Social Media’s Best Strategy Secrets, with Ish Verduzco

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Marketing Millennials Episode: Social Media’s Best Strategy Secrets, with Ish Verduzco
Host: Daniel Murray
Release Date: July 18, 2025

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Introduction

In this insightful episode of The Marketing Millennials, host Daniel Murray engages in a deep conversation with Ish Verduzco, a seasoned social media strategist currently leading social and community efforts at a16z Crypto. Ish shares his unconventional journey into the tech industry, his philosophies on social media growth, and actionable strategies for building and managing a robust social media presence without hefty budgets or large teams.

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Ish Verduzco’s Journey into Tech and Marketing

Breaking into Tech with a Non-Traditional Background

Ish opens up about his transition into the tech industry, emphasizing that his path was anything but traditional. Starting as an assistant manager at a 24 Hour Fitness in Southern California, he managed a team of 20 people at the age of 22. His passion for marketing, sparked during the MySpace and AOL Instant Messenger era, led him to pursue a career in tech despite not having a conventional background.

"[...] my first job was actually leading like an assistant manager at a gym at a 24 Hour Fitness in Southern California. [...] marketing is something that I've always been really passionate about ever since back in the MySpace and AOL instant messenger days." ([01:07])

Ish highlights the challenges he faced as the first in his family to attend college and enter the tech space. Despite initial setbacks, his persistence paid off when a mentor advised him to leverage his enthusiasm and unique skill set to secure a role at LinkedIn. Ish's proactive approach—driving overnight from Los Angeles to San Francisco for an interview—eventually led to his current role at a16z Crypto.

"I drove up the next day to San Francisco from Los Angeles. I drove overnight and then I interviewed a day and a half later." ([05:56])

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Philosophy on Social Media Growth

Understanding the Foundation: Audience and Value Proposition

Ish emphasizes that successful social media strategy begins with a deep understanding of the target audience and a clear value proposition. Without these, social media efforts can lack direction and effectiveness.

"The bedrock of everything that I do is understanding who you're speaking to, what your unique value proposition is as a company, as a product, as a service, and then as a marketing arm of all of that." ([07:10])

He advocates for creating content that not only aligns with the brand’s core values but also resonates uniquely with the audience. This involves delivering informative, educational, and engaging content tailored to the interests and needs of the target demographic.

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Strategic Approach to Building Social Presence

Initial Steps: Internal Consultation and Strategy Development

Upon joining a16z Crypto, Ish didn’t immediately launch social channels. Instead, his first move was to engage with various stakeholders within the company to grasp the existing culture, personality, and voice of the brand. This internal alignment was crucial in developing a cohesive and effective social media strategy.

"I tried to speak to everybody, high level, low level, you know, executives, et cetera, to determine like what's the personality and the voice and tone of a16z crypto." ([09:16])

Setting Clear Goals and Choosing the Right Platforms

Ish outlines the importance of defining clear objectives—be it increasing podcast listeners, boosting blog visits, or enhancing overall brand recognition. With these goals in mind, selecting the appropriate social media platforms becomes more strategic.

"Once those are kind of mapped out, then okay, well, what social channels are more most likely to drive growth in those areas." ([09:35])

For a16z Crypto, the chosen platforms were Twitter (now X), LinkedIn, and Farcaster, a decentralized social network. Ish aimed to foster a positive community by striving for 90% positive interactions in replies, thereby positioning the brand as helpful and educational within the often contentious crypto and Web3 spaces.

"One of my personal goals was just like, let's try to get like 90% of our replies to be positive." ([11:02])

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Tactical Social Media Strategies

Comprehensive Social Media Blueprint

Ish provides a detailed breakdown of his comprehensive social media strategy, which can serve as a blueprint for marketers aiming to build or revamp their social presence:

1. Goals: Define clear, measurable objectives aligned with overall business goals.
2. Voice and Tone: Establish a consistent brand voice that reflects the company’s personality.
3. Audience Segmentation: Identify and categorize different segments within the target audience for tailored content.
4. Content Cadence: Determine the frequency and scheduling of posts to maintain consistent engagement.
5. Success Metrics: Establish KPIs such as replies, bookmarks, reach, and impressions to measure effectiveness.
6. Content Strategy: Outline the types of content to be produced, including founder stories, educational posts, and promotional content.
7. Content Pillars: Identify key themes (e.g., DeFi, NFTs, gaming, metaverse) that resonate with the audience.
8. Community Management: Develop guidelines for engaging with followers, including response strategies and engagement etiquettes.
9. Follower Strategy: Define criteria for following new accounts and building strategic relationships.

