team at the Nasdaq.

We talked about why Cisco was a great place to work and how you could be yourself here. And, we got to meet some of the hosts of, CNBC shows. And we had our employee photos on the tower on the Nasdaq tower in Times Square for about 10 or 15 minutes that day. And we took pictures in front of it with our nerd dumb outfits.

I think I had, a shirt that had a Princess Leia shirt that said Princess, emperor, you know, badass or something. I can't remember what the shirt said, and we generated 25,000 clicks to our job description that day. And it earned us several awards best social team, best social activation. It was just a great moment for the team, and it all started from networking.

Daniel Burstein: I'm jealous of your story and I want to get you out about Star Wars and Nasdaq. That sounds super cool.

Carmen Collins: We can get out about that later.

Daniel Burstein: Do you have it? Are you talking about networking now, and or do you have an example of building your network to find your next job? Because when I interviewed, Carlos Gayle, the US market brand evangelistic at response and how I made it marketing, one of his lessons was that same Porter Gayle quote, your network is your network.

And he talked about a story of sharing one of those Uber shared rides. And it turned out to be with a LinkedIn recruiter. And that's how he got the job at LinkedIn. And, you know, a lot of us, maybe me included, would just be staring at our phone and not talking to the person right next to us, not making networking connections.

So you mentioned Cisco's job openings. I, I know people do get jobs from job openings, you know, just seeing a job posting, but it's gotta be a pretty low number. I feel like most probably comes from recruiters and frankly, from networking. I mean, there's so many gates you got to pass through if you're just applying for a job opening now from the 80s, all the different stuff and I interviewers and stuff like this.

So I mean, as we talked about, I think I looked at your link to as like 11 or 12 or something different brands, well known brands, you have really been able to do a good job. I don't know, you know, we're talking about the job you did actually working there. You did a good job getting all these jobs.

And I got to think there's some really good networking story somewhere in there.

Carmen Collins: Well, you know what? I have been very, very lucky in that almost every job I've ever had has been from an apply. But I will say that my job search is very focused. If I'm in the market, I want to. It's not about quantity, it's about quality. And I don't have a story about getting a job from networking.

But I will say, and I know that a lot of people in marketing are struggling right now. This job market is brutal. I've never seen anything like it, and I want them to know that I was in it, and I understand what they're going through. During that time, my network was my network net worth because they kept me saying, of course I was networking to find that next opportunity.

Do you know anybody that's hiring? Is your company hiring? You know, I want to sort of move into the role that you're in. How do I get there? A lot of those type of conversations. But for me, my network kept me sharp. We would have marketing, we would geek out, just like you and I are doing now about our stories and and how creativity comes to play and social and just marketing in general, and talking about our own campaigns.

Because when you're in the job market, it's so taxing on your mental health and your physical health, and you just feel like I've lost my mojo. What am I going to do to get that mojo back? And my network kept that mojo alive. You know, we would come up with ideas. It gave me ideas for consulting projects or, you know, I wrote a children's book when I was looking for a job, but it could give you other creative outlets.

So for me, that's that's where my network helped me the most. Of course, I was hoping that somebody in my network would say, yeah, I've got a job for you. And it often, you know, I was I was introduced to other people through my network. Again, they didn't have a job because this market, again, it's brutal, but it helped me grow professionally and personally by expanding my network in a quality, not quantity way.

So that would be my encouragement for folks that are trying to look for new jobs in the space.

Daniel Burstein: Well, I think that's a great encouragement in a way I didn't predict. Like, you know, would I here I've been here for 16 years. I frankly haven't looked for a job in a while, but from what I hear from a lot of people, is that you can't get jobs through your job posting anymore. And it's the fact that you got that many jobs through job postings.

I mean, that's an encouragement to everyone out there to keep trying. All right, this next section, I mentioned it in the opening because I love it. It's all about the story and it needs to include empathy. And as you see on how I made it, morphing, that's what the whole podcast is about, right? We don't want to just hear thought leaders and buzzwords and all this stuff.

It's like, okay, if you did something, if there's some buzz or if there's some advice you have, tell us a story. How did you do it? So tell us the story. How did you learn this? Carmen?

