SPECIAL SERIES: The Practitioner's Playbook: Building Your Brand with Carmen Vicente, Content and Social Lead at Slate

0:00A quick one before we dive in. If you're running a social team, you need to look at Slate. Video and image editing, long to short form clipping, team approvals, and all of your brand guidelines baked in one place to create content. No chaos. It was built by the guy who ran social for the NFL, so he actually knows what your team is dealing with. Go to slateteams.com to learn more.

0:30Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests, stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the f*** up. we are back with another episode of the market millennials and today i am here with carmen vicente um super excited to chat because she used to run social for brewing company for years um over a decade and then now she works she's been working in tech but also is a linkedin top voice. So she's has her own personal brand herself.

1:23So it's gonna be cool to talk about both sides of the coin, what it's like to run brand, but also build yourself out. And then what's it like to pivot in your career at such a late stage. So it's gonna be super excited to talk, but I want you to give you a little bit of how you got into marketing in general. Yeah, I went to school for creative writing, and I wanted to be a writer. And when I sort of entered the more like, business corporate world, it was clear that if I wanted to write, marketing would probably be the way that I would get that done. So I started in a role that was more like communications and then it evolved into social media and then eventually that turned into marketing.

2:09But really, I think that my start in marketing was my pragmatic brain being like, OK, what job do I get to write in? And, you know, that was how I made the decision to get into marketing, even though, you know, maybe that's not like a totally direct link for what marketing is. And I want to go into, so you did spend over a decade at a brewing company. So what does it actually look like? What does your average day look like running a brand social account? A lot of people think the brewing industry is super cool because there's some sort of like, I don't know, when you work with alcohol, it somehow has this like special aura or something.

2:50But I think you could equate it to like a CBG brand. You have physical goods that you're selling. And a lot of what we were doing in our marketing department and in our social media team was like, you know, it's a lot of photo shoots. It's a lot of kind of communicating with the production team, which is funny because I think there's a lot of parallels to tech, too. Like, you know, what the product team means in beer and what the product team means in tech are two separate things. But ultimately, they're trying to ensure the quality of the product. I want to actually talk about that transition because you left the beer industry in your 30s and you described it.

3:28I know you described it as like a trust fall, not really a pivot, because you really didn't know anybody in SaaS. So walk me through that moment where you decided to apply to a tech role. I think I was done selling beer. I didn't want to. A lot of what you do in a marketing department when you work in the beer industry is you're trying to see, like, could we, you know, if someone's consumption is like one case per week, could we get them to buy two cases per week? you know, and I think I was just like, I was ready to be done finding creative ways to get people to drink a little bit more alcohol.

4:06And I am not a huge like, I'm not like constantly listening to podcasts. But I did listen to a podcast at the time that I started made this big career change. I'm forgetting what it was called. But it was with Eli Weiss and Cody from Jones Road Beauty. I liked their podcast because I felt like the work I was doing in social, it kind of straddled like marketing and CX, you know, what is social, if not somehow kind of like a mixture of those two. So I think that Eli was maybe an ambassador for Gorgeous, the company that I eventually applied to. And so he had lots of good things to say about it. And I remember thinking like, oh, yeah, that company's on my radar, you know, if an opportunity ever came up, I would go for it.

4:50And so when I decided to leave my beer industry job, I wasn't even dead set on and going into tech. I just was like, I want to work in a different industry. And I actually was ready to get away from physical products. I thought it would be nice to be selling services as opposed to like, I just never wanted to take another picture of a bottle of beer. I was so done. Um, so I think honestly, it was just like having Eli's recommendation that this particular company was that, that he had such a positive opinion of this company was enough to make me feel like, okay, here's like a, here's a good recommendation.

5:28And so when I saw a job posting for gorgeous come up, then I applied. I want to also go through the moment you decided, okay, I used to, I, I've managed a bunch of social profiles, but I'd want to decide to post for myself. And I know that happened later, too. So could you walk me through why did you decide to as a personal brand? Yeah, I mean, I didn't know. So I pretty much May of 2024 was when I entered tech. And when I did, I didn't really know what LinkedIn was. I knew one of my friends who worked in tech was on LinkedIn. And I remember texting her being like, can you show me what LinkedIn is?