"These are all the different sections that help define the strategy from top to bottom." ([16:45])

Content Adaptation Across Platforms

Ish emphasizes the importance of tailoring content to fit the unique dynamics of each platform. For instance, strategies that work on Twitter can be adapted for LinkedIn by adjusting the tone to be more professional and mature, thereby catering to the distinct audiences of each platform.

"If Twitter's kind of where I start testing something works really well. I'll figure out how can I craft it for the LinkedIn audience, which is slightly different." ([12:36])

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Building and Maintaining Engagement

Unscalable Practices for Initial Growth

Ish discusses the necessity of engaging in unscalable practices during the early stages of building a social media presence. This includes personalized interactions, intensive community management, and hands-on content creation to lay a strong foundation of followers.

"Most of the things that grow are unscalable at first." ([27:12])

Shift to Scalable Operations

Once a substantial follower base is established, the focus shifts to scalable strategies. This includes leveraging high-performing content, automating certain interactions, and streamlining community management processes to maintain growth without overwhelming resources.

"But until I get there, I can't really do anything." ([29:09])

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Common Challenges and Solutions in Social Media Management

Role Overload and Specialization

Ish highlights a common issue in social media management: the expectation for one person to handle multiple roles, from content creation and analytics to community management and design. This often leads to burnout and inefficiency.

"A social media manager's job is not to do everything. Our job is not to do analytics, growth, five platforms at once." ([24:10])

Advocating for Specialization and Delegation

To combat role overload, Ish recommends specialization within the marketing team. By delegating specific tasks to dedicated individuals or contractors, social media managers can focus on their core strengths, such as content strategy and community engagement.

"Most of the things that grow are unscalable at first... but you have to do those things at the beginning otherwise you're never going to scale." ([27:12])

Documentation and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

Ish stresses the importance of documenting processes and establishing SOPs to ensure continuity and reduce dependency on a single individual. This approach facilitates team scalability and allows for smoother transitions when expanding the social media team.

"You want to be somewhat replaceable or at least like somebody can step in if you need to take a day off." ([20:26])

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Key Takeaways and Insights

1. Start with a Strong Foundation: Understanding your audience and defining a clear value proposition are crucial before launching any social media efforts.
2. Strategic Platform Selection: Choose platforms that align with your business goals and where your target audience is most active.
3. Tailored Content Strategy: Adapt your content to fit the unique dynamics and audience expectations of each platform.
4. Balance Unscalable and Scalable Practices: Initial growth often requires personalized, hands-on efforts, which should transition to more scalable strategies as your following expands.
5. Avoid Role Overload: Delegate tasks and specialize roles within the marketing team to enhance efficiency and prevent burnout.
6. Documentation is Key: Establish clear SOPs to ensure consistency and facilitate team scaling.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Ish Verduzco on Passion for Marketing:
  "marketing is something that I've always been really passionate about ever since back in the MySpace and AOL instant messenger days." ([01:07])

• Daniel Murray on Focused Social Presence:
  "The more focused you can be, the better." ([12:28])

• Ish Verduzco on Being Helpful in Social Growth:
  "the third one, you can be helpful. This is the route that I usually recommend." ([29:49])

• Ish Verduzco on Specialization:
  "Instead of one person doing five jobs, get a more specialized marketer that’s great at social media but they’re fantastic about copywriting specifically on Twitter." ([25:39])

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Conclusion

This episode of The Marketing Millennials offers invaluable insights into effective social media strategy from Ish Verduzco. His emphasis on understanding the audience, setting clear goals, and adopting both unscalable and scalable practices provides a comprehensive roadmap for marketers aiming to build a strong social media presence. Additionally, his advocacy for role specialization and thorough documentation offers practical solutions to common challenges in social media management. Whether you're a budding social media manager or a seasoned marketer, Ish's experiences and strategies offer actionable guidance to elevate your social media game.

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Connect with Ish Verduzco:

• Twitter: @ishverduzco
• Instagram: @ishverduzco
• LinkedIn: Ish Verduzco

Join the Marketing Millennials Community:

• LinkedIn: The Marketing Millennials
• Instagram: @the_marketing_millennials
• Newsletter Signup: The Marketing Millennials Newsletter

If you found this summary helpful, consider subscribing to The Marketing Millennials on your preferred podcast platform and leaving a five-star rating to support the community.