Carmen Collins: Yes. Let me give you, you and your audience a little bit of a background. So several years ago, I started a project, one where I started researching a lot about empathy and empathy in general. And like most of us, I thought I knew what empathy was until I started researching it. And I realized we throw the word around like confetti.

You get empathy. It's like an Oprah show. Everybody walk out of your chair, you get empathy, you get empathy. And we really don't understand what empathy is. And I just want to give a little bit of context to the audience. So to help them understand truly what empathy is, we we think it's the story of walking in someone else's shoes.

And I don't think that goes far enough. And I think marketers stop there. You cannot physically pick yourself up and put yourself in someone else's shoes. And a moment of time and understand what they are going through. You can't do it. Are they walking in high heels on cobblestones? Are they walking in slippers on comfy grass like you just don't know in that moment of time?

So empathy. That is a very simplistic term. I mean, there's a lot of research about it and I'm making it, you know, a soundbite. But empathy is walking beside someone. Keep your shoes on. They keep their shoes on until your shoes start to feel like theirs. It's really walking beside and walking beside your audience. And that's where I think you find the sweet spot in storytelling.

And you find the sweet spot spot in social media and marketing in general. It's it's about the story, and it has to include empathy. And a great example of that is, like you said, I've been at Generac almost a year, just a little under a year, and our viral moment of 2024 was story. And, you know, in social, of course, we want to sell product.

Of course we want to educate our consumers. We want to tell our corporate story as well. But 2024 was a record breaking hurricane season. And for Generac, that is the time when we are put on display. Our customers want, you know, their power and we want to help wherever we can. And we had two major hurricanes hit the East Coast within two weeks of each other.

And Generac has this program where we send we call it our storm response team. And we send people who are employees. They do get paid to go, but they're volunteering time away from their families for weeks on end to go help in these affected areas. And they went to North Carolina. Now, what story are you going to tell that doesn't highlight devastation and, you know, hurt.

These people were hurting. And yes, we want to tell the story of our generators and how we're backing up power. But in that particular moment, that didn't seem as relevant at that time. That story was before the storm and after the storm. But this is in the thick of that storm, and we ran several posts on social media about our storm response team, and I think it was the perfect mix of right time, right place, right story, right conversation.

The world was watching, and our storm team was really the star of that. And I think that goes back to my Taliban days at Sysco. Right. I think that your employees are often your better storytellers for your brand. And we took a little bit of a social media risk. I know that social media is about short and sweet and, you know, get to the point, but our storm team came across a general store that was pretty much the only general store for 50 or 60 miles.

And it's it's a staple of the community. If you visited that area in North Carolina, if you were a tourist there, you knew this general store and you knew the owner. And, we wrote basically a mini blog post about him and what he said about Generac and how happy he was to see us show up. And, you know, it wasn't that his generator failed it.

You know, if a tree falls on it, you can't do anything about that. And so it was this team showing up to help him and to help the community. And we had a sort of blurry picture. It wasn't the greatest picture in the world, but it was the story. It was the story that caught everybody, not just people who lived in that community, not just people who lived in and North Carolina, but in California and Texas and Oregon.

Saying, I've been there. I know him, and thank you for helping. And we didn't do it for us. We were telling his story, but it really is the it's it's humor and heart. It's what it's what every human being gravitates to. And I, I get a little frustrated at companies. I'm like, well, we're B2B, we can't be funny or we're B2B and B2C.

We can't be serious and be heartfelt and know we're all human beings. We all react to the same thing. It's an moment. It's humor or it's heart, and it's that story that gets you every time.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah, and I think that's a great example of story, too, because I'm sure you'll hear a lot of empathy has become such a did you hear people just talk about it generically in many other podcasts, but actually hearing the story behind it, that's how you use it. Let me ask you now, as a social media leader, what controls or process have you put in place to make sure that your brands are acting with empathy?

Because the story you mentioned makes a lot of sense. Generac sells generators. It makes a lot of sense to produce content around a hurricane, right? However, other brands have gotten in trouble for. For example, I remember I won't name it a marketing automation platform producing content around, like Superstorm Sandy that hit New York or all these other things.

