August 22, 2025 • 29 mins
When social media first appeared on the marketing scene, few saw it as a legitimate business driver. For Robyn Nissim, it wasn’t just a new channel; it was a blank canvas to create impact. In this episode, I sat down with Robyn, a LinkedIn Creator, content strategist, and fractional VP of Social, to talk about turning “just vibes” posting into measurable business results, scaling processes, building brand voice, and keeping your sanity in an industry that never stops moving.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today, I'm joined by someone who has not only built
some of the most iconic brands social media presences in
the world, but has also changed the way companies think
about social as a true revenue driving channel. Robin Nissum
is a social media and influencer marketer who is launched
and scaled social strategies for brands like Nissan, Alta Beauty, Anastasia,
(00:22):
Beverly Hills, and Alo Yoga, where she helped drive millions
in organic revenue. Now through her social proof training, Robin
helps executives, marketers, and teams turn social from a reactive
task into a strategic growth engine. In this episode, we
dive into her career journey, the systems and processes that
(00:43):
make social scalable, and her advice for marketers who.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Want to earn a real seat at the table.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
So let's dive in, all right.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Diving in, So, you know, I remember a time when
social media was just not a job at all, and so,
you know, thinking back to like how it's evolved, how
did you get into this world of social media? And
when did you realize that it wasn't just about posting
pictures but a career that could move the needle for
big brands.
Speaker 5 (01:34):
Yeah, and thank you for acknowledging that, because hearing this
question brings up so many feelings for me, because the
reality is that when I got started, social media wasn't
a real job, like I quite literally made it up
on the fly. So my story is that I graduated
college and I went straight into traditional agency advertising and
(01:55):
being a millennial, I just found nothing resonated with me.
And I got lucky in the sense that the word
millennial was trending when I happened to be one in
the workforce, and that gave me the opportunity to sit
in meetings that I had no business being in and
I got to speak and when people ask me like, hey, Millennial,
how do we reach you?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I was super honest.
Speaker 5 (02:18):
I was like, listen, it's crazy that we're spending a
million dollars on that TV commercial because I'll never see it.
Like I stream everything, I have an AD blocker, and
I'm addicted to social media. It's where I get all
my news, it's where all my friends are, and so
if you want to reach.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Me, this is the way.
Speaker 5 (02:33):
And that gave me the opportunity to open up brand
channels for Michelin, for Nissan, I did that in the
agency world for several years before winning a Webby Award
on a campaign that went completely viral, tweeting dead Mouse
from the Nissan account, and it resulted in us delivering
him a car and he used.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
It in his YouTube series for Free.
Speaker 5 (02:55):
It was like millions and millions and millions of earned
media impressions in Wow twenty fifteen, like it was unheard of,
and so I quit.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
I had my mic drug moment.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
I was like, I'm carrying the whole team on my
back out of here and was quickly humbled by the
power of global brand recognition. When I started freelancing for startups.
That's how I found my place in the influencer marketing industry.
And to bring it back and answer your question, I
don't think my little social media job was ever actually
(03:28):
taken seriously until the pandemic when every single other channel
was shut down and I was at Anastasia Beverly Hills,
which is eighty percent dependent on retail for revenue driving,
and so when retail was shut down and my channel
was the only channel that was still capable of getting
(03:49):
in front of people and able to put our field
team who spent their days going into stores to work
by getting them on live and creating content for the
brand and getting in the comment and having conversations with
customers and having virtual meetings to discuss their exact color
and what they needed from makeup.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
It was then.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
Taken really seriously, like wow, social media is a channel
that can hold the business together, and putting all of
the company's resources into social at that time paid off phenomenally.
We were making so much money when the rest of
the business was completely closed. And so I would say
(04:31):
it was the pandemic, unfortunately, for better or for worse,
is what gave media as a whole credibility.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
I mean, the pandemic changed so much, especially for marketers
and just the way we work, the way we consume media.
You know, I wasn't on TikTok until, you know, just
as a consumer until the pandemic and now addicted to it.
You know, I wasn't working remote and now I haven't
had a job.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
In office since.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
I mean, there's just so much that has changed. So
for you, there was this moment that you just stopped
doing your little social media job, as you said it,
and started running it like a business.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
What was that moment for.
Speaker 5 (05:08):
You, So I would say again, at Anastasia Beverly Hills
pre pandemic, I got there, and for context, Anasasia Beverly
Hills is the largest privately held beauty brand in the world,
and it has one of the largest Instagram account followings online,
or it did when.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I started there.
Speaker 5 (05:27):
I think when I started it was at like seventeen million,
and I took it to twenty four million. And when
I got into the details, I was like, okay, so
what's the strategy.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Oh, we're just posting based on feelings.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
Okay, how are we supporting e com Oh, like only
on product vibes today? Well, where are we tracking you know,
the metrics? How are we measuring impact? Oh we're not okay,
And so really again, it was twenty nineteen when I
started working cross functionally with other teams to understand our
(06:00):
impact and really show like, look, this.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Is not just vibes.