6:08because like I've worked in social for so long, but in my mind, LinkedIn wasn't social media. So when I entered my previous role in tech, I had to start posting on LinkedIn just because I was like, surely this is like the, the, the way that you, I felt like it was like part of the job. And it was at a time in LinkedIn's sort of trajectory where the algorithm was so generous. So I was like, wow, this is like, you know, I was so used to like the TikTok and Instagram algorithms that I found LinkedIn to be incredibly, like the engagement was very high, people were really forthcoming with positive sort of feedback.

6:45And I was like, God, this is so much nicer than Instagram and TikTok, where it's like, you'll get eaten alive. So I think that having some early momentum helped me feel like, okay, I could begin posting here. But then last year, more as a social experiment, I decided to start posting on TikTok. And I was like, I've managed lots of brand accounts, and I've built them up. But algorithms are historically quite hard on brand accounts, you know, they sort of stifle your reach. And it's it's hard to get people to care about a brand. So I thought like, if I was able to just create content from a personal account, could I learn at an accelerated rate?

7:25And I know this is a contentious topic in social media circles, like a lot of social media, people who work in social media don't want to have have to cultivate a personal brand because they feel like, well, I spend, you know, eight to 12 hours online already, like this feels like almost like insult to injury or something. But I kind of went into it less like I'm going to build a personal brand and more like, oh, I'm going to conduct like, like an experiment, almost like I'm a little guinea pig in a lab or something. So So, yeah, I guess I just started to post on TikTok because I knew that I would report back on it.

8:02And that made me feel less kind of like used by the platform. If I was like, no, no, no, I'm using you to like get insights that then I'll relay back to people on LinkedIn. But the growth on TikTok is so much easier or I found it to be so much easier than the growth on LinkedIn. yeah could you I would love to hear that because I mean some people say the LinkedIn algorithm is so much easier TikTok is really hard I don't know how to do so what what do you feel about TikTok versus LinkedIn and how how do you think about showing up differently on those those two platforms yeah I mean I used to just kind of cross post a lot of my content where like if I had a video do well on on TikTok, I would just bring it over to LinkedIn.

8:55But increasingly, I really don't mix the platforms because I find that the audiences demand very different, like topics and approaches and perspectives and all of that. So, you know, like on LinkedIn, and for work, you know, my life involves a lot of AI, whereas like on TikTok and Instagram, I feel like you get skewered a lot more if you talk about AI, and that isn't, you know, your whole brand. But I mean, also, like the algorithms change so much a lot of the I've made a decent amount of content recently about how right now, like Meta's platforms are just juicing reach, I think that they're, they're trying to lure people away from YouTube and, and TikTok.

9:35So right now, I would say, like, probably the easiest place to grow. And I didn't probably like if I had to advise anyone, I think the easiest place to grow right now is Instagram or Facebook. I mean, And Facebook isn't really my cup of tea, but like people like threads and Instagram right now, the growth is just kind of wild. But yeah, it's not the same kind of content that does well. And I think if you were like, you know, you worked in an insurance in the insurance industry and you were used to writing 500 word written posts, I wouldn't recommend that you start trialing those on TikTok. Like it's never going to going to work.

10:07So there's obvious kinds of like creators or thought leaders who probably don't have the right, like the necessary components to test out their content on another platform that's more video based. But if you're creating video content, I think that making content for TikTok and Instagram is like a very important boot camp because it's a ruthless kind of act, you know, and you'll learn very quickly like, oh, this is this does not this is not good enough. Or like this hook sucks or like your topic is not well researched enough or you're just not engaging. So, you know, it's a it's a very quick, like fast feedback loop and it's very iterative.