So we've tried as marketers and as social media marketers, we want to jump into this real time marketing. We want to be relevant in the conversations. You gave a great example in the beginning with the super Bowl, right? However, if we're not acting with empathy, we can really shoot ourselves in the foot. And a lot of times, you know, we've got new or younger employees who are all of a sudden, you know, leading social media for some big brands, for some sometimes public brands that get a lot of public scrutiny.

So what Carmen, do you put in place? What kind of controls or process to make sure that you are engaged in these real time conversations? But as you mentioned, the brand is being empathetic.

Carmen Collins: I don't know that you can build that into process. You have to build it into your team meetings. You have to build it into your content calendar. It has to have more than one person looking at it. I think the way I have always run my teams when we do our editorial calendar, it's a team activity. It's not one person.

Now, one person might be doing the ask the visual ask that's one person might be writing the copy, but it's all of us coming together and thinking and then I think businesses in general have those controls in place. You have your legal department. And, you know, in social media, we always joke about the legal department not letting us do these crazy things, but they do it for a reason.

And I think, I think that brands, if they are close to their audience, and I think social is the closest channel to your audience that you have outside of being a salesperson. Right? Because we hear from our customers all the time. We know when they're happy, we know when they're not happy, and I think we know what they're talking about.

And I think it's you again, it's that, example of empathy. You have to walk beside them. It's not a decision you can make in the moment. You have to have an understanding of your audience and of your company, and where you're going. One example, a very recent example. It's still a sports analogy. You know, Kendrick Lamar performed at the Super Bowl and instantly became a meme.

And there were brands jumping in on this meme. And, you know, I would have loved to do that, but I've the experience I've had in my career, I know that the Super Bowl has heavy IP restrictions. I'm sure Kendrick Lamar has heavy IP restrictions and to be a brand and jump in that moment, I don't I don't see how it can fit because there was so much art and commentary and shared experience in that halftime performance that if you don't have knowledge of that, you are now alienating the very audience you're trying to participate with.

It's, you know, it's like you're having a party and all the, you know, it's being hosted by the head cheerleader and the and the quarterback of the football team. Right. And they're all talking about the game. And you walk in and you want to talk about Dungeons and Dragons, and you're going to get a lot of looks like, what are you even talking about?

While I'm at the party? But you're not sharing the experience of the people who you're trying to interact with. And I think that that's just a really good example of, yes, we should include ourselves in conversations where it's relevant and where we understand what we're talking about and where we can add relevance. I don't think that there's that.

You should jump on every trend. I don't think that you should. Be in every conversation has to make sense. And I think people can sense when you are trying to force your way into a thing. I just think it works better. I mean, there's some brands that do it very well and it's their space. I mean, you know, Oreos, you can still dunk in the dark.

I just thought that that was a brilliant moment of empathy because it was relevant. It happened in the moment. It's what people were talking about. I think they're right in more ways to do it.

Daniel Burstein: That's classic. But also when you mention that there's not two sides to that, right, that when the power went out in the Super Bowl, it wasn't two sides. Some of the things you mentioned, like Kendrick Lamar or even the hurricane, I mean, these are bigger conversations where something I've noticed in our society as I've moved along, I didn't notice this years ago, is everything has kind of become two sided.

Almost everything the hurricane response has, even the halftime shows. And so really understanding, does your brand have a stance on this? Why do they. And to your point, you don't have to have a stance on everything. Maybe it's sometimes just, you know, we make networking software or sell generators or whatever, and we're not involved in this bigger conversation because a brand is not a person, right?

As much as we try to personify them. Okay. So I just tried to get you on the spot and say that there are certain rules for your social media teams that you apply. Have you noticed Carmen would not admit to any. So I think this does bring up her next lesson. Perfect, she said, speaking of breaking rules, that's my biggest learning and it's taken me a long time.

So Carmen, you seem like a rebel. How did you become this rebel?

Carmen Collins: I have a post that I'm going to post on LinkedIn again about this, and, again, I mentioned before, you know, just sometimes you have to do things without asking permission, and sometimes you have to break the rules to get what you need. But one example right now is a lot of people are talking about how can I be more like this brand?

