Winning on LinkedIn: How Executives Can Build Their Personal Brand with Stephanie Schwab

Did you know that executives who post on LinkedIn are 5X more likely to influence purchasing decisions?

In this episode of Curve Ahead, host Brian Wiles chats with Stephanie Schwab, CEO of Crackerjack Marketing, about:

✅ Why executive branding is the future of LinkedIn marketing
✅ How company pages are becoming less effective in B2B marketing
✅ How to write LinkedIn content that builds trust & engagement
✅ The resurgence of newsletters & why they’re a smart content play
✅ How to overcome writer’s block & find your authentic voice

🎧 Tune in for expert insights on LinkedIn marketing, content strategy, and executive branding!

Transcript

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Stephanie, welcome to the podcast. Today's guest is Stephanie Schwab, the founder of Crackerjack Marketing. And I am Brian Wiles, your host and founder of Autozy. So, Stephanie, do you mind introducing yourself? Thanks, Brian. My name is Stephanie Schwab and I'm the CEO of Crackerjack Marketing, a 14 year old digital marketing agency serving primarily B2B clients. What led you to start Crackerjack Marketing? Well, I've been working in either consulting or agencies all of my adult career. And I come from management consulting and then went into marketing and had just understood the agency model and had a really bad experience with one agency. And when I left there, I was like, I'm gonna do this totally differently. But I started because I felt like there could be a different agency model with less pressure, less total stress. And that's what I've tried to create in these last 14 years. Okay, we have to talk about the name. Can you tell me the story behind Crackerjack Marketing? Yes, it's a good story. I started by just like not knowing that the first year that I was in business, I was Stephanie Schwab Consulting. And then when I started to think about the name, I asked 10 friends to each come up with 25 names. And they came up with some really good ones. Like, there were some great choices. But in the end, I came up with Crackerjack on my own because I was looking for a word that meant expert. And Crackerjack is a person of excellence. It's a Crackerjack somebody who's really great at what they do. Now, little did I know that when I went to apply for the trademark of Crackerjack Marketing, that Frito Lay, the owner of Crackerjack Food, the popcorn caramel thing, would not be happy with that. And so it was a protracted conversation with them over a number of years. And the. The upshot of it is that I am crackerjack Marketing, not Crackerjack, and I have the right to use my name, but I cannot trademark it. So it's. I think it really speaks to who we are. We're excellent at what we do. And it was kind of fun, actually, to tangle with Frito Lay about it. So, good story. I honestly didn't know that Crackerjack meant that you have been a remote first organization for 14 years. Tell me the evolution and why you decided to be remote first. So. So I had worked in an agency in midtown Manhattan for five, six years and had overseen that office having a big transition. We went from one space to a new space. We Built it out to our specs. We spent, you know, tens of thousands of dollars a month on rent. We grew out of it and had to, like, find more space. Like, it was just always such a hassle to deal with space. And, of course, because at the time I was in New York, like, the idea of doing something in Manhattan was out of the question. Like, it was just so, so expensive. And so. And I should say, at the time, I was living in New York, but most of my family was in Chicago, so I was traveling a lot and going back and forth and. And I had a little kid at home, too, and so a toddler. And so I really wanted to do something where I had flexibility and the ability to work from anywhere. So it was very selfish, really. You know, I did it so that I could do what I wanted to do. And it's worked out really well because it meant that I can hire anybody from around the world and get the best of the best. And so I built a team that's truly international. And we span, like, eight different time zones, but across, like, 15 hours of time, and we all work when we can, and we meet when we can, and it all works out. That's incredible. I love that. So I would assume, because you were already prepared for that, Covid really wasn't a big deal for you guys? Covid was not at all a big deal in that respect. Now, we did teach a bunch of our clients how to go remote, so that was like, were truly the experts of that. We taught a lot of them about Slack and about Zoom and about getting your virtual phone number and all that stuff. So that was fun, actually, to do and to feel like were contributing that, you know, in that important time. But, yeah, for us, it was just like another day at the office, really. I think we all felt, like, really good that were already connected online. So, like, as opposed to other people who weren't used to it. Like, I feel like my team weathered the storm better because were already really connected to