10:45and what's nice about posting on your own accounts is that you know you don't have to go through legal you don't have to go through other other rounds of approval so if you have a video do poorly or do well like you can follow it up so quickly and and then really like yeah it's sort of accelerate those learnings about what works on these platforms it's crazy because i would say like instagram i mean meta the facebook universe is having like a revival where facebook itself is facebook itself is getting crazy reach um threads trying to compete with x is getting crazy reach and then instagram trying to compete with youtube shorts and um tiktok getting crazy reach so um people like ignoring facebook and threads because they thought it was a one and done thing but you can get millions of views and thousands of views on a facebook video which is crazy to think about um and it used to be super hard to do that like five years or six years ago to get preach on facebook which is crazy and i don't think it's just that like the people have changed or that people aren't sleeping on these platforms anymore it's like i think it's the algorithms you know like the i think clearly meta is doing something funky with their algorithms right now and it's it feels like a bit of a monetary stimulus so they're trying to be like okay you can get rich over here and by rich i mean like we'll give you lots of views i also wanted to ask you i know this is a because i've talked to social media managers have talked to people who run social i've talked to like heads of social and i know it is a contentious topic of especially when they're applying like why don't you have a like a personal brand like how could you yeah have not grown your personal stuff like why don't you know how to do that and all that stuff but i want to ask you for someone for the people out there that are social people that want to take the leap into like creating their own brand like what do you recommend them do to just start like what are some like one two tips that you recommend for them to start like you said like i empathize with people who don't want to make a personal brand because it's a lot of work and it's a lot of just like exposing yourself to the internet's trolls which like you have to have a bit of a thick skin for.

13:02But yeah, I mean, I think what I would say is like, I, it's easy to sort of spread yourself too thin and be like, okay, I got to be on YouTube shorts, and I got to be on Instagram, and I got to be on TikTok and whatever. And like, they're all kind of different. So I think it's worth just like kind of choosing. Like, I really liked having two polar opposites in the beginning. Like I just did LinkedIn and TikTok for a long time. And I liked that, you know, it's like, they're very different. And surprisingly, I think a type of content that works quite well it doesn't it doesn't work in both directions all the time.

13:33But it's like, every time I post about TikTok on LinkedIn, the content performs crazy good. And I think that you can kind of bring insights from one platform to the other. And people are very curious about like, you know, that that other ecosystem. I mean, I would say on TikTok, people love making fun of LinkedIn. So I think if you're able to like, sort of make your LinkedIn experience into more of like a comical data set, then people enjoy it on TikTok. But I don't know, I would say probably I would choose two platforms that represent pretty different demographics and then see if you can build on those.

14:08And maybe it's a matter of like choosing a sort of video native platform and then one that's less video, like say threads and TikTok or something like that, where it's like one is really just text based, and then another is more, you know, video or sort of like clip be focused. I think another good attack could be like Instagram and sub stack or something like that. But I feel like it's too risky to just build on one platform for I mean, even just the algorithmic reasons we just talked about, you know, sometimes the algorithm gives and sometimes it takes away. So it's better if you're not like having all of your eggs totally in one basket.

14:46And I think just content is so much work you know it's so much work on top of your regular job whatever you're you're already doing that to like only distribute that high lift project in one platform is a throwaway like you've got to just get it at least in two places so yeah I think I would probably go for range and choose like I don't know if opposite is quite the right term here but two disparate platforms and then, you know, try to leverage those two. And if it's going well, you could expand, but also, you know, who's to say that successful creators have to be on five platforms or something.

15:22There's plenty of people who really just have like a strong hold on one. Yeah. I mean, I've noticed too, that maybe not format wise, it will transfer into platforms, But if you have a message or a topic that hits on one platform, you usually can maneuver it well and bring it on to another platform because you know someone cares. And if it's gone viral on one platform, there's a chance it could go viral on another platform too or get used on another platform. 100%. I think that that's like really necessary feedback. If you had a threads post that went viral, like do your best to turn that into a video for something else, you know.