This brand does it really well, how can I? I want to be like them, but I don't have their budget and I don't have their audience. I don't have their legal team or whatever it is. And I'm getting a little bored of this conversation. Why are you the brand? Everybody wants to be like, why aren't you breaking the rules in your way in your industry and your channels so that other brands want to?

Why do we want to all be like somebody else? Like that's not where innovation and creativity occurs. And I started I mean, I'm always a rebel and it's just built into me. I, I there's a, song, you know, taking the long way around. That's me. I don't do things like anybody else, but I think it's led to a lot of the success I've had in my career.

And I'll be honest, in many cases, it's held me back to there are brands that say they want change, that don't want change. And, you know, it's finding those moments where it makes sense to break the rules. And my recent rule breaking, I have been hearing about the marketing funnel since the beginning of my career. You know, you have the top of the marketing funnel, and that's where social media sits.

And then you've got your sales team at the bottom of the funnel. Then you have advocacy. And if you do a Google search right now on the marketing funnel and do an image search, you'll see 17 Kajillion and I'm making that number up clearly different variations of the marketing funnel. Why? Because it doesn't work. And marketers are trying to find a way to have this thing.

Look, we're successful. We have this model that we're following and but we're not following it because we're adding layers to it and changing the look of it. And it's not a funnel anymore. It's circle and all these things. The Edelman Trust Barometer, I think it was their 2023 report. Don't hold me to that. It might have been 24.

They had a different iteration of the marketing funnel as well. They said they don't think it works either. And that's because trust should be at the center of everything you do with your audience. And I agreed with them, but I didn't think it went far enough, because if you have to understand, trust, there's something called the trust triangle.

And there are three points on that triangle. One, you have to tell the truth. Trust. You have to be truthful. You have to be authentic because, you know, social media loves the work. We're authentic. If you look at the data, your audience doesn't think you are. You think you are, but you don't. So you have to tell the truth.

Be authentic. But the third point is empathy, which again, I know is missing because of all the research I've done, I don't think the marketing funnel has ever worked for us. Maybe pre-digital at work, maybe back in the madmen era, but now it does not serve us. It's turning into a crutch. And so I started to think about how marketers use this marketing funnel and why they use it the way they do.

And I came up with a different model, which I call the marketing mindset model. I just got my, copyright notice from the Copyright Office, so I was very excited about that. And basically I took the funnel and flattened it. I put trust and empathy at the center of it and showed that a customer goes on a journey.

They don't start at the top of the funnel and end at the bottom of the funnel. They go in and out of the customer journey at all spaces. I don't know very many things before TikTok came along and, you know, like going through the checkout line at target, it makes you buy things you don't need. There aren't many sales driven from an Instagram post.

There aren't. You know, you can. The post I talk about Justin Timberlake, you know, did that drive revenue at the bottom? That's not what it's about. That is one point on a journey that a customer is taking. They may come to your social account, go to your website. They might go to a I mean like for generators, they might go to a retailer and take a look.

Come back to our help pages and see is this the right generator for me? Who installs it? Social has a role in that process, but it's not the end. Click a link. Buy right. And if you look at the messages that Gen Z are sending us now, they want to have relationships with brands before they even are a part of the purchase process.

And I had an example like that recently. I went into a makeup store and I was looking in tick tock. It told me my eyeliner wasn't cool anymore. Fine. I got to go be cool. So I went in and I had, for those that don't know, for the men in our audience, when you look for a color match, you put a lot of colors on your hand.

It's the closest to your face color. And when you leave a makeup store, your hands look like you're a, you know, an artist. You've got paint all over them. And I was looking for a product, or, cleaning station to get rid of the colors. And a woman asked if she can help me. So I'm just looking for the alcohol wipes to get this off.

She's like, oh, no, I have a product for me, for you. Let me show you. And she brought me this product and I put it on it smelled delightful. It was essentially called Melt Away. It takes the makeup right off. I'm like, this is amazing. I have told that story probably 100 times since it's happened. I never bought the product.

I'm not in the market for that product, and I'm not planning to be in the market for that product in the future. Where do I fit in the fall? I don't, and that's why it's broken. So I changed it.