Speaker 5 (06:04):
Like, yeah, it is vibes and it's super important and
it's giving us clout, but we can measure that and
then you know, once we started doing that, the finance
team was super interested and they wanted to have meetings
with me, and I just remember being like, wait, I'm
just a little social media manager. Why am I having
meetings with the head of finance? This is crazy? But
that gave me the opportunity to then, in my next
(06:26):
role head of social alo Yoga, manage a budget and
completely scale the team and work with paid to get results,
and speak in forecasting meetings and reporting and be taken
seriously and sit at meetings with the CEO of my
company and have a voice for my channel. Because in turn,
I was able to completely shift consumer behavior right with
(06:49):
that brand specifically, And so I would say that was
really the moment Again twenty nineteen on Astassia Beverly Hills,
I think that was like, really the that's incredible, the
brand that changed things for me.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
What a cool brand to be able to grow your
career at and just be able to thrive there. I
love it. Thank you so For those young or mid
career managers stuck in the grind of content calendars and
you know, just not being able to do what they
want to do, what's your advice for shifting their mindset
to think like strategic leaders?
Speaker 5 (07:23):
Yeah, I would say, first and foremost, just having been
in this industry and hired so many managers and run
so many teams across at least ten different businesses.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
You have to put in your time there. Number one.
Speaker 5 (07:39):
No one wants to do the grunt work, but you
have to do the grunt work for years and years
and years to be able to really become an expert
at it and master it, not just one year. And like,
just know you're not alone. We've all been there, We've
all put our time in. Trust me, I still am
doing social media manager roles at my fifteen years of
experience level. So with that said, I would say, become
(08:02):
a master at your craft. Really tap into your audience
and know them and understand them better than anyone, and
then take those insights and share it with your internal team,
and not in just a way of likes and reach,
but talk about your audience in a way that actually
(08:23):
measures your impact as a social marketer. So, for example,
you want to show that you can not only grow
a following online, but you can get that following who's
super engaged to now go sign up for a product
in advance of it dropping, so that then you can
have early access and you're creating now new funnels within
(08:46):
the business. I want you to think beyond social media
and think full picture marketing? So what can your channel
actually do? Don't just think about it in terms of
likes and engagement, think about picture and full funnel marketing
and tying it into all of your other marketing partners
in the organization.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
That's so smart.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
I mean, it's the best way to be taken seriously
because social media, as we both know, is the hardest
part of marketing to be taken seriously by C suite
And it's like speaking two different languages. So what is
your trick to making social media matter to those executives
who maybe don't understand its value beyond getting likes or
make this go viral?
Speaker 5 (09:30):
Yeah, so I think it's super important to look at
social media. I always say it's like a three part story.
Number one, you're looking at your vanity metrics, which measure
how you resonate with an audience. And that's super important
because from those resonating metrics, you can also kind of
see intent right saves and shares. Let you know, oh,
(09:53):
someone liked it so much that they felt called to
share it with someone. They liked it so much they're
gonna come back to it. It means we're inspiring them.
And you know we were in their pocket now, right,
But then are you able to actually elicit a response?
Are you so impactful do you resonate so deeply that
you can get someone to take that next step, which
(10:15):
might be, like I said, signing up for a new
product drop, going to the website and executing a purchase.
And then once they get to the website, are they
actually doing the thing that they you know, intended to
do by clicking? And so it's a three part story,
and I think that you need to be really clear
with the C suite about how you are effectively telling
(10:39):
that story, right, Like, again, you want to measure your
impact and share that. So we have three hundred people
super interested in this thing, like from what we can see,
it's trending upwards, and we anticipate that at least fifty
percent of that three hundred people we can drive to
the website. And then once we get them to the website.
(11:01):
Now is really on the e comm team, but we
can deliver at least one hundred and fifty eyeballs, right,
And for some brands that might be a huge number,
for other brands that might be nothing. And it's going
to depend everywhere. But really showing the full picture journey
of what you're doing beyond just oh yeah, we got
twenty likes?
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Cool? What does that mean for us?
Speaker 5 (11:21):
Right?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Tell me more about the twenty likes.
Speaker 5 (11:23):
Of course, everyone wants to hear revenue, right, we can drive.
For example, when I was at Allo, I made seventeen
million dollars a month organically off social and once you're
doing that, of course that's really the only thing anyone
cares about. But it took a really long time to
get there. It actually didn't it took It didn't take
(11:43):
that long.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Most brands it would take a while, but.
Speaker 5 (11:48):
Still six months and social media years did feel like
three years.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
To be fair, I mean that you feel like everything
so much longer. I don't even know what day it
is because I work four quarters ahead in marketing, so
we're all just all over the place.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
And I'm sure you've had.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
Those moments where you walked into a room, both consulting
and in your corporate like world, where you realize that
you now have to convince leadership that social isn't just
a fun add on or fun thing that marketing is
just playing around with. What's your go to method for
turning social metrics into something that executives care about and funding.
Like you were just saying, you know, the impressive stuff
(12:26):
with organic, but like what is your go to that
you can be like, hey, listen, this is making an impact.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (12:32):
So again, like I said, everything that I've said up
until now, showing Okay, like we teased an event, this
is how many people are interested. We then from the
level of interest that we got, ask people to sign
up and let us know what city they're in. We
found out that X number of people are in this
city and essentially showing them that social media is so versatile.
(12:57):
It is truly the brand's number one owned communication channel
and you could do whatever you want with it, from
figuring out you know what your audience wants from you,
if you want to get them involved in product development,
if you are seeing, hey, the customers really despise the
name of this product, like it's all I'm seeing in
(13:18):
the comments. It's such a big role that can be
used in so many different ways.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Now, I think finding the.