Transcript

[Daniel Murray]

We are back with another episode of the Marketing Millennials podcast. Today's guest is Ish, a social pro who knows how to build from zero and make people actually care. We talk about growing an audience from scratch on social, making content that people actually want to share and how to do it without a big team or budget. This episode was recorded last year, but I swear it's still full of so much gold. Excited to get into it and excited for you to listen.

Welcome 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 top.

What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Market Millennials. I have a special guest today. He crushes it on social. He's crushes on multiple social profiles. I'll let him introduce himself, but welcome to the podcast.

[Ish Verduzco]

Thank you, Daniel. What's going on, everybody? My name is Ish. I currently lead social and community at a16z crypto. I've been in the tech industry for like nine or 10 years now and I like to kind of share how I broke into tech because I have a very non traditional background. My first job was actually leading like an assistant manager at a gym at a 24 Hour Fitness in Southern California. So basically doing like front sales and customer service, managing a team of like 20 people. And I was, I think 22 years old. But marketing is something that I've always been really passionate about ever since back in the MySpace and AOL instant messenger days. I just found it fascinating. And I think the reason why is that I grew up moving around a lot. I must have moved like 12 or 13 times by the time I hit high school. And you know, growing up, it sucks when you're always a new kid on the block and you can never like, you know, keep in touch with your friends. And like back then it was email. My mom didn't let me have an email address at the time. And then this thing like MySpace came along. I think AOL Instant messenger came along first and then I was able to like connect with people and keep those relationships going. So I guess I'll pause there and see if you have anything to chime in. Before I kind of share how I broke into tech, which, no, very backdoor, you know, not, not traditional at all.

[Daniel Murray]

It's actually funny because like, for like the millennials out there, like I remember it was actually hard to if you didn't have a community in your school or anything to, like, find your, like, people.

[Ish Verduzco]

Yeah, exactly.

[Daniel Murray]

Even AIM was just your friends and MySpace was just your friends. And then they were like chat rooms back in the day where you can go find chat rooms, but you never really had an opportunity to, like, Instagram and stuff like that too, and other social. When to break into, like, new communities online, which you can fit in in. So it's. It was a really interesting journey if you didn't go. Especially when you move around so much. It's hard to find your group of people when someone, some people have been living in the same place or took 12, 13 years and very envious of that.

[Ish Verduzco]

People had, you know, their friends since, you know, first grade, all the way to college, and then, yeah, they just been together forever. So, yeah, I went to school at UC Merced, very small school in the Central Valley. And I, like many people our age, was very influenced by, like, the social network, the early days of, like, Facebook, Snapchat, et cetera. And so I always wanted to work in tech. I just didn't know that tech had jobs that weren't engineers, um, until I graduated college. And I was like, talking to people about, like, what I wanted to do. I was trying to apply to jobs. And one of my mentors was like, you know, if you really want to work in tech, you know, you can break in. There's always a back door. And I was like, yeah, but I'm not an engineer, and it's going to take another four or five years in order to learn that skill set. He's like, no, dude. Like, you know that they hire marketers and they hire, like, product managers. And, you know, I had no exposure to tech before. Like, I'm Latino. I grew up the first in my family to go to college. I'm the first person to ever be exposed to any of this stuff. And so I graduated, did not get any of those jobs that I applied to, and then had to move back home with my parents in SoCal and then landed a job at a gym. But every night that I would go home, I would just apply to these jobs that I was like, dreaming of. Until one day there was a role that, that came up and it was like an event specialist role. And so I basically, like, foundation somebody at the company who I always also went to school with. And they just got him on the phone and was like, hey, can you walk over to whoever's the manager for this role? I want to speak to her right now. And he's like, dude, you're crazy. Like, I'm not going to do that for you. Like, like I just started working here myself and sure enough, eventually broke him down. My friend Kevin Ali Busan. And he walked over during lunch one time and handed her the phone and she was hiring for an event specialist and said, hey, I know you don't know me. I've already sent you an email. I've already sent you a LinkedIn message. Here's my portfolio. I know that I'm just like a hungry college kid, but I know that I can do this role better than anybody else. Long story short, I drove up the next day to San Francisco from Los Angeles. I drove overnight and then I interviewed a day and a half later. The morning of, I get a message from the manager and she's like, hey, just to let you know the role that you applied for has been filled. But there's a recruiting coordinator role if you're up for it and kind of a different skill set. And so I applied, I applied for that role. I interviewed and then I got a call at 5pm later on that day and she's like, hey, so want to let you know you failed miserably in the recruiting coordination interview. But you know your, your skill set and your passion for events shine through. So we're going to open up a brand new role for you doing events. And so that's kind of where I started my tech career. From there I've created my own job, my own job role at LinkedIn doing social media marketing and recruitment marketing. And then from there I landed my social media lead role at LinkedIn a few years later. So that's kind of like the career trajectory, I guess.