each other versus other people who'd, like, just stayed at home and didn't have those means to connect. So, yeah, we came out of it pretty well. Can you tell me more about what crackerjack marketing does and who you focus on? Sure. So we are a digital marketing agency that is really focused on content marketing and social media. And what that means is we run social media for big corporate clients, including our former client, Hewlett Packard, Lara, other big B2B companies. And that's been our bread and butter up until the last about 18 months and 18 months ago, we started also doing executive brand building, which is creating executive presences primarily on LinkedIn. And so now we work with executives within companies, usually teams of people, to help them grow their presence on LinkedIn as individuals in support of the company strategy and objectives. So that's been a really cool way to expand our reach and get new clients. And I think it's something we do because of our long history in corporate social media. It's something that we do really well. Do you think that more. That's going to be a more prevalent trend of seeing execs building out their personal brand in support of their organization? No question. You know, especially in B2B world. In the B2B world, it used to be that maybe you had two choices as an executive or a thought leader. You could be on what was then Twitter, or you could be on LinkedIn, or you could be on both, but you weren't, you know, as a. The executive of a, you know, Fortune 500 company, you were probably not going to be on Facebook as your primary channel. Channel or Instagram is your primary channel. Right. Two years ago, certainly in the last year, especially Twitter or X has become not such a viable option for a lot of people. And As a result, LinkedIn has really boomed because of the pandemic, because people were networking online and because I think the demise of Twitter, LinkedIn's become the place for B2B executives. So what we know for sure is that if they get on LinkedIn and they're active on LinkedIn, that people are five times more likely to buy from them. Because people buy from people and not from company pages and company messages. Executives or salespeople or thought leaders. In a company, being active on LinkedIn is a huge benefit to the company. And if the company helps them with it, trains them, supports them, maybe even writes for them or has somebody like us write for them, then it's very frictionless for the executive because of course, time is at a premium. And so the more that you can help them, the better the results. I think that's going to be a new frontier. And luckily, lucky for you for finding it as early as you have is. Is that exact branding? Yeah, yeah, there's. There's only one place to go for organic media. Like, you know, you can increase your efforts on your company page, I guess, but that's not going to do much for you. If you get two or three executives, that's like six or ten timing ten times ing your reach because individuals will get more reach than the company page. Yeah, mine is my company page gets probably a tenth of the traction that my personal does when post these. Post these TikTok. Post these podcasts. So yeah, it's interesting. I, I see what you're saying there. Yeah. Yeah. So let's get back into the other core competencies of crackerjack marketing. You had mentioned you've been in business for 14 years and you started off doing content marketing. How has that evolved over the 14 years? Gosh, it's changed so much. I've actually, I've been doing this for almost 25 and. Scary. Yeah, like 25 years. And you know, of course we've seen social platforms come and go, we've seen blogging rise and fall, but one thing stays consistent and that is that content is the backbone of most marketing these days. And organic content, the stuff that you can still put out on your website or your blog or putting stuff into your YouTube channel or putting stuff on LinkedIn is still really good ROI. Like it. The value that you get from putting content out there, of course it's going to cost you to create content, it's going to cost you to edit videos, whatever. But versus paying for each eyeball individually through ads or partnerships or sponsorships or whatever, it is really good value to do content marketing. So that hasn't changed. Just the where and how we do content marketing has kind of ebbed and flowed, I would say, over the years, but otherwise the need for it remains strong. Yeah, I think the need for organic content is always out there. Giving people kind of the opportunity to share a bit more about themselves in their organization or about their organization and their wins and failures, I think makes, it humanizes not only the person, but also the organization. It helps, I think, magnetize them. People want to do more business with them because they do see that person on a regular basis, even if it's, you know, they don't engage with their content a lot like they see it and then because of that they're top of mind and they're more likely to get additional business. Yeah, I think that's totally right