Daniel Burstein: Okay. So something we do and how I made it marketing, whether I agree or disagree, we like to push back and to see like the other side of things. We're not one of those podcasts. We're just we agree with everything. The notes that the guest says. So let me ask you this. What is on your model? So a business leader can instantly understand the business outcomes and metrics right?

Because, for example, when I interviewed Kelly Cutler, lecturer and associate director of the Spiegel Research Center at Northwestern University, on how I made it marketing, one of her lessons was good work has to speak for itself. And that story she told was she got, an account from someone else's job interview because they saw work she had done, like executives spoke for herself.

And while I agree that the marketing funnel is flawed, I think where it came in and where it was helpful is it's an analogy that business leaders understand because marketers, if we think about it in a pre funnel time, they were pressed, like you said, that everything had to lead to instant results. Especially public companies were my gosh, everyone's under the gun every quarter.

We got to, you know, great results. And so where the funnel came in was this idea of like, well, there's some other metrics we care about. And now we've gotten to this point today where if you present a marketing funnel to any business leader, they'll understand the importance of these different metrics. It can speak for itself in some way.

So while I love and I'm open to innovation and applaud you for trying to find a way to be a better way to do this, like in that model, since business leaders aren't familiar with it, how do you show metrics? So again, not every social media market or marketer is under the gun to you. It's got to produce sales.

Carmen Collins: That's what I really like about this new way of looking at it. It references the old model. So it uses similar structure and similar wording to the original so that marketers can use this but communicate it back in to your point, to your C-suite and other leaders in a way that they understand it. But in that mindset model that I developed, I have entry and exit point.

It kind of looks. I know your audience can't see the model right now, but it looks kind of like a circular maze and, you know, you have to navigate your way through it. There are entry points and exit points that you can come in and out of at any stage that you are in your customer journey, the entry and exit points, the names for those are very similar.

This. The wording changes a little bit because words matter. We're marketers, words matter, but it conveys the idea versus the traditional A whereas consideration action advocacy and it lists different activities that are happening within that model. So you can see where they fall as customers enter and exit the model. But I also built it with KPIs. Now, you know, for most people, KPIs, key performance indicator or metric.

For this model, the KPIs are different acronyms for me. So keep people interested, keep people, keep people interested, keep people engaged. Like the KPIs stand for different things and the point of that is that I also think we're telling our metrics incorrectly to our leaders. I don't think we are representing our work in the way that makes it as important as it is.

For example, at a former company will not be named. The marketing department would tell our CFO and CEO how many impressions we got on social media. Now we all know that impression is how many people could have possibly maybe seen it on a Tuesday in February. Right? It's not really a metric that shows value to the business. So if the goal for the post that you're making from the business is we want to draw awareness to this new product, there are a series of metrics that tell that story.

It goes back to being a storyteller. Maybe it's from my journalism days, but you've got to tell the story. You have to explain why that metric matters, because we are still not at a point. I keep hoping for the day where we have CEOs and CFOs and CFOs that came up through social media and, you know, really knowing and I my CMO now is, is she's the one that has the most insights into social that I've ever had the privilege to work for.

So far. But often you have to explain things in a different way for your leaders. And that's why I built KPIs into the model, because I don't think it's one number. I think it's a series of numbers, and I think it's how those numbers play together. For example, you can have 100% engagement rate, but if all of the comments on that post are negative, does it matter?

And you know, you could have a million followers. And if ten of them like what you did, but you got 100 million impressions, did that matter? So it's really about telling the story to make it make sense for the people who don't really understand what you do.

Daniel Burstein: Very well, and how I made it. Marketing. In the first half of the episode, we talk about lessons from the things we made. For example, Carmen made her own marketing model in the second half of the episode, we talk about lessons from the people that we made them with. That's a great thing we get to do as marketers.

We get to build things. We get to build with people. But first I should mention that the How I Made It in Marketing podcast is underwritten by Mech Labs. I the parent company of Marketing Sherpa. You can get conversion focused training from the lab that helped pioneer the conversion industry in our AI guild, and a community to collaborate with.