[Daniel Murray]

I love that. That's a, that's for people. It's sometimes a scrappy way. You have to find the scrappy ways in sometimes. I remember when I started I wanted to work in marketing, but I was in San Diego and San Diego had like no tech jobs or any like.

[Ish Verduzco]

Cool company on the Bay Area. Yeah.

[Daniel Murray]

And I was like, okay, let's just take like a market, like a pardot, like specialist role. And I didn't know what part I was, but I was like marketing technology, that might be a cool thing. And then I worked there for like a year and then finally like I, I saw tech companies hiring for marketing ops and then I'm like, oh, I could go work at tech. But it was like I had to find for someone to take me for like a skill set and then the skill set let me into yeah, exactly.

[Ish Verduzco]

Once you're in, then you can kind of carve your own path. You just need that trust and to get into the network and then you can kind of figure it out from there.

[Daniel Murray]

I want to go into social media marketing and social media growth. I know you're, I know you're passionate about that. Let's start of how, how you think about growth in social media. What is your philosophy? And then we'll go into more tactical things that you do to grow for sure.

[Ish Verduzco]

It's like many other marketers on the podcast that are listening probably understand that like without understanding your audience and, and your value proposition, there's not really much you can do on social or on, in marketing in general. So the bedrock of everything that I do is understanding who you're speaking to, what your unique value proposition is as a company, as a product, as a service, and then as a marketing arm of all of that and then figuring out like, how can you share that in unique creative ways via social and then layering in value add opportunities. So like, if you're, I don't know, if you're building something for B2B SaaS, not all of your content should be like B2B SaaS related. It should be helpful for the people that are using that particular service. So informative, educational, informational and, you know, humorous, et cetera. On social specifically, what I do, I'll go out and I'll find 10 profiles that I want to target and then find 10 other profiles that are similar to them and just keep branching out until I have like a thousand people that I'm kind of targeting that are in my target audience. Because when you're doing it via email, it's like a faceless name. But on social, people have their social profiles online. So I can go find them, see what they're interested in, go through their content, go through the replies, go through their likes, and get a good gauge of what are these people like, what are they most likely to engage with and how can my brand or my product or service deliver content that's going to be shown, shared into other people's feeds?

[Daniel Murray]

So when you started your new, new role, like their social presence was not really big.

[Ish Verduzco]

Yeah, we had zero. I built it from, from scratch.

[Daniel Murray]

So when you're approaching something like that, because I know a lot of marketers like are either in the stage where they come in and there's a social problem with 2000 people and half of them are like bots and half of them other things. What are the first couple things you start doing, I know you, the audience thing is great, but what are the first couple things you start doing to map out? Okay, I want to grow. What channels am I going to be on, what am I going to start posting? What are the first things you started mapping out?

[Ish Verduzco]

So the very first things that I did when I got hired is I didn't even launch the social channels. I didn't even put together a social strategy. I tried to speak to as many people at the company as possible. And just because I was like an outsider coming in and the culture was already developed for the, for the company, for the brand. And so I try to speak to everybody, high level, low level, you know, executives, et cetera, to determine like what's the personality and the voice and tone of a 16z crypto. If they 16z crypto was a person, how would they speak, who would they follow, how would they like, what kind of content is it, are they funny, helpful, et cetera. And then put that into like a personify, a 16z crypto and then develop a social strategy. So um, at the very top of it is like, why are we developing a social strategy? Why is it important to the brand? What are the goals that we're trying to reach? Is it like increased podcast listeners, increased blog visits, Is it just brand recognition in general or increased attention to brand? And then once those are kind of mapped out, then okay, well, what social channels are more most likely to drive growth in those areas? So, so for us that was Twitter X Now and LinkedIn and at their channel, which is called Farcaster. Decentralized social network. It's a decentralized network and a social platform layer on top. Within the crypto community, the crypto and Web3 community, there can be a lot of hate and a lot of back and forth, especially in the replies. So one of my personal goals was just like, let's try to get like 90% of our replies to be positive and over time if they get better and better and better and people start saying like, hey, this is very helpful, this is educational. I appreciate this type of content and that's like a huge W for me. So I can get more tactical if you'd like. I kind of, I've written a few threads.