Speaker 5 (13:26):
You have to of course, when you're speaking to the
C suite, you have to play into what they want
to hear, right, Like that's just the reality of being
successful in business. You're not trying to combat someone, You're
trying to help them achieve their goals. And I think
fundamentally showing all of the ways that social media can
(13:48):
help achieve those goals is going to be the thing
that helps you win.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Right.
Speaker 5 (13:52):
So, if you know that your CMO has X as
an initiative, I'm just trying to think of an example,
find ABC reasons to support how social can bring idea
X to life.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Yeah, work backwards from what they're trying to do exactly exactly,
so smart. I know you've seen it all from brands
ignoring social media from it becoming their lifeline like Alo,
where it's making so much money organically. What's the biggest
shift in how brands approach social and why do you
think that some brands still hesitate to invest fully in
(14:27):
social media? And what would you tell them if you
had five minutes to change their minds? You're in an elevator.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Okay, wow, where do we even begin with this one?
Speaker 5 (14:37):
I think that the biggest thing that I see, especially
in these past four years of working independently as a
VP fractional VP of social generally ninety percent of brands
and businesses cannot keep up with the speed at which
social media moves, and the people at the top who
are the decision makers have never touched social media. They
(15:00):
don't know what it looks like, they don't know how
to resource it, they don't know what a good strategy
even encompasses. And so they just put a young, socially
native person into the role, and that person is now
responsible for a core marketing function, and so it falls flat.
And I think that's really the biggest issue. And what
(15:22):
I would like to use the remaining four minutes in
the elevator to say is like, hey, listen, like there's
actually a formula to being successful on social It is
a science that I personally have replicated at least at
five different brands now, and I'm able to take organic
social to minimum two percent of business revenue. Let me
teach you how to do it and the way that
(15:44):
you do that. It starts with having a strategy that
is all encompassing of the business, that supports every single
business initiative, good processes, that allows your social team to
have resources and support the way that your email marketing
team has analytic and the way that your web team
has a copywriter and having access to photo shoots and
(16:05):
plugging into influencer and having content made directly for those channels.
And once you fully staff and support social the way
that every other marketing arm gets supported and staffed, you
can take it to business revenue. You can make it
a business driver. And so I hope that answers the question.
(16:27):
I feel like there are a few questions in there,
but I would just say it really does start with
processes to scale, Like, you cannot scale without a process.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
You can't scale without a strategy.
Speaker 5 (16:39):
It's not something that just happens by throwing spaghetti at
the wall. And yes, the game of content development is
a little bit like throwing spaghetti at the wall. But
make no mistake, social media has to be strategic and
there has to be a plan in place to get there.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. I mean, I think
in our own content production.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
I think in brand it's all a plan.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
Now, some things go viral that you wouldn't expect, and
other things that you expect to go viral go flat.
But it's all behind a strategic plan of content pillars
and timing and staying in your lane and being on brand.
There's just so much that goes into it. Not jumping
on every trend, jumping on the trends that matter to you,
and we.
Speaker 5 (17:21):
Can't all be duo lingo right and not doing the
thing that your CEO's cousins son suggested at a barbecue
three weeks ago, like, trust your social teams. These are
the people that you've hired to be the expert authority.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
In this space. Let them.
Speaker 5 (17:40):
Like I would never go to my email marketer and
be like, hey, I think you should actually do X
y Z because that's on my job, Like unless they
wanted to have some sort of cross functional brainstorm and
I was asked for my opinion, that's the only way.
But there's something different with social media because everybody has
it where they think because they're posting their own personal
(18:03):
life that they can do the same thing for the business.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
And the reality is when.
Speaker 5 (18:07):
It comes to making social media a revenue driving channel,
it's very different than posting even about your personal brand.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Like they're two different things.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
Yeah, I completely agree. I don't have the social background
that you do. I'm digital marketing and I have my
other skills. But people will see my LinkedIn and they're like, oh,
well you could do that for brands. It's social No,
that is not my expertise and what my personal brand
is is not going to drive for this. You trust
the experts that are in the room doing that. And
I do think that is a mistake that brands make
(18:39):
a lot is they hire influencers who have built their
own tiktoks and things to come and do brand and
it just falls so flat.
Speaker 5 (18:48):
I've seen it a ton of times where I'm like, Okay,
that's so cool. You have a content creator. Oh, they're
running social. This just looks like an extension of their
social where's your brand in this? And this? This is no
shade against content creators and listen, I follow you on LinkedIn,
we connected on LinkedIn. You are brilliant and I'm sure
(19:10):
if you put your mind to it, you could and
would figure it out. But it comes down to truly
being a master at becoming the brand, not yourself. And
so that means how does the brand feel about this?
How does the brand show up? What does the brand
stand for? What's the brand's tone of voice? Like who
(19:30):
is the brand for? Who's the brand not for?
Speaker 4 (19:32):
Yeah, you have to become that brand exactly like them,
think like them, And that's a difficult thing to like
step outside of if you're a content creator all the time.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
So you know, we talked about.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
Some great social strategies that turn things around, for like Alo,
can you dive into that a little bit more than
what success you saw there and.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
How Yeah, So Alo was crazy. When I started at Alo,
it was Alo Yoga.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
Alo didn't exist yet, and I was reporting into my CEO,
Danny Harris, and he told me, he was like, listen,
you have one job. Make this brand fucking cool. Like
I just want to be cool. I want to be
the it girl. I want to be street style, I
want to be fashion. I want to be men's performance,
hyper masculine, just like Rough. And I was like, okay, bet,
(20:22):
let's go. And I knew from what we had already
because when I started to Alo, there was a few
million followers on the Alo yoga account and I was like,
these people are so into this yogi kind of like
affluent mom lifestyle, a little wander lust energy. If we
start showing them like men's muscles and grit and fashion, like,
(20:44):
they're not going to like this. And so I was like,
why don't we just open multiple different channels and this
will become each of our different business units and That's
exactly what I did. I opened Alo Alo men Allo
Wellness for all things lifestyle and body care and played
into each of those lanes with a unique content strategy
(21:06):
for each, with a unique influencer strategy, supporting with a
unique paid strategy for each, hyper targeting exactly who we
were looking to get in the market. That's the word,
hyper targeting our exact buyers.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
And it worked.