Grab your free three month scholarship to the AI Guild at Joint Mech Labs ai.com that's join that Mech Labs. I.com to start collaborating today. All right. Let's talk about some people you collaborated with Carmen. You mentioned Nick Cicero, the founder of Del Mundo Metrics and now Mundo Metrics. And you said you learned from Nick that metrics are the best sword and the best shield when it comes to social media marketing.

Carmen Collins: Yes. Nick and I met at a social media conference between 10 to 15 years ago. I won't date myself entirely for that, but, at the time, he had just built a metrics platform that was the only metrics platform that brought in Snapchat metrics. And my team at Cisco was launching a Snapchat channel, and that was really important to us.

So we had a lot of conversations, and Nick and I became, friends and colleagues and, worked together many times over the years. And I call him my metrics guru. I feel like I know a lot about social media metrics, but he looks at them in a different way and really helped me throughout the different roles that I've had in my career.

Tell that metric story. One example is when I was first starting to use Instagram Stories. I know that there was a metric called completion rate. It's how many people started your story and ended your story, but you don't want them to drop off after slide one because that's just a measure of engagement. And I thought by talking about completion rate, that I could tell the story of what people are really interested.

They're sticking around through ten Instagram Stories screens. Right. They're not leaving immediately. And when I spoke with Nick, he's like, that is part of the story. But if you have a longer Instagram story, you're getting way more reach and engagement. So how do you tell that story together? And so Nick is always educating me on different ways to use the metrics.

Or as I mentioned, a sword and shield. The sword is where you you test and learn and you go to your executives or your leaders to get buy in for whatever project you. Here's the metric. This is why I know it's going to work. Social media has so much data like I think that we're overwhelmed with data sometimes.

That is how you get things done. That's how I've always gotten buy in for what I needed to do for the brand and what I needed to do for their goals, but it's also a shield. As I mentioned at the beginning, the nemesis words just put this on social. Why would I not want to do that? Why would I want to guide this business partner and finding a different way to tell their story than just just post this infographic that nobody can read on a mobile device, right?

Like that's not something that's happened to me in a long time, but it is something that has happened to me in my career. And, you know, 99.999% of people are looking at social on a mobile device. Why in the world would you do that? You want to guide them to do something different so that they reach their goal.

So Nick has been a really great partner with me on that throughout the years.

Daniel Burstein: So when we talk about metrics, I mean another thing to talk about is budget. So can you give us an example of how you would use those metrics to get budget? I mean, something I've seen in my career is and this has been changing since I've been around, but everything used to be tied to media, right? So when things were tied to media, budgets were a heck of a lot clearer.

You get into social media now, it's got media and the term. But there's that paid component, of course, but there's that free component. And so the budgets get a little wishy washy. And sometimes people see it as free. Like what do you mean budget. Right. So can you give us an example of how you use those metrics to to get budget, the budget you needed?

Carmen Collins: Yes. This has happened many, many times. So I don't have one specific example, but it happens over and over again that, a business unit comes in and asks the social media team, can you put this in social? And it's a very niche message. And I mentioned before that a lot of my job is spent educating the business.

So it's going back to the business and showing them the metrics and explaining to them organic social is about reaching a broad audience, unless you have specifically built it from the ground to be a niche audience. And there are some businesses that that I find more success in that way. But if you are, for example, a recruiter, I'll just use Cisco as an example.

If you're a recruiter and you want to go out into the world and tell engineers that Cisco is a great place to work, it's not likely that the corporate Cisco handle is going to want to do that because they didn't build their audience that way. Their audience is around SAS leaders and people who are decision makers and policy makers.

And so it's really important to explain the benefits and drawbacks of organic social, to go back and tell that business partner, look for $500, we could take this piece of content, turn it into a paid post and reach your goals. Whereas if over here we do it organically, we're not helping at all. We're actually just spinning and we're being unproductive.

So that's just one example that I sort of drew from experience. But almost at every company, it's important to help educate the business that if you understand their goals, there might be better ways to, you know, they're trying to meet their KPIs. Everybody wants a good performance review at the end of the year, right? How do I help you get there in the right way?