[Daniel Murray]

I think one thing that I want to dive into that you so important that you said was I think a lot of people just think like, hey, you need a social like presence. Like I think the first step, knowing like why we even need a social presence is important. I don't think like sometimes like that's not. Shouldn't be your first, like focus and like, it might be good to like have like a, as a landing page, but it might not be something you want to grow. So it's so important to like know why we're going on social and then the goals of what we're trying to achieve. So then you set up for success. Because I think they just want to have social because everybody has social, which is usually like an answer a lot of people have. How do you get screwed?

[Ish Verduzco]

Every social media manager's worst nightmare is when the head of marketing or the founder says, hey, I want to be on this new social platform just because it launched or because everybody's on it and you're like, well, our audience is not even on there. The content that we produce is not going to really work well for that platform. And we're putting so much energy into this other platform that's already producing great engagement. Why not just double down there? Most of what I preach when it comes to social media marketing is like, the more focused you can be, the better. And that's with your content, that's with the platforms that you decide to be on, that's with your engagement strategy is be as focused as possible. Because it's very easy to be on like five platforms at once and give each of them like very little attention to detail.

[Daniel Murray]

Yeah, that's why it's also important. You said I started Twitter or X. Now, um, once I've learned X, I.

[Ish Verduzco]

I branched off to LinkedIn and the different, different audiences and different tones as well. But you know, kind of you can pull what worked from Twitter, which is what I do. Like, if Twitter's kind of like where I start testing something works really well. I'll figure out how can I craft it for the LinkedIn audience, which is slightly different, a little bit more serious, a little bit more mature than like the crypto audience on Twitter, which is very like funny or like, you know, faceless names on, on the screen.

[Daniel Murray]

Also why I like how you said it started X, at least for your audiences. It's such a real time feedback platform where LinkedIn takes a while to like, you could like throw up like 30 posts and like where like LinkedIn you only have like one or two a day to like, yeah, you got to.

[Ish Verduzco]

Put out the bangers on LinkedIn.

[Daniel Murray]

Exactly.

[Ish Verduzco]

There's two things that I think will be helpful. The second one is going to be the, like, what I. What's working for us right now, for our growth. The first one that I think we can Dig into right now is like my Twitter strategy. So when I got to a 16z crypto, I talked to a bunch of people, I put together a doc, and then, like, I figured out this is the voice and tone. Next is outlining exactly what I'm going to do and how I'm going to go tackle this goal. So if you're kind of building the social presence from scratch, start off at the very top, obviously your goals. So it could be like increasing your following, driving traffic to your website, being positioned as a leader in the space. Next is voice and tone. So determining, like, are you helpful? Are you playful or supportive? Knowledgeable, insightful, Kind of figuring out, like, if your brand was a person, how would they speak and who you know, who would they be online? Next after that is like the different audience segments that you're speaking to. A lot of people sometimes will say like, oh, well, I only have one target audience. And they're like this huge generic blob of people. But you can oftentimes break it down into more specific audiences, which is helpful when you're developing content because you can say like, all right, if Web3 founders are the majority of people that we're speaking to, well, what are other ones? Web3 enthusiasts, people trying to break into Web3, you know, Web 2.5, Web 2.0 people, people in tech, big tech, et cetera, media industry influencers, et cetera. All of this helps you craft, like your content strategy. Next category is content cadence. How often do you want to post on Twitter or whatever, social platform? And do you want that cadence to go up over time, down over time? And then what are your success metrics? Are you measuring based on replies, bookmarks, do you want more reach? So you're measuring based on impressions, retweets, et cetera. Figuring out what your success metric is so you can kind of determine if you want to increase or decrease. The next thing on my doc is content. So what kind of content do you post? Do you have an editorial team? Do you. Do you have founder stories that you want to tell? Figuring out what are the buckets of content? And oftentimes, if you have a marketing organization, all this stuff is already there, like events, news, community, et cetera. It's just a matter of outlining it. And then at the very top is what's the most important content that we want to share and how can we make it social first? Next is content pillars, the different types of content that you're going to. And this is not meaning like video, short form, etc. It's more of like, for us, it's like, you know, DeFi NFTs, gaming and metaverse. All of these things are like subsets of web3, but they're things that we want to talk about regularly. I get really, really in depth with my stuff just because I'm a social team of one, which usually this is the case. And so I want to make sure that whenever I'm out, whoever's running the social channels can look at this doc and be like, okay, I know exactly how we're going to speak. And Ish gave me examples of like, you know, the voice and tone, etc. I outlined content examples. Specifically, how would you write on Twitter? And for us it's like, I wrote examples for like the helpful tone, editorial tone, promotional tone, supportive tone. This is how we speak. These are the emojis that we use, these are the things that we don't use. And so the next category is like, okay, how do we like, what are bad examples of content that if we push that online, we would be pissed or somebody would be pissed. So you know, the content dos, the content don'ts. I'm going to rush to the last couple content to avoid community management. This is actually really important to our growth strategy. When do you reply or like to content? Do you like every single comment that you get online? Do you like some of them? Only the positive ones, the neutral ones. How do you respond to people, the specific words that you use, the emojis you use, the gifs that you use, the memes that you use, etc. And then examples for each. The last category that I have is like the follower strategy. So for each specific platform, we don't follow everybody. What are the types of people that we do want to follow? You want to be very strategic with them. How do we reach out to them? Do we DM them? Do we try to build relationships with some of them? And all of this can be like, you know, translated to a business. If you run a business or CMO at a company, you want to have all this stuff outlined because it's kind of like your sales funnel at the same time. That's kind of like my, my social strategy. You can kind of use this for any social platform.