Speaker 5 (21:24):
And we had a massive flywheel marketing flywheel as well,
where Social and Influencer Why Influencer team mirrored my exact
social strategy. We worked hand in hand on everything. Social
team was creating briefs weekly for the influencer team in
addition to the influencer teams briefs that they were creating.
(21:46):
Like it was, it was so exhaustive. And then we
also had events that we were plugging into and driving
people to and tapping from our community to throw events
so that we could create is almost like insane brand
affinity with people and bringing them into the family. And
(22:06):
then there's pr of course, like making sure that the
world is seeing it and people are talking about it
outside of our channels. And I think that's the thing
that was just unbeatable about it. It was a true
lohemith Like we had a thirty person marketing team.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
It was.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
It wasn't even imagine having that many different just like
icps for different channels is so crazy. But it worked.
I mean, Alo is massive. I love that you didn't
like pigeonhole one type of person into the Alo brand.
You separated that out and noticed that and said, hey,
let's just dive into each of these. You created so
(22:48):
much more work for you and your team, but it worked.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
Well, Like I'm sure you were quite busy, and you
know that leads me in that social media is chaos
a lot of the time. But it's a lot of
chaos if you don't have a plan, especially, so what
saved your sanity in building scalable processes? Like what's your
advice for social media managers who feel like they're constantly
scrambling chasing the next trend or just making it to
(23:15):
the next post and then running the next No.
Speaker 5 (23:18):
I'm just gonna shamelessly plug my group training program. I
launched last summer a group training program called Running Social
for Brands, where I literally teach my exact process from
how to build a strategy and to you know, unlock
your entire roadmap, how to execute, how to infiltrate other teams,
(23:39):
how to get support, how to get resources, how to
work cross functionally so that you can scale. And it's
my belief that you have to have your strategy locked
and you have to have execution super dialed in to
be able to scale. Without those two things, you'll never
really get off the ground. And so I teach those
in my eight week program. I'm just getting so much
(24:02):
good data. All of my people from last summer who
took the course have been promoted this summer. They actually
got promoted in the spring, and it's trickling in. People
are getting jobs from job interviews using my methodologies. But
with that being said, it comes down to having a
sound strategy and really really well oiled machine like processes
(24:26):
because it's repetitive. But it's also like you never do
the same thing every day, but you're always doing the
same thing.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
If that makes any sense.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
Yeah, it does, and it doesn't I get it, but
it's you know, that's so good and I love I mean,
what an incredible feat that people are getting promoted and
new positions and things like that from taking your process.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Not surprised at all. But heck, yeah you go, thank you.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
Yeah, that's amazing. So what trends are you keeping your
eye on now? Social moves so fast when it's you know,
it's TikTok trend, the next day it's another TikTok trend.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
What keeps you from losing your mind?
Speaker 4 (25:06):
And what are you keeping on an eye on right now?
Speaker 5 (25:09):
For me, I'm a sucker for content format trends. I
don't really think that like trending sounds as catchy as
they are, and I'd be lying if I said it
wasn't walking around the real world like with looping TikTok
trends in my head, because they are, but it's really
hard for brands to play into those, and I find
(25:29):
them so much less meaningful as opposed to like really
cool content formats. So I'm going to age myself by
saying this, But like back in my day when I
was a social marketer, I'd like to think I invented
the this or that ig story game.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Let me have it, because in my mind, I really
do think I did.
Speaker 5 (25:48):
But like that is a big one that exploded into
this day. People are still doing this or that level
type of content. But now like I just posted a
video about this last week where like me created those
reels with like two posts and one and they're interacting
and it's taken fire on the internet. Influencers are doing it,
other brands are doing it because it's so cool, and
(26:11):
so for me, it's more of like the content trends
and like new content formats that I'm interested in because
I think they just have a much longer shelf life
as opposed to like a trending sound or like you know,
demyror as your whole personality type of energy.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
I love that.
Speaker 4 (26:29):
I think that the longer life like shelf life you
can have there is best, And especially with the algorithms changing,
where you know, you've got LinkedIn showing posts that are
three weeks old. Now, yeah, you kind of need to
have things that are going to be longer to be like, Okay,
maybe this shouldn't be so timely. It's not that you
shouldn't have that timely content, but you know, you never
(26:50):
know what the algorithm changes. So shameless plug, where can
people find you and you know, like your next upcoming
big things that you want to like in here?