16:04And if you had a video that really struck a nerve, then yeah, like just like translate that into a post for LinkedIn. And that's a lot of what I do, too, because I often will post a video on TikTok, see what the response is. And then I take like a combination of the commenters feedback and my own thoughts on like how I've been able to reflect on that video. And then like I'll turn it into a post for LinkedIn. And it gives you a bit more perspective, obviously. it's crazy we're like almost 20 minutes in the podcast and we haven't used the word ai yet but i'm going to ask you the words ai because this is a lot of work um to do all this and manage a brand social account and post or even if you want to run a personal brand it's a it's a lot of work because if you want to be successful um yeah what are some ways you are leveraging ai to make your job easier to be able to post on multiple platforms and how is it used in your workflow?

17:03I'd probably say the primary use of AI for me in content is I work for Slate. We make a video editing tool, a content creation tool, and I use Slate shortcuts for any time we have, like we do webinar, I host a webinar every month and then I always do shortcuts to basically translate the long form content into short form clips. And like, that's the kind of use case that I think AI is really nice for in content. And with creatives right now, I think there's a lot of times where even if you didn't have a webinar, let's say you're recording a podcast like this, or you have an interview, or you did like, you know, customer interviews, if you work at a software company or something like, there's a lot of times where you have like, one, two, three hours of footage, And the idea of going through it all is like, you know, it's astronomical amounts of that's just way too much time.

17:58So I like I like AI for that, for synthesizing big pieces of content into like short clippable stuff. Slate also, I mean, I'm going to just keep on plugging it, but Slate also has the ability to like parse out, you know, more share worthy moments for you or you can search by a specific speaker. So it's something that I like legitimately use every single week. But I think that in terms of more like not a proprietary product, I really hate reading AI writing. And I just finished Sam Chris's article on Substack about he like says, if you use AI to write, I'm going to find you and I'm going to kill you.

18:42You don't have to put that in the show. That's too crazy. But it's a really funny article about how he's like, you think I can't tell? I can tell. um and recently I've come across a few women on TikTok who are saying like don't use LLMs to write your content but you can use LLMs to say like what do you think my positioning should be or like based on the performance of these 50 different posts across TikTok and Instagram like what are the clear common denominators on the post that got over 50k views it's like I think that that using it to synthesize like where my content has impact is also another area where I think that that it's like yes it makes sense to have it um analyze like huge amounts of uh inputs so those are two places where I think that it's been useful for me and I don't know if this makes me like if I'm aging myself or something but I'm like pretty anti using it to write any copy and I know that that was like the first ways that a lot of social and marketing teams decided to use llms and i think it's kind of a shame i hope we're outgrowing it i do kind of get the sense that we are uh yeah i mean aside from that i also like just built this tool it's like an internet troll tool where like you know we always joke in social that like internet trolls are the worst and they get into your comment threads and they just kind of wreak havoc but i like purposefully created this internet troll that's like very crotchety and grumpy.

20:08And basically like, there are times on a social team where you publish a post and then you realize like, ah, crap, I didn't really realize that, you know, it could be taken out of context or that some people would misconstrue its meaning. And so this tool, I called it Heckleton, which is just a stupid name for this troll, but Heckleton, you like feed it your scripts or your captions or things that are going to go live on social and basically it will like flag areas of concern that aren't necessarily on your radar or that are like tying into current events so it's like pulling from a few different things like it's synthesizing my notes it's also like uh kind of giving me a final read on things before it goes live but it's also you know it's like you don't always you might be working on a team where you're kind of in a bubble and you don't realize that like some breaking news story has just like changed the landscape of the you know online world that day and so this little tool is i i guess i joked that it was like supposed to save me headaches and pr nightmares so that's another way that i use ai i think that's a really cool use case because i've run into problems because i write content a lot and i run into problems am i going to get canceled if i say this yeah or like oh is there anything in this copy, am I going to, am I like have blinders on?