on that. It just enhances everything else that's happening with your company. And yeah, it can really make a big difference in the long run. So let's talk about a platform that I've been debating moving into for a while. Newsletters. What are your thoughts on newsletters? Such a good question. So we think that B2B companies should absolutely have newsletters like traditional newsletters. You know, they should build their email list through lead magnets or demos or whatever they're doing to get people on their list. And then the newsletter is a way to continually nurture the audience. So there's some stats that say that for B2B companies, only 5% of your customers are actually in the market for your product or service at any time. So the 95% of them, like, if you've only got one shot at converting them, like when you know, get them to your page, then you know you're missing out on all the other 95% of the time. And so you really want people to follow you, to get engaged with you, to read your newsletter, to subscribe to your company page. But getting people's email addresses is goal. And so once you have them on your list, like, don't market to them. Nurture them and get them engaged. Get them, you know, replying, you know, questions and consuming what you've got so that you're showing them that you're an expert and you'll be top of mind when they are ready to buy in that other, you know, in that when they get to that 5% time, when they're ready to buy, you want to make sure that you're there and that you're recently there. So weekly newsletters would be really good. Not a lot of clients don't do that, but we like to encourage at least a weekly newsletter because it's. It can make a huge difference. There's another style of newsletter too, which is the kind of substacky newsletter, which is more of like a informational newsletter. And I run one of those as well, called the Networkist. We do profiles of top LinkedInners every week. And so that's more of an educational, informative thing. And that could work for a company. Like, I'm doing it on my own personal brand, but in benefit of crackerjack marketing. But it works really well for individuals who want to be thought leaders as well. I think my challenge when it comes to, like, sitting down and creating a newsletter for myself or for my organization is just that, finding like an authentic voice that I want to share. Right. Because a lot of times when it comes down to the face and voice of my company, it's me. It's literally my face and my voice, which I'm used to, but I don't know how to translate that into writing. So I feel like I am missing out from that perspective on Being able to continue to nurture, finding my authentic voice, and then kind of like engaging content to put into a newsletter is where I'm like, I struggle regularly. Yeah, I, I totally see that. And especially, you know, for a small business owner, for somebody who's a solopreneur, you know, you've got to put so much of yourself into it, and not everybody can do that. Well, not everybody likes to write. So I would say to you, Brian, like, knowing that you're big on TikTok, like, take the stuff that you put into TikTok every week, transcribe it, and edit it a little bit, and that could become a newsletter. I go sort of the other way. Like, I write on LinkedIn a few times a week, and then I take the best of that and I make it my newsletter from my company. Like repurpose and Reuse and not. The audiences aren't going to be 100% the same by any stretch of the imagination. Like, you know, if you've got a little overlap between your newsletter and your TikTok, sure, it's fine. Not everybody's going to see your TikTok stuff and not everybody's going to open your newsletter. So I, you know, I think people should try to do it because it's such a great way to stay top of mind with your audience. Yeah, I'm a big fan of being able to take content and reuse it. Right. Like, these podcasts will help generate a bunch of shorter clips that I can use as YouTube shorts. That puts it into a totally different, like, viewing scenario for people to gain presence about me and you kind of the things that we're talking about, and then be able to post that also on LinkedIn and on TikTok. It like, it's kind of this reuse, recycle mentality. I think that there was. There's a creator out there that basically it says start with like a blog post first. And if you create a blog post, you can create, you know, 50 pieces of content from there, whether that be like 10 Twitter tweets, like three shorts, and then just kind of cross post those. So I thought that was kind of an interesting thing that I, I tried for a little while, but it's easier for me to shoot video than it is for me to sit down and just write. I think I just have like a permanent writer's block. But that video could become those 50 pieces of content in written form as well. Right. And so, and especially with AI, which is so Helpful. You know, if you take your original transcript and you ask AI to not change a word, right? You don't want the AI voice. You want your voice, but you ask AI to say, like, make this