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (27:01):
Oh thank you? You can find me on LinkedIn I'm
most active there. It's Robin Nissum. I'm sure you'll link
it somewhere from there. In my link in bio you
can find everything. I also challenge myself to start showing
up more on Instagram so on all other social it's
at I go by Robin have a newsletter that I
send out weekly if you're just interested in getting some
(27:23):
raw hot takes that are sometimes a little too spicy
to post on the internet. IM with my community, and
I'll be running another master class. My master class is
like a three hour masterclass that is just a taste
of what my larger group training program feels like. In
October with the Social Media Strategy Summit, and then I
(27:46):
actually just announced today I will be speaking at the
Commerce Roundtable, which is a conference that Gary Vaynerchuk is headlining.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
So I than you goodness, so jealous.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Very exciting me.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Oh my god, we've made it type of thing.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
Yes, so cool. I'm very excited for you, very well deserved.
Thank you so much for being on the podcast. I
think people are going to be very interesting to hear
what you hear. Eric here what you have to say,
and thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Yeah, thank you, Nicole. I appreciate it. I love being here.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
I hope you love this conversation with Robin as much
as I did. Her ability to combine creativity, strategy and
bottom line results is exactly what brands need to hear
right now, especially in a world where social moves at
lightning speed. If you want to hear more about Robin's work,
check her out on LinkedIn, sign up for a newsletter,
and keep an eye out for upcoming masterclass.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
And speaking appearances. You'll also find links to her social
proof training in the show notes. Thanks for tuning in
to talk digital to me and I'll see you next episode.
Speaker 5 (29:00):
App
Today, I'm joined by someone who has not only built
some of the most iconic brands social media presences in
the world, but has also changed the way companies think
about social as a true revenue driving channel. Robin Nissum
is a social media and influencer marketer who is launched
and scaled social strategies for brands like Nissan, Alta Beauty, Anastasia,
(00:22):
Beverly Hills, and Alo Yoga, where she helped drive millions
in organic revenue. Now through her social proof training, Robin
helps executives, marketers, and teams turn social from a reactive
task into a strategic growth engine. In this episode, we
dive into her career journey, the systems and processes that
(00:43):
make social scalable, and her advice for marketers who.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Want to earn a real seat at the table.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
So let's dive in, all right.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Diving in, So, you know, I remember a time when
social media was just not a job at all, and so,
you know, thinking back to like how it's evolved, how
did you get into this world of social media? And
when did you realize that it wasn't just about posting
pictures but a career that could move the needle for
big brands.
Speaker 5 (01:34):
Yeah, and thank you for acknowledging that, because hearing this
question brings up so many feelings for me, because the
reality is that when I got started, social media wasn't
a real job, like I quite literally made it up
on the fly. So my story is that I graduated
college and I went straight into traditional agency advertising and
(01:55):
being a millennial, I just found nothing resonated with me.
And I got lucky in the sense that the word
millennial was trending when I happened to be one in
the workforce, and that gave me the opportunity to sit
in meetings that I had no business being in and
I got to speak and when people ask me like, hey, Millennial,
how do we reach you?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I was super honest.
Speaker 5 (02:18):
I was like, listen, it's crazy that we're spending a
million dollars on that TV commercial because I'll never see it.
Like I stream everything, I have an AD blocker, and
I'm addicted to social media. It's where I get all
my news, it's where all my friends are, and so
if you want to reach.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Me, this is the way.
Speaker 5 (02:33):
And that gave me the opportunity to open up brand
channels for Michelin, for Nissan, I did that in the
agency world for several years before winning a Webby Award
on a campaign that went completely viral, tweeting dead Mouse
from the Nissan account, and it resulted in us delivering
him a car and he used.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
It in his YouTube series for Free.
Speaker 5 (02:55):
It was like millions and millions and millions of earned
media impressions in Wow twenty fifteen, like it was unheard of,
and so I quit.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
I had my mic drug moment.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
I was like, I'm carrying the whole team on my
back out of here and was quickly humbled by the
power of global brand recognition. When I started freelancing for startups.
That's how I found my place in the influencer marketing industry.
And to bring it back and answer your question, I
don't think my little social media job was ever actually
(03:28):
taken seriously until the pandemic when every single other channel
was shut down and I was at Anastasia Beverly Hills,
which is eighty percent dependent on retail for revenue driving,
and so when retail was shut down and my channel
was the only channel that was still capable of getting
(03:49):
in front of people and able to put our field
team who spent their days going into stores to work
by getting them on live and creating content for the
brand and getting in the comment and having conversations with
customers and having virtual meetings to discuss their exact color
and what they needed from makeup.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
It was then.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
Taken really seriously, like wow, social media is a channel
that can hold the business together, and putting all of
the company's resources into social at that time paid off phenomenally.
We were making so much money when the rest of
the business was completely closed. And so I would say
(04:31):
it was the pandemic, unfortunately, for better or for worse,
is what gave media as a whole credibility.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
I mean, the pandemic changed so much, especially for marketers
and just the way we work, the way we consume media.
You know, I wasn't on TikTok until, you know, just
as a consumer until the pandemic and now addicted to it.
You know, I wasn't working remote and now I haven't
had a job.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
In office since.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
I mean, there's just so much that has changed. So
for you, there was this moment that you just stopped
doing your little social media job, as you said it,
and started running it like a business.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
What was that moment for.
Speaker 5 (05:08):
You, So I would say again, at Anastasia Beverly Hills
pre pandemic, I got there, and for context, Anasasia Beverly
Hills is the largest privately held beauty brand in the world,
and it has one of the largest Instagram account followings online,
or it did when.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I started there.
