Should my founder be an influencer?

Summary: In this episode of 'Dear Marketers,' Host Emily Kramer and her friends Devon Watts, Head of Product Marketing and Partnerships at Mercury, and Jenny Thai, Head of Content at Vanta discuss the intricacies of turning executives into LinkedIn influencers. They delve into the pros and cons, key factors to consider, and practical strategies for achieving a meaningful presence on LinkedIn. The episode features expert insights from Peter Conforti, Founder of Good Content, who provides frameworks and tactics for successfully managing executive social media influence.

Dear Marketers is produced by MKT1 & Caspian Studios in partnership with Typeform. Episode 4 is sponsored by Framer and Tofu.

About our hosts

Emily Kramer is the creator of MKT1 Newsletter, marketing advisor, and investor. She previously led and built marketing teams from the ground up at Asana, Carta, Astro (acquired by Slack), and Ticketfly. She’s helped hundreds of startups with B2B marketing, has over 55,000 subscribers on Substack, and has reached millions through her content. Kramer’s known for her pragmatic advice, first principles approach to marketing, and her “krameworks”. When not marketing “marketing”, you can find her with her dogs in Oakland, CA or eating ice cream on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee.

Devon Watts is a long-time startup marketer currently leading Product and Partner Marketing at Mercury. Previously, she ran marketing for the high-growth fintech Anrok, and spent time building her PMM, content, and brand expertise at companies like Yammer, Asana, and Carta. Devon has led B2B marketing teams with anywhere from 1 to 25+ people, and has experience in PLG and sales-led motions. In addition to marketing, Devon loves her kids, being on/in/near the water, her dog Dolores, and eating cheese.

Jenny Thai is a marketing leader with 15 years of content and storytelling experience at high-growth B2B startups. She currently leads content at Vanta where she’s building full-funnel programs to fuel brand and business growth. Before that, Jenny was Director of Communications + Content at Clearbit and Head of Content at Asana where she scaled the content team and function from Series C to post-DPO. When she’s not thinking about doing some content, Jenny enjoys reading books, eating noodles, and playing skee ball. 

This episode features an expert segment with Peter Conforti, Founder of Good Content, who builds online audiences for B2B executives through thought leadership content.

We also hear from Clare McClintock, Biz Ops & Marketing at Metronome, the usage-based billing platform that helps you launch products and iterate pricing faster, who asks us “Should my founder become an influencer?”

Quotes

*”It takes a long time to build on LinkedIn. It’s wildly unpredictable and you're kind of at the whim of others. It's not like paid where you can kind of control what goes out or even like email where you know who's on the list. It's difficult to predict, and you can spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to crack the code. But at the end of the day, it's time and authenticity that are going to win the day.” - Emily Kramer

*”I think that the [founder’s] actual desire to [build a personal brand] is more important than you might think. Yes, you can have marketing help and you can sort of prod the person and try to tee them up with topics and all of that. But if they are just not that into it, then maybe try to find someone else in the company. It doesn't have to be your CEO or founder doesn't even have to be an exec actually. And maybe what it really should be is the person who knows the most about the topic that you really want to talk about and get eyeballs on. So I do think the want of the person who is going to be the face of this initiative is a pretty important criteria.” - Devon Watts

*”There's two situations here that we're really talking about. We're talking about the situation where founders and executives often ask you to highlight them as a thought leader, but then on the flip side, marketers sometimes want to force their founders and executives to be thought leaders and the forcing doesn't work. And just because your founders asked you if they should do it doesn't work. And so you need to find that happy medium where the founder kind of wants to do it. And you feel like you have the resources and it makes sense.” - Emily Kramer

*”There's like three big criteria that we look at if somebody is going to be set up for success on this motion. One is credibility and experience. And experience as the ICP, I should say,  because if you think about when you come across a piece of content on social media, the first thing you think of, whether subliminally or explicitly, is, ‘Why the hell should I listen to this person?’” - Peter Conforti 

*”I think  it's really helpful to think about your executive as a journalist in their industry. They're kind of like the new version of a trade magazine or publication that’s reporting out on what's going on in your industry. So if they are having interesting backroom conversations that then they can create a piece of content about and share about like, ‘Hey, I'm hearing this thing from other people in the industry. This seems to be a problem that's coming up. Here's how I think we should deal with it,’ that's going to be very interesting. If you can report out, ‘Hey, I talked to a customer last week and they were dealing with this problem and they solved it in this way. And here's the playbook that you can steal to go do it because your ICP audience looks exactly like they do,’ So you want to have somebody who has these access points, cause they're going to have an interesting thing to report on. They're going to be an interesting journalist for your audience.” - Peter Conforti

Time stamps

[00:15] Meet Devon Watts, Head of Product Marketing & Partnerships at Mercury and Jenny Thai, Head of Content at Vanta

[00:55] Question from Clare McClintock, Biz Ops & Marketing at Metronome: “Should my founder become an influencer?”

[01:34] Initial Reactions and Hot Takes

[02:38] The Importance of LinkedIn Influencers

[04:00] Challenges and Realities of LinkedIn

[05:36] Frameworks for Evaluating LinkedIn Strategies

[07:40] Metronome's Case Study

[09:28] The Role of Founders in Social Media

[16:15] Evolving Marketing Trends

[21:20] Expert Insights with Peter Conforti, Founder of Good Content

[37:48] Setting Up Executive Marketing Strategies

[39:17] Content Production Tactics

[41:37] Audience Engagement Techniques

[43:45] Debating the Value of Personal Branding

[50:03] Practical Tips for Executing Thought Leadership

[55:30] Game: LinkedIn Influencer Challenge

Recommended products & agencies

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Caspian Studios

Connect with: 

Emily Kramer

Devon Watts,

Jenny Thai

Peter Conforti

Clare McClintock

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