21:30And sometimes you, you, sometimes you don't, you can't get feedback from so many people. So if you have AI, just give you a quick read, which is something you might need of like current events, what's happening and totally. And sometimes you don't know, like you might have like a reference or like a joke in your post and you don't realize like, Oh, that joke is actually quite offensive to this, like, you know, demographic of people or you know it's like i think it's good to have like you say you can kind of have blinders on or you might not totally have like uh sensitivities to all of the sub genres of you know people who are reading your stuff on the internet so this helps to prevent those i mean i i i have one like one recent example like i made like a little joke about how i made this image with chat gbt or something and then it was kind of a little offensive to like designers out there because like why didn't you just get a designer to do it like why are you using so you have to really think about every little aspect and who it's gonna it might offend timing too like you know you i saw somebody they put out an article the other day about you know they were trying to be um conscientious and they were saying like you know um the job you have this year is not the job you're going to have next year.

22:50Basically, your job is going to evaporate, even if that means that you'll still be employed, but it'll be different. And people were saying, oh, this is not a good title in the wake of all of the meta layoffs. And it's like, okay. So it's not even that the joke was perhaps insensitive, but it was insensitive at that particular time. So sometimes it's more of a timing thing than topic. Yeah. I think a lot of it is timing thing. I think a lot of what landed five years ago is not going to land today. And what landed today is not going to land five years from now. Or even 10 a week from now, it might not land.

23:25So with the current landscape, I think those are really good use cases. And I also do truly believe that AI just helps. Like if you're not a great writer and you're trying to use AI to write and you don't know what great writing looks like, you're just going to post not great writing and you don't know how to get feedback so like great writers could spot out ai because they're great writers um non-great writers cannot spot it out because they're not great writers and um like with everything is if you don't have a foundation of what great looks like it's hard to or have your taste and years of experience and years of studying creative writing, if you didn't have that, you would probably, it'd be so much harder to spot these things.

24:15But since it's in your brain and you've studied it, you know how to write great copy. It's like, why am I going to use AI when I could use originality and creativity of my own self and maybe have AI come in as like an opinionator or an editor or a second viewpoint, but not as the main source. We're brought to you by Slate today. And honestly, if you run social for a brand, listen in for like 20 seconds. How many tools are you using just to make content? Because most teams are at 5 or 6 apps. And you're still chasing logos in some Google Drive folder nobody's organized since 2022. Slate is one content creation workspace.

25:01The NFL, Amazon, New York Times are on it. The Pistons Lily dish cap cut for Slate. Video and image editing, AI clipping, approvals, brand assets, all of it. SlateTeams.com, links in the show notes. Back to the episode. Yeah, I mean, I think that there are like, there are so many arguments to be made. And I understand how like people could have a debate with very good, like I said, yeah, arguments on both sides about like why they needed AI to refine some part of their argument. But these days in marketing and social, I feel like it's just like it's a slippery slope for using it for copy generation.

25:42And I wouldn't recommend it. Yeah, it is a slippery slope. I mean, some of the biggest brands are using it, which is scary. And it's also so sad because it's ruined some things that great writers use every day and makes them look like they're AI generated too because they use an M-dash, which is crazy to a great writer. There's a lot of things going out there that's crazy. I wanted to also, since you do talk about this every day, could you quickly describe, let's go through maybe LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, and maybe one more platform. What do you think the algorithm looks like on those platforms and what is a reward and disincentivize?

26:29It's interesting. I think the LinkedIn algorithm actually rewards a lot of personality right now. Like, I think people have this cliched vision in their heads of like LinkedIn just being like optimization bros. But in all honesty, I find that it's quite favorable to people who like venture outside of those sort of formulaic post styles. So I think on LinkedIn, I would encourage people to be a little bit more themselves and share a bit more of like their insights rather than like believing they have to say stay so like middle of the lane with their with their perspectives. I also think that like, yeah, on LinkedIn, you're always going to get better engagement and reach if you can tie your that perspective, that unique perspective back to some sort of business lesson.