Speaker 5 (05:27):
I think when I started it was at like seventeen million,
and I took it to twenty four million. And when
I got into the details, I was like, okay, so
what's the strategy.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Oh, we're just posting based on feelings.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
Okay, how are we supporting e com Oh, like only
on product vibes today? Well, where are we tracking you know,
the metrics? How are we measuring impact? Oh we're not okay,
And so really again, it was twenty nineteen when I
started working cross functionally with other teams to understand our
(06:00):
impact and really show like, look, this.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Is not just vibes.
Speaker 5 (06:04):
Like, yeah, it is vibes and it's super important and
it's giving us clout, but we can measure that and
then you know, once we started doing that, the finance
team was super interested and they wanted to have meetings
with me, and I just remember being like, wait, I'm
just a little social media manager. Why am I having
meetings with the head of finance? This is crazy? But
that gave me the opportunity to then, in my next
(06:26):
role head of social alo Yoga, manage a budget and
completely scale the team and work with paid to get results,
and speak in forecasting meetings and reporting and be taken
seriously and sit at meetings with the CEO of my
company and have a voice for my channel. Because in turn,
I was able to completely shift consumer behavior right with
(06:49):
that brand specifically, And so I would say that was
really the moment Again twenty nineteen on Astassia Beverly Hills,
I think that was like, really the that's incredible, the
brand that changed things for me.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
What a cool brand to be able to grow your
career at and just be able to thrive there. I
love it. Thank you so For those young or mid
career managers stuck in the grind of content calendars and
you know, just not being able to do what they
want to do, what's your advice for shifting their mindset
to think like strategic leaders?
Speaker 5 (07:23):
Yeah, I would say, first and foremost, just having been
in this industry and hired so many managers and run
so many teams across at least ten different businesses.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
You have to put in your time there. Number one.
Speaker 5 (07:39):
No one wants to do the grunt work, but you
have to do the grunt work for years and years
and years to be able to really become an expert
at it and master it, not just one year. And like,
just know you're not alone. We've all been there, We've
all put our time in. Trust me, I still am
doing social media manager roles at my fifteen years of
experience level. So with that said, I would say, become
(08:02):
a master at your craft. Really tap into your audience
and know them and understand them better than anyone, and
then take those insights and share it with your internal team,
and not in just a way of likes and reach,
but talk about your audience in a way that actually
(08:23):
measures your impact as a social marketer. So, for example,
you want to show that you can not only grow
a following online, but you can get that following who's
super engaged to now go sign up for a product
in advance of it dropping, so that then you can
have early access and you're creating now new funnels within
(08:46):
the business. I want you to think beyond social media
and think full picture marketing? So what can your channel
actually do? Don't just think about it in terms of
likes and engagement, think about picture and full funnel marketing
and tying it into all of your other marketing partners
in the organization.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
That's so smart.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
I mean, it's the best way to be taken seriously
because social media, as we both know, is the hardest
part of marketing to be taken seriously by C suite
And it's like speaking two different languages. So what is
your trick to making social media matter to those executives
who maybe don't understand its value beyond getting likes or
make this go viral?
Speaker 5 (09:30):
Yeah, so I think it's super important to look at
social media. I always say it's like a three part story.
Number one, you're looking at your vanity metrics, which measure
how you resonate with an audience. And that's super important
because from those resonating metrics, you can also kind of
see intent right saves and shares. Let you know, oh,
(09:53):
someone liked it so much that they felt called to
share it with someone. They liked it so much they're
gonna come back to it. It means we're inspiring them.
And you know we were in their pocket now, right,
But then are you able to actually elicit a response?
Are you so impactful do you resonate so deeply that
you can get someone to take that next step, which
(10:15):
might be, like I said, signing up for a new
product drop, going to the website and executing a purchase.
And then once they get to the website, are they
actually doing the thing that they you know, intended to
do by clicking? And so it's a three part story,
and I think that you need to be really clear
with the C suite about how you are effectively telling
(10:39):
that story, right, Like, again, you want to measure your
impact and share that. So we have three hundred people
super interested in this thing, like from what we can see,
it's trending upwards, and we anticipate that at least fifty
percent of that three hundred people we can drive to
the website. And then once we get them to the website.
(11:01):
Now is really on the e comm team, but we
can deliver at least one hundred and fifty eyeballs, right,
And for some brands that might be a huge number,
for other brands that might be nothing. And it's going
to depend everywhere. But really showing the full picture journey
of what you're doing beyond just oh yeah, we got
twenty likes?
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Cool? What does that mean for us?
Speaker 5 (11:21):
Right?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Tell me more about the twenty likes.
Speaker 5 (11:23):
Of course, everyone wants to hear revenue, right, we can drive.
For example, when I was at Allo, I made seventeen
million dollars a month organically off social and once you're
doing that, of course that's really the only thing anyone
cares about. But it took a really long time to
get there. It actually didn't it took It didn't take
(11:43):
that long.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Most brands it would take a while, but.
Speaker 5 (11:48):
Still six months and social media years did feel like
three years.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
To be fair, I mean that you feel like everything
so much longer. I don't even know what day it
is because I work four quarters ahead in marketing, so
we're all just all over the place.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
And I'm sure you've had.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
Those moments where you walked into a room, both consulting
and in your corporate like world, where you realize that
you now have to convince leadership that social isn't just
a fun add on or fun thing that marketing is
just playing around with. What's your go to method for
turning social metrics into something that executives care about and funding.