transcript into an email and you know, but keep exactly the same language. It'll do that. And so, you know, we. We're in an age now where there's no real excuse, Brian, for not writing a newsletter. Just guilty of tiny little bit. Okay, fine. No, this may just be the kick in the butt that I need to get that going, because, like, if you look at some of the newsletters out in the space, right, There have been huge, like, newsletter acquisitions in the past year or two. Like, price that they trade at is. Is insane. And it's mostly just being able to buy the. The data that supports them. But, yeah, I thought that was really interesting, and I know that I'm missing out on something by not doing it, but. Yeah, no, it's why I'm having this conversation with you. Yeah, yeah. Next steps. It's all right. We got to go at our own. Pace 100%, so let's change topics a little bit. You had mentioned that you have a team in eight different time zones, and then you kind of support 15 working hours a day. How does that influence your strategy as a marketing team? So my team is from all the way from the Philippines to Los Angeles and everywhere in between. Now we have three people in Barcelona, so our heaviest concentration is here, but we have a number of people in the States, and then we've got people india and in the country of Georgia. So we really have a global team, which is super cool. It's in part because I teach digital marketing at a global university, and I get to hire my students later. And so wherever they are in the world, you know, I know that they're really good, and so I get to hire them. That's. That's been one of the best things about what I do. But we try to align people with clients, time zones as much as we can. We now have. We hadn't for a while, but now we have a new Barcelona client. And so we are aligning that work with people who are here in Barcelona as much as possible or India, which is four and a half hours ahead of us here in Barcelona. And so, you know, when we can. We do that, we have a West coast client, and so we have somebody who's working late eastern time hours to be able to service our west coast client. And so it's tricky sometimes. You know, you don't always have somebody available for the right client, and it's not always the best fit. And so balancing both the client needs and the time zones can be a little. A little tricky, but we make it work. Everybody's super flexible. Everybody's grateful, I think, for the opportunity to work from home and work from anywhere. And everybody, including myself, are willing to work some kind of weird hours sometimes because they get to do it from wherever they are. So I hope that's something that we continue to be able to do, that people are happy to do it, because it's a really important part of how we work. I think it's interesting that you. I mean, it makes sense that you're aligning resources to the closest client. Is there ever an opportunity for you guys to kind of do a Follow the sun method, especially when it comes to, like, major problems within the organization that as people come on board. Right. You're able to pull in more resources or kind of pass it on to the next, and by the time your tomorrow comes, it's already solved for you. That happens every single day in. In this company. Yeah, our designers are india. And so, you know, for our US Team, especially, like, that's kind of. They're almost a whole day apart, a work day, certainly. And so there's a lot of, like, sending it over the transom, you know, sending it into Notion. We. We do all of our tasks at Notion, maybe with a quick slack message like, hey, I put that in notion for you. And usually in the morning, people wake up and it's done, which is, you know, people in the States, it's done, which is amazing. And then our India team is super cool about, like, getting on a late call if they need to every now and then, and our US Team about getting on an early call every now and then. And so. Yeah, I think it works out really well. The Follow the Sun method. I forgot that's what it was called, but we've been doing it for a long time. Yeah, I was introduced to it, I would say, probably like eight years ago now, where I was working with a small SaaS CRM company where we had teams in the US UK, the Czech Republic, and in Australia, like, being here in Denver, we would get on board with Australia in our afternoon. Australia would pick it up. They were able to give it over to our European team, and our European team would pick it up, and we would pick it up in, like, the following day. So usually, I mean, it cuts down on how much time a problem or issue will take, especially when were in software development, so. Especially when it came to software stuff. Yeah, yeah, totally. It's. It's exactly how we solve problems, too. We had mentioned AI and kind of how you guys are definitely leaning into it. Is there anything to note there, like, any cautionary tales with AI from your perspective? Sure, yeah. AI is really changing the way that we work. Changing the way a lot of way that a lot of people work. I would say, like, at the beginning, like, our main