[Daniel Murray]

I love the breakdown of it. I think it's super helpful for anybody who wants to start kicking up. One question I wanted to go back to is, when you started a 16Z, how did you know you wanted to start at that company to build a social, like, if someone's going to be get A social media manager. Or it could be different things. Like some people are great at growth, social media growth, Some people are great at keeping a great account. Great. How do you know like this is the social media manager role for you?

[Ish Verduzco]

This took like a lot of like self development work and just kind of like reflecting and like listening to books and podcasts, et cetera. But one thing that I've learned about my personality, and this is like true since I was a kid, is I like to go from like zero to one phase. I don't like to like maintain things. And so when I've like reflected into different jobs that I've done or different projects that I've started, I get so much energy from like the ideation, the creation, the building and like the initial part of the scaling phase, like going from literally zero followers to let's just say a hundred thousand followers or a million followers and then after that the thing is going to grow itself. You don't really need to add that much more creative work in order to get the momentum going. And so kind of reflecting when I was at LinkedIn, we had 400,000 followers when I started and I took us to 1.2 million. Um, and that was really fun for me because I more than double X, you know, I, we, we got over to a million, which is really awesome. But then after that I was like, okay, well what's the next big milestone? We can get to like five, maybe two or three. Um, so I guess speaking to like a potential social media manager or other social managers out there is like finding the brands that are like aligned with your interest or the industry is aligned with your interest and then figuring out would you rather build from zero to something or find a brand that's already doing really well or decently well and trying to like one up it, which oftentimes is pretty difficult.

[Daniel Murray]

I think knowing that too is a great thing because for me I'm, I'm in your boat. I, I'm more of a growing thing phase. I also don't like a lot of red tape. So, so I can, I can, I don't want a lot of peripherals to get things out. I want to be very. Because social is a very quick game. So you have to be, you can be stuck in reviews for.

[Ish Verduzco]

You can't have 48 hour SL turnaround.

[Daniel Murray]

So I think that's so important to know who you are as a person in your career to say like, also like what type of company you want to work with. Do you want to work for like a Startup and mid phase stuff like that. There's all these different things that you should know before you go, go in your career. So I think that's important. Also. One thing I want to nail down that you said that's so good is setting up a sow or like statement or whatever you want to call it, sop, standard operator SOP of like, hey, this is how we run social. So like if I. So you can take a break as a social media.

[Ish Verduzco]

Yeah, most social media managers are so burnt out because you're the only person that could do your job. So you want to be somewhat replaceable or at least like somebody can step in if you need to take a day off, you know?

[Daniel Murray]

Yeah. I think it's so important to have that even, even if as you grow as a social manager, let's say like you, you end up hiring a team now you have like an SOP to just hand off to your next hire and be like, okay, this is how. It's how we do it, this is what we do. So then you can go focus on the next phases of the strategy. So I think that's so important. And I made that mistake a lot early in my career with marking operations. I was like the only marking op. So I was like, I built it all myself. And then, then I was people, I started hiring people and they're like, I had to keep telling them what to do and I should have just day one documented everything. So it's such an important point.