Like you were just saying, you know, the impressive stuff
(12:26):
with organic, but like what is your go to that
you can be like, hey, listen, this is making an impact.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (12:32):
So again, like I said, everything that I've said up
until now, showing Okay, like we teased an event, this
is how many people are interested. We then from the
level of interest that we got, ask people to sign
up and let us know what city they're in. We
found out that X number of people are in this
city and essentially showing them that social media is so versatile.
(12:57):
It is truly the brand's number one owned communication channel
and you could do whatever you want with it, from
figuring out you know what your audience wants from you,
if you want to get them involved in product development,
if you are seeing, hey, the customers really despise the
name of this product, like it's all I'm seeing in
(13:18):
the comments. It's such a big role that can be
used in so many different ways.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Now, I think finding the.
Speaker 5 (13:26):
You have to of course, when you're speaking to the
C suite, you have to play into what they want
to hear, right, Like that's just the reality of being
successful in business. You're not trying to combat someone, You're
trying to help them achieve their goals. And I think
fundamentally showing all of the ways that social media can
(13:48):
help achieve those goals is going to be the thing
that helps you win.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Right.
Speaker 5 (13:52):
So, if you know that your CMO has X as
an initiative, I'm just trying to think of an example,
find ABC reasons to support how social can bring idea
X to life.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Yeah, work backwards from what they're trying to do exactly exactly,
so smart. I know you've seen it all from brands
ignoring social media from it becoming their lifeline like Alo,
where it's making so much money organically. What's the biggest
shift in how brands approach social and why do you
think that some brands still hesitate to invest fully in
(14:27):
social media? And what would you tell them if you
had five minutes to change their minds? You're in an elevator.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Okay, wow, where do we even begin with this one?
Speaker 5 (14:37):
I think that the biggest thing that I see, especially
in these past four years of working independently as a
VP fractional VP of social generally ninety percent of brands
and businesses cannot keep up with the speed at which
social media moves, and the people at the top who
are the decision makers have never touched social media. They
(15:00):
don't know what it looks like, they don't know how
to resource it, they don't know what a good strategy
even encompasses. And so they just put a young, socially
native person into the role, and that person is now
responsible for a core marketing function, and so it falls flat.
And I think that's really the biggest issue. And what
(15:22):
I would like to use the remaining four minutes in
the elevator to say is like, hey, listen, like there's
actually a formula to being successful on social It is
a science that I personally have replicated at least at
five different brands now, and I'm able to take organic
social to minimum two percent of business revenue. Let me
teach you how to do it and the way that
(15:44):
you do that. It starts with having a strategy that
is all encompassing of the business, that supports every single
business initiative, good processes, that allows your social team to
have resources and support the way that your email marketing
team has analytic and the way that your web team
has a copywriter and having access to photo shoots and
(16:05):
plugging into influencer and having content made directly for those channels.
And once you fully staff and support social the way
that every other marketing arm gets supported and staffed, you
can take it to business revenue. You can make it
a business driver. And so I hope that answers the question.
(16:27):
I feel like there are a few questions in there,
but I would just say it really does start with
processes to scale, Like, you cannot scale without a process.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
You can't scale without a strategy.
Speaker 5 (16:39):
It's not something that just happens by throwing spaghetti at
the wall. And yes, the game of content development is
a little bit like throwing spaghetti at the wall. But
make no mistake, social media has to be strategic and
there has to be a plan in place to get there.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. I mean, I think
in our own content production.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
I think in brand it's all a plan.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
Now, some things go viral that you wouldn't expect, and
other things that you expect to go viral go flat.
But it's all behind a strategic plan of content pillars
and timing and staying in your lane and being on brand.
There's just so much that goes into it. Not jumping
on every trend, jumping on the trends that matter to you,
and we.
Speaker 5 (17:21):
Can't all be duo lingo right and not doing the
thing that your CEO's cousins son suggested at a barbecue
three weeks ago, like, trust your social teams. These are
the people that you've hired to be the expert authority.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
In this space. Let them.
Speaker 5 (17:40):
Like I would never go to my email marketer and
be like, hey, I think you should actually do X
y Z because that's on my job, Like unless they
wanted to have some sort of cross functional brainstorm and
I was asked for my opinion, that's the only way.
But there's something different with social media because everybody has
it where they think because they're posting their own personal
(18:03):
life that they can do the same thing for the business.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
And the reality is when.
Speaker 5 (18:07):
It comes to making social media a revenue driving channel,
it's very different than posting even about your personal brand.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Like they're two different things.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
Yeah, I completely agree. I don't have the social background
that you do. I'm digital marketing and I have my
other skills. But people will see my LinkedIn and they're like, oh,
well you could do that for brands. It's social No,
that is not my expertise and what my personal brand
is is not going to drive for this. You trust
the experts that are in the room doing that. And
I do think that is a mistake that brands make
(18:39):
a lot is they hire influencers who have built their
own tiktoks and things to come and do brand and
it just falls so flat.
Speaker 5 (18:48):
I've seen it a ton of times where I'm like, Okay,
that's so cool. You have a content creator. Oh, they're
running social. This just looks like an extension of their
social where's your brand in this? And this? This is no
shade against content creators and listen, I follow you on LinkedIn,
we connected on LinkedIn. You are brilliant and I'm sure
(19:10):
if you put your mind to it, you could and
would figure it out. But it comes down to truly
being a master at becoming the brand, not yourself. And
so that means how does the brand feel about this?