writer was, I think, a little bit nervous about it, like, didn't want touch it. And were like, you got to get on board with this. Like, you're. You're going to end up with a better product for having done it. And so she got on board. Like, everybody in our agency uses it. I think it's really important I teach my students how to use it well. But I think that's the key, is you have to know how to use it well. The New York Times this year coined a new term for all the crap that's going out onto into the world on social and blogs that's only AI generated, and it's called slop. And so we want to avoid adding slop to the slop pile. You know, we want to still turn out really good content, whether that's written content or video content. We want to turn out great content, and we want it to not sound like everything else and not be AI ified. You know, we want our executives to have their voice really clear, even if we're using AI to help or clean up or structure some of their content. So we, I think, use it as a tool, not as an extra person, if that makes sense. Like, everybody in our team knows how to use it for what they're using it for, and we're constantly innovating that, but we're not relying on it. It's not writing any of our content word for word. Like, that would be just adding crap, I think, to the. To the universe. And we don't need any more of that. So we need original voices, we need original thought. And so we're not going to rely on AI. I would agree. I think AI is great for, like, idea generation. And then on the flip side of that, being able to analyze, like, analyze the data to provide you answers way more quickly than it would have with, like, analyst or someone that you would have actually combed through the data. So I think that there's definitely some advantages of leaning into AI, right? Like I think most of the things that I use on a daily basis now have some sort of AI proponent to it. Whether it's like, AI will help edit this video or, you know, I use AI a lot for, like, these. The questions that I reach out to people on when I'm doing my podcast. So, like, it helps kind of help me personalize some outreach. It helps with this, that and the other thing. But I do think that there is definitely a heavy human element to it that needs to be there to be managed effectively. Absolutely. It's, it's, again, it's a tool. Like you trust what your calculator tells you, but you go and make sense of it, you know, in whatever way you need to make sense of it. So I think that's what AI is really about, you know, so it's. It's a tool. It's a tool that we use every single day. On that note, talking about kind of Trends, as the CEO of a B2B marketing agency and a former consultant. I wouldn't actually put you as a former consultant. I think that CEOs consult all the time. What are some of the biggest challenges you think B2B marketers will face in the coming years? Yeah, I mean, I think it's because of that AI slop, because of all the content out there, it's going to be harder and harder to get noticed and harder to get seen. And your company is going to have to really be above the, you know, above the pack in order to do that. AI is also making it really easy to rush new tools to market and new software and new products. And so, you know, we're going to. It's going to be harder and harder, I think, to make your mark as a company, as a. As a product, as a individual. So knowing that, I think developing your people and giving them really great resources and tools to be able to both do their jobs better, but also get their own brand out there is going to be really increasingly important because people buy from people. And so for your humans to be out there being human, that is going to help you rise above all the noise, because there's going to be more and more noise. So, you know, there's always change. There's always change in marketing and especially in social media. But I think the constant is the need to be individualized and quite specific about what you do and who you are, not trying to sell all things to all people, because that's increasingly impossible as we're fragmented in society. But, you know, trying to really be human, I think is going to be the next big challenge in this AI age. You had mentioned change. Like, I mean, the space is constantly changing and I think that the half life of things in marketing now is even shorter than it was, partially because of AI. What are some of the changes recently that have kind of surprised you or have there been any that actually surprised you? I'm not easily surprised anymore. I used to be more easily surprised. I would say, okay, big one is X Twitter. And you know how that's kind of just essentially for most businesses, kind of gone away like, and in a hurry, like in a weird way, like it's just risky to have your company on Twitter. For most companies, and I would say a publicly traded company or a company that's really involved in politics or particularly white right wing politics or right wing journalism, like, of course they're going to still be there and that's fine. But for your average company, it's risky