And those metrics are really what shows it's data. It's not my gut instinct anymore. It's not my experience. You know, we joke and social that everybody thinks they can do our job, you know, would you go hire your uncles, cousins, girlfriend just because she's good at debate to be your lawyer? No. For the same reason you hire people with expertise and strategy in social media to do that right for you, and you trust what they say.

And those metrics are what build that trust.

Daniel Burstein: I will going in to get that budget can be very hard. You know, we can take a lot of hits when, our creative ideas are turned down. So I like this next lesson. You said, have your own fabulous personal advisory board. So you've got this group supporting you. You said you learned this from Carrie Karp and the founder of Likable Media.

And now she's with the whisper way. What is this fab Pam, as you call it? And how do you use it?

Carmen Collins: So Carrie and I met many years ago as well. We're not going to date ourselves there either, but she and, she became something of my mentor, and I officially asked her a few years later if she would be an official mentor with me and meet with me regularly and, you know, help me be creative about where I wanted my career to go and how I wanted to stand out in the roles that I had.

And her advice, which is, one of the things that she put in one of the books she's written and in her podcast that she had was this idea of a fab, Pam. And it is your fabulous personal advisory board. And she geared it towards women because women are notoriously, I think, bad at pushing our own selves.

We are often raised to be in service of others and not really be in service of ourselves. And she says, you just need to surround yourself with really fabulous other women that can be your voice in rooms where you are not and can help lift you up and help push you when you need it. And that was the first time that I ever said I need to make this like an official thing.

I need to go find the women in my life who are either doing job that you know, are aspirational or have done the job I'm in or in a similar field to help me one be a better leader myself and grow the next generation, but also situate myself in a in a good place. And I'm forever grateful for her for that.

We are still friends to this day and I try to pay it back to her now, lifting up all the work she does. She is helping women, exit from their businesses, and she has a path to that that she calls the Whisper way. And she's releasing a new book now, so I'll plug her book for her.

But I just thought that that was a great piece of advice for everybody.

Daniel Burstein: So it's great in our careers. But what about inside a company you work at? Like, have you been able to build these networks and how do you do it? For example, when I interviewed Tiffany Denim Quan, the CMO of amplitude, on how I made it marketing, one of her lessons was become a natural collaborator. And she talked about breaking down silos within SAP Ariba.

And for you, Carmen, as I mentioned, you've worked at a lot of big brands, a lot of big companies. When I hear marketers from big companies complain to me, one of the big complaints I'll say is it's hard to get anything done, especially something new and creative. The people that I've seen who can get it done. Yes, there's positional authority, of course, but it's the people that could build these internal networks, which I will say right now I'm very introverted.

I am not good at this thing. So I'm turning to you seem like a very outgoing person giving examples of how you you build this internal network to get things done in a company.

Carmen Collins: I don't know another way. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's pretty much every role I've ever had. I think it's so important. And it goes back to empathy. And I didn't know that it was empathy until I studied it, but it really is trying to understand what other people in your business are trying to accomplish and what matters to them, and making what you need and what matters to you also matter to them.

And I think it's just about building relationships. And I feel like good social media marketers, you know, it is social media. I think it is always started. When I worked at America Online a long time ago, it was community and that became social. But it really is about community, and I think that social folks should be good at that from the start.

And I think if you live it and you're in your business dealings within your company and within your your network, it's a natural. It's a natural flow into the space.

Daniel Burstein: All right. And you said this is another lesson learned advocate and champion for each other. You said you learned this from Derek Hubbard, who manages a PR team at Southwest Airlines. How did you learn this from Dennis? Sorry. Derek.

Carmen Collins: Derek. Yeah. He and I met when we were speaking together at another conference, and I'm not trying to get political in this space, but we know that, diversity, equity and inclusion efforts are under, fire. These days for being the opposite of what I think they are intended. I don't, you know, equity to me is everybody having the same opportunity?

And, Derek and I have many times over the years advocated for each other. And I was recently a part of a webinar that, the, webinar lead reached out to me and said, Derek recommended you for this webinar. He thought you would be great for it. And I'm like, and I sent him a note. I'm like, thank you for always, again, representing me in rooms where I am not.