[Ish Verduzco]

And I learned the hard way because when I was at LinkedIn, I was still a team of one leading social for like their biggest business line, talent solutions. And so whenever I would take days off, I would be like, literally sitting on a beach, like stressing or like checking my phone. My manager always had my back, but I, I, you're still a team of one. I didn't, I hadn't, I didn't have things as documented as I, as I do now. Like, you can probably pick up my document and still run the channels, like decently. Well, at least so that nobody notices that I left, you know.

[Daniel Murray]

Yeah, that's the key. That's a key part, I think. And it's also, I think for you is that writing down the tone and make sure that's what I, I've done. Like, even for like the marketing millennials, we started documenting. So if anybody was going to come and post on Twitter or Instagram or anything, it was, it's like, okay, here's how we talk, here's how we don't Talk. These are the words we say. This is the words we don't say. Like, this is how we.

[Ish Verduzco]

Sure. So you got to get really specific. And just for anybody who doesn't do social, like, this level of spec. Specificity that we're talking about, it's like, it sounds. It sounds like common sense or sounds kind of just like, oh, why do that? I already know. But like, you know, your brand is. The entire Persona is going to be. If you have hundreds of thousands of followers, even like a few hundred or thousands, it doesn't really matter the size. Like one word misplaced or one use of emoji or like one meme that's out of place. Like, your audience will for sure notice. It just gives them kind of like a cringe. Or like you. Your. Your brand equity loses a ton in just that one post. So I think that's why I'm so, like, so strict on it, especially in.

[Daniel Murray]

Very strict niches like crypto or if you marketers.

[Ish Verduzco]

Oh, for sure.

[Daniel Murray]

And you're not talking like a crypto person, and you're talking like someone who doesn't know anything about crypto.

[Ish Verduzco]

Oh, man, they'll drag you on crypto Twitter. They will drag you if you don't.

[Daniel Murray]

If you don't like, one word, you could say something like, for example, like the talk. Like when you say someone write like sass with like two capital A's, for example.

[Ish Verduzco]

Exactly. Will track you.

[Daniel Murray]

Yeah, exactly. So, like, you got to make sure, like, you understand those things. And we don't say spell sass like this. We don't say this like this. Otherwise someone who doesn't know, like, it's not a bad, like, bad thing that they don't know, but if they put it on Twitter, the whole community, like, are you. Do you guys even understand us as an audience?

[Ish Verduzco]

Exactly.

[Daniel Murray]

If you put.

[Ish Verduzco]

Exactly.

[Daniel Murray]

So it's. I just want to give a quick example. I bet there's a bunch of crypto examples, but that's. I just seen a lot of people who try to put things out on social that understand that you can read between the lines that they don't understand what they're talking about just because of one word they put out. Last thing I want to ask you is, what is a marketing hill you would die on?

[Ish Verduzco]

Okay, I have one. And a lot of social marketers would agree with me. But outside of social media management, you kind of people, like, scratch your head. A social media manager's job is not to do everything. Our job is not to do analytics, growth, five platforms at once. Editorial blog memes, design work, community management. And it's been, it's gotten better in the past couple of years. But when I started my marketing job or social media marketing job like six, seven years ago, we were expected to do it all. Like okay, this week you're going to write a blog post but make sure you Write also do 40 pieces of content across five different social platforms and don't forget to engage with everybody. And you know we need you in this email marketing meeting because social is going to be included as well. And so we were, we were being like stretched so thin social marketers because we were doing five jobs at once. And a lot of social media managers will complain about this because it still happens today, especially at startups. Unfortunately the bigger organizations are figured it are starting to figure it out. They're like, why not get a more specialized marketer that's great at social media but they're fantastic about copywriting specifically on Twitter. And then I'll help them by getting a designer that's good at doing memes and, and you know, creating infographics, et cetera. And then I'll like, you know, hire a contractor to do blogs or something like that or podcasting. Whereas before and it still happens today, like one person is expected to do.

[Daniel Murray]

It all and people don't understand it's different skill sets. A lot of those things being able to edit videos, being able to create.

[Ish Verduzco]

I've edited some shitty videos before.