because your stuff could be shown next to who knows what. There's not a lot of moderation and it's a scary place for a lot of brands to be. So that was a surprise. Like, who would have thought that essentially Twitter would go away or become something that it's become. But we know that social networks come and go. You know, I watched the rise and fall of MySpace and had clients on MySpace back in the day. Right. Or Vine. So we know that this happens. But I think people kind of thought of Twitter as like a public utility. It was where police like said, you know, a disturbance on the street, avoid the traffic. I don't think that's happening very much anymore. And I don't know where that's going to go. I just don't know where that information is going to go. So yeah, I think that was going to be my follow on question is like kind of with the disappearance of that. I know that there has been a large migration recently to. I think it's called Blue Sky. But do you think that there may be another emerging player who will kind of be somewhere in between where X is or where like just going back to where Twitter used to be. Do you think that will happen? It's interesting that you bring up Blue Sky. I've had a bunch of conversations about Blue sky just today and it is definitely on the rise. I joined it really early on when it first appeared on the scene. And I've been on there now, have not been active, but I've been watching it for well over a year. I was really amazed. I'm sure. Well, I'm not sure when this podcast will come out, but this week there was a attempted coup essentially in South. South Korea where the leader of South Korea declared martial law and within six hours he backed down for the first time I think ever that news hit Blue sky and didn't really hit Twitter, that the journalists that were reporting it from the ground were reporting it on Blue Sky. And that made me think back way back to the Arab Spring when the uprisings in Cairo were being covered on Twitter for the first like that. That was the first time that people were getting real time news coverage through Twitter or one of the first times, one of the most significant times and really helped cement Twitter as the go to breaking news source. It'll be really interesting to see if what happened this week on Blue sky and South Korea continues. But it could be a fierce competitor and become the Newtown Square or maybe not. It could also just for some reason not succeed. You know, it doesn't scale fast enough or it becomes too thought of as liberal and you know, left leftist or whatever. I hope that it becomes a good replacement to Twitter because we need one. But I'm. The jury's still out, I think it's hard to say. Yeah, I think that there's a couple of challenges that I see early on. Right. Is, is that not necessarily that it's over moderated, but it's definitely moderated. And then right now I think that there's just kind of a lack of integration with a lot of these other platforms that help. You know, if I'm posting something onto YouTube, for example, like there's an option for me to be able to post that onto X right there and create the post versus I don't think there is that sort of integration quite yet with Blue Sky. Yeah, I agree. It's definitely. It's got a long way to go. Their team is tiny. They are struggling to get servers to keep up with demand, you know, but today they just hit 24 million users, so it's definitely catching on. And you know, it seems like the engagement there is super high compared to X certainly, but maybe in other platforms. So again, like from a business point of view, our business is flocking there. No, not yet. It's still primarily, I think, a journalist's and a citizens individuals platform. But I think businesses would be wise to claim their handles there and be ready to embrace it if it seems to be something that really takes off. Noted. Well, Stephanie, I appreciate your time today. You've been great. This is the last thing in my podcast. I give all of my guests 90 seconds to talk about whatever they want. So that could be crackerjack marketing. It could be some other passion project. So without further ado, the next 90 seconds belong to you. That's so cool. So I, as you've heard, I'm super passionate about LinkedIn. I'm a big user of it. I love working on it. I think it's like a really human platform where businesses can humanize themselves through their people. So if anybody out there listening is interested in getting More active on LinkedIn, we have a profile optimization service. It takes two weeks. It's $1,000. Everything is completely done for you with, of course, your approvals. And so that's one service that we offer. And then we also offer content creation services for executives and executive teams. So that's more bespoke. We'll talk to you about what your needs are and price that for you. But we'd love to talk to anybody who sees the ability for their people, their executives, their thought leaders to get More active on LinkedIn, and we want to help support people in that. Awesome. Stephanie, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much, Brian.