And I always try to do the same for him and everybody in my network if I can. I just think it's important to bring diversity of thought into a space. I have been on many stages where I'm the only female speaking, and I have been at many conferences where I had to fight to be the female speaking.

And I just appreciate when we lift each other up and, and advocate for each other, especially in this space, because it's a small space. I mean, you know, most social media marketers are at least familiar with each other, if not, regularly in contact with each other. I think we need it for our sanity and mental health more than it helps.

But, you know, he has always been a champion for me, and I appreciate that. And I hope that I pay that forward as well.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. And I love the idea of advocating and champion for each other in our careers. But what do you do to advocate and champion for the customer within, again, a large company. So for example, when I interviewed Sarah Hodges, the CMO of Procore technologies, on how I made it marketing, one of her lessons was you have to walk in your customer shoes, literally.

And I know you talked about how you can't really put those shoes on. Let me tell you what she would actually do. She worked at a construction software company. She would put boots on, she would go on the worksite and she would understand, like, what's it like to drink a cup of coffee in the cold with all these gloves on and all this other stuff?

So, you know, for you, Carmen, when you work on social media, as you said, like, sales has this kind of touchpoint with the customer and social media does too. There another group within the company. So how do you use what you learn in social media to advocate for the customer, to champion the customer inside a company, since you've got that touchpoint with them?

Carmen Collins: Yeah, I have a great, actually very recent example of this. Perfect. At Generac, a lot of our customer engagement comes through social, and we get everything from testimonials to I love my Generac. It's doing great. To oh no, a storm is coming and I forgot to check my oil. What do I do? And you know, just oh, we love this ad, but wouldn't it be cool if you did x, y, z?

Our customers are not shy about telling us what they feel, and I've recently brought onto a team or to my team a consultant whose sole job is to start telling the business what our customers are saying and social. And, even recently I reported, I believe we answered over 80,000 customer inquiries and social media last year. And, a lot of those came during hurricane season.

We're going to now be able to have the capacity to take those learnings back to the business and really be that champion for the customer, really help the business understand, you know, again, we're one of the teams, I think, a little bit closest to our audience and help the business understand if they think that the customer challenges X and we're like, well, yeah, it's X, but it's X plus that helps them make better product.

It helps them make better, customer experience decisions. That helps them understand how they can show up. And, you know, that's one of the things I really appreciate about working at Generac is they really are very focused on I mean, it's it's essentially an engineering company. And how can we make the best products for meeting the needs that we find, you know, in the area that we find ourselves in the grid, it's old, you know, we're finding a lot more challenges with weather.

And we want to be there and put the power. And I'm yes, I'm using a pun and it's something Generac uses, but it's true. And you put the power in people's hands. Let them have a way to make a decision and and feel in control of their situation. So, I'm excited about taking those learnings. But I mean, we see them, we have them on our head all the time, but now we're going to have a, a, a purposeful way of getting that feedback to the business.

Daniel Burstein: Right. Well, you shared so many stories, so many lessons with us today, Carmen, if you had to break it down, what are the key qualities of an effective marketer?

Carmen Collins: Key qualities of an effective marketer? I'm going to go back to my journalism roots and stay. So you've got to be able to tell the story, and it comes from a place of empathy. You have to be able to tell the customer's story and tell business stories to the customers in the way they want to hear it.

They want to see your business story very differently on TikTok than they do on LinkedIn. They don't want to see the same post across all of your social channels. They want it relevant to them. It's telling the story of your impact. It's helping the business tell you the story of your goals. I just think that storytelling is such a key component.

And if you look at the rise of the creator role in social media, it's just another way to tell the story. And I think that that without that skill, you're you're starting at the back of the pack.

Daniel Burstein: Well, thank you for sharing all your stories with us today. It was fascinating.

Carmen Collins: Carmen, I was so happy to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Daniel Burstein: Thanks to everyone for listening.

Outro: Thank you for joining us for how I made it and marketing with Daniel Bernstein. Now that you've got an inspiration for transforming yourself as a marketer, get some ideas for your next marketing campaign. From Marketing Sherpas extensive library of free case studies at Marketing sherpa.com. That's marketing rpa.com and.