[Daniel Murray]

I'm not very good at it. Videos, design, community, manage copyright, understand technology under analytics growth like all these things are, are different. Also brains like sometimes like some social media managers are highly creative. Doesn't mean they're like the best at understanding numbers like this and you have to like find the what they good at and then figure out how to like build at least even if it's not on the social team. Like you can have like a head of content feeding social people social content and you can have a video team feeding because they're already doing video for the companies feeding social some of that video content. There's like you can have support functions that also help the social team do.

[Ish Verduzco]

Their job and like you don't even always need to hire somebody to like compensate for the weaknesses of that social media manager. You can also do like contractors, you can use online tools. You can strip away the stuff that like is not really moving the needle but you're just doing it because that's how it's always been done. Like you don't need to do video, you don't always need to do podcasts, you don't always need to do blog, you don't always need to do X, Y, whatever that is. It's just kind of like double down on your strengths. If you can hire a contractor or hire an agency to kind of fill in the gaps and if not, then just do what's going to work for your brand and your audience, you know. Yeah.

[Daniel Murray]

Going back to what you said earlier is it's focus at the end of the day, the way you grow a great presence is be graded the one or two channels first and then once you've graded one or two channels and you understand and it's like an always on channel that is can keep going, you can start branching out. But also what you said at the beginning, a lot of the things that scale you at first are very unscalable ways of doing it. So things that take you to scale are very unscalable. Community management is like one of the. Even if you put it in a software that helps you, it's still unscalable. You still have to reply to all these people.

[Ish Verduzco]

Exactly.

[Daniel Murray]

Even if you put macros and you're still replying to all these people.

[Ish Verduzco]

For sure. I did every single response myself for. I mean I still do. I don't reply to every single tweet now because we get so many of them, but I try to like as many of them as possible. But early on I would get like at one point our notifications on Twitter was like hundreds every, like every time I checked it every hour, just hundreds of new things coming in, new notifications. So definitely unscalable. But it obviously worked, you know, to get the initial base of following.

[Daniel Murray]

Most of the things that grow are unscalable at first. And that's just the, the especially on social is what you said at the beginning. All the things that you're saying in this beginning are unscalable things. But it takes you to get to the point where when you had 20, 30k that you can scale easily. But reaching it, finding 10 profiles and then finding those, that's unscalable. But it'll help you scale replying to people, it's unscalable, help you scale at the end. Doing that research and getting in depth in all the comments and all the community is unscalable at first, but it will help you get to where you are. But you have to do those things at the beginning otherwise you're never going to scale account unless you get really lucky and elon Musk retweets you or something like that.

[Ish Verduzco]

I did a presentation, like a masterclass on social media marketing. I'll send it to you. Maybe you can include it. It's like a 30 minute, 20 minute video on YouTube. I started off with a meme, but then one of the things that I said is like, there's three ways to grow a social presence. One, you could be famous. Two, you can be controversial. I don't recommend that. One, because it can usually end bad, even if it grows a following. And number three, you can be helpful. This is the route that I usually recommend and let me tell you why. And I kind of dig into it, but it's exactly to your point. Like, if you're famous or you have like an established audience somewhere else, then yeah, of course it's easy. You can throw shit at the wall and it'll stick. But like most people like us, you kind of have to like, figure it out the hard way, which is the not scalable way, you know?

[Daniel Murray]

Yeah. And being helpful usually is very unscalable, but it's also great. It also builds great things. So you have to live and die by what you really want. If you really want to grow, you have to commit at least like the first 10,000, 20,000 followers are going to be very unscalable things you do until you get into an operating rhythm where you're like, okay, I get. I have 30 people that I know, like, are retweeting this that are like high profile people who are great and, or like are in the crypto community that are. That I know will have audiences that will start doing it, but until I get there, I can't really do anything.

[Ish Verduzco]

Yeah, for sure.

[Daniel Murray]

Well, this has been great. I want to also ask where people can find you and where people can find your stuff.

[Ish Verduzco]

Yeah, for sure. It's just ishvirduzco I S H V E R D U Z C O on Twitter, Instagram. I'm going to be More active on LinkedIn. So if you guys are active over there, check me out there. And yeah, this has been really fun, Daniel. I appreciate it. Finally, us getting on a call.

[Daniel Murray]

Well, this has been great and thank you so much.

[Ish Verduzco]

Yeah, man, cheers.

[Daniel Murray]

Thanks so much for listening. Keep tuning in to hear more great insights from the cool, coolest marketers from around the world. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and follow the Marketing Millennials podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. And if you like what you hear, I would greatly appreciate you giving us a five star rating. It helps bring more marketers into our community.