27:15So like that is the professional element, less so than like maybe the tone. on instagram i mean talking head kind of yapping videos are really like the bread and butter i think of of most people's um growth strategies uh i i think that there's always like the risk on instagram that people kind of get bored of your shtick so now people have to treat their brands as like fully fledged like media agencies where they don't just create one kind of content you know they have three kinds of content that they regularly cycle through and they're all these different series so it's like I don't know I think on on Instagram you get rewarded for treating your content almost like a like a show you know where there's like different kinds of there's like small bite-sized things and then there's also like slightly longer format and you have got to post your stories and do your instance so it's like on Instagram you just have to use all of its all of its product features but certainly I think that like head to can talking head to camera yapping video is is like the easiest way to grow um on tiktok i still think that this like it still rewards a less polished version than than instagram like i think you can have way worse like camera quality audio quality all of that and and do great on tiktok um but i don't know it's strange i find tiktok to be way more volatile my numbers are always volatile there like i have my highest highs on TikTok in terms of reach and engagement.

28:46And I also have my lowest lows, whereas like Instagram is more of this like median line that just like moves through every piece of content. And then Substack I'm also on. I don't know if that's that's one that that you think about much, but Substack I feel is like the platform where like any any sniff of AI is just like, so you know they'll they'll crush you for that so um i think unless your sub stack is about like how to use ai um really there is a much bigger appetite for like long form writing big pieces that people will read uh the attention spans are the highest on sub stack and so that's kind of an interesting like it represents an interesting corner of the internet but it's also like the demands are high.

29:35If you're using an LLM to write on Substack, your days are numbered. Yeah. Article driven platforms. I feel like I've seen people using tools to say 68 % AI degenerated from LLMs. They really go hard. If you're going to write a thousand word article, oh, you better be, this better be coming from your fingers or your voice to text or something. Yeah, it better be coming out of you. Otherwise, you're going to get trolled really hard. Like Reddit used to be the same thing if you did generic, fluffy type posts where you would do on LinkedIn. Some people would do on LinkedIn and try to bring it over to Reddit.

30:20They would sniff you out because they wanted originality. They want people talking from experience. They want actual. You want to have like one final corner of the internet where the bots don't touch. And so I get that people are like, no, no, no, this is a safe zone. You know, like don't come in here. Could you tell me about the creator challenge that happened at Slate and where did that idea come from? Yeah, I mean, that's Christina Lee's baby. So I can do my best to sort of like translate her vision. But basically, we, we did a like a mini rebrand for Slate. And we had chatted internally about the fact that, you know, oftentimes software companies will be like, Hey, we rebranded, you know, and like their blue is now a turquoise or something like that.

31:07And it's just like, inside the operation, people care a lot. But like the audience or the average viewer is like, I don't give a shit. I don't care what color you turned your, your logo to I don't care if you change your fonts. So just traditionally, rebrands can take up a lot of your mental bandwidth when you work at these companies, but to the outside world, they're, they're really insignificant. And so we were saying, with that understanding, like, what, what do we want to do to get the word out that we had like a mini rebrand and just raise some awareness for Slate. And Christina was like, well, maybe we should, you know, it's almost like more trustworthy if it doesn't come from us if we don't say oh we're so thrilled to announce our rebrand um so she reached out to a bunch of creators we worked with um creator buzz which is a b2b agency and basically we i think it ended up being 11 people total who they had to announce the slate rebrand but use slate to do it so it was a very meta campaign and ultimately i think it was um And it was picked up by a lot.

32:17Like the marketing team at LinkedIn talked about it and we had some really nice mentions. But I think people appreciated that it was just like a less straightforward, more creative way to talk about a rebrand that didn't just feel like the employees being forced to write their 500 word post and publish it on LinkedIn. It's so funny that LinkedIn, I'm thrilled to announce that I think that anti that, which is. I still see so many brands treating LinkedIn like one of those old press release feeds, which is crazy to me. And where I totally believe we're in a social first era. It's so crazy to me that they use it as like a checkbox, which is absurd.