How does the brand show up? What does the brand
stand for? What's the brand's tone of voice? Like who
(19:30):
is the brand for? Who's the brand not for?
Speaker 4 (19:32):
Yeah, you have to become that brand exactly like them,
think like them, And that's a difficult thing to like
step outside of if you're a content creator all the time.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
So you know, we talked about.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
Some great social strategies that turn things around, for like Alo,
can you dive into that a little bit more than
what success you saw there and.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
How Yeah, So Alo was crazy. When I started at Alo,
it was Alo Yoga.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
Alo didn't exist yet, and I was reporting into my CEO,
Danny Harris, and he told me, he was like, listen,
you have one job. Make this brand fucking cool. Like
I just want to be cool. I want to be
the it girl. I want to be street style, I
want to be fashion. I want to be men's performance,
hyper masculine, just like Rough. And I was like, okay, bet,
(20:22):
let's go. And I knew from what we had already
because when I started to Alo, there was a few
million followers on the Alo yoga account and I was like,
these people are so into this yogi kind of like
affluent mom lifestyle, a little wander lust energy. If we
start showing them like men's muscles and grit and fashion, like,
(20:44):
they're not going to like this. And so I was like,
why don't we just open multiple different channels and this
will become each of our different business units and That's
exactly what I did. I opened Alo Alo men Allo
Wellness for all things lifestyle and body care and played
into each of those lanes with a unique content strategy
(21:06):
for each, with a unique influencer strategy, supporting with a
unique paid strategy for each, hyper targeting exactly who we
were looking to get in the market. That's the word,
hyper targeting our exact buyers.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
And it worked.
Speaker 5 (21:24):
And we had a massive flywheel marketing flywheel as well,
where Social and Influencer Why Influencer team mirrored my exact
social strategy. We worked hand in hand on everything. Social
team was creating briefs weekly for the influencer team in
addition to the influencer teams briefs that they were creating.
(21:46):
Like it was, it was so exhaustive. And then we
also had events that we were plugging into and driving
people to and tapping from our community to throw events
so that we could create is almost like insane brand
affinity with people and bringing them into the family. And
(22:06):
then there's pr of course, like making sure that the
world is seeing it and people are talking about it
outside of our channels. And I think that's the thing
that was just unbeatable about it. It was a true
lohemith Like we had a thirty person marketing team.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
It was.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
It wasn't even imagine having that many different just like
icps for different channels is so crazy. But it worked.
I mean, Alo is massive. I love that you didn't
like pigeonhole one type of person into the Alo brand.
You separated that out and noticed that and said, hey,
let's just dive into each of these. You created so
(22:48):
much more work for you and your team, but it worked.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
Well, Like I'm sure you were quite busy, and you
know that leads me in that social media is chaos
a lot of the time. But it's a lot of
chaos if you don't have a plan, especially, so what
saved your sanity in building scalable processes? Like what's your
advice for social media managers who feel like they're constantly
scrambling chasing the next trend or just making it to
(23:15):
the next post and then running the next No.
Speaker 5 (23:18):
I'm just gonna shamelessly plug my group training program. I
launched last summer a group training program called Running Social
for Brands, where I literally teach my exact process from
how to build a strategy and to you know, unlock
your entire roadmap, how to execute, how to infiltrate other teams,
(23:39):
how to get support, how to get resources, how to
work cross functionally so that you can scale. And it's
my belief that you have to have your strategy locked
and you have to have execution super dialed in to
be able to scale. Without those two things, you'll never
really get off the ground. And so I teach those
in my eight week program. I'm just getting so much
(24:02):
good data. All of my people from last summer who
took the course have been promoted this summer. They actually
got promoted in the spring, and it's trickling in. People
are getting jobs from job interviews using my methodologies. But
with that being said, it comes down to having a
sound strategy and really really well oiled machine like processes
(24:26):
because it's repetitive. But it's also like you never do
the same thing every day, but you're always doing the
same thing.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
If that makes any sense.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
Yeah, it does, and it doesn't I get it, but
it's you know, that's so good and I love I mean,
what an incredible feat that people are getting promoted and
new positions and things like that from taking your process.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Not surprised at all. But heck, yeah you go, thank you.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
Yeah, that's amazing. So what trends are you keeping your
eye on now? Social moves so fast when it's you know,
it's TikTok trend, the next day it's another TikTok trend.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
What keeps you from losing your mind?
Speaker 4 (25:06):
And what are you keeping on an eye on right now?
Speaker 5 (25:09):
For me, I'm a sucker for content format trends. I
don't really think that like trending sounds as catchy as
they are, and I'd be lying if I said it
wasn't walking around the real world like with looping TikTok
trends in my head, because they are, but it's really
hard for brands to play into those, and I find
(25:29):
them so much less meaningful as opposed to like really
cool content formats. So I'm going to age myself by
saying this, But like back in my day when I
was a social marketer, I'd like to think I invented
the this or that ig story game.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Let me have it, because in my mind, I really
do think I did.
Speaker 5 (25:48):
But like that is a big one that exploded into
this day. People are still doing this or that level
type of content. But now like I just posted a
video about this last week where like me created those
reels with like two posts and one and they're interacting
and it's taken fire on the internet. Influencers are doing it,
other brands are doing it because it's so cool, and
(26:11):
so for me, it's more of like the content trends
and like new content formats that I'm interested in because
I think they just have a much longer shelf life
as opposed to like a trending sound or like you know,
demyror as your whole personality type of energy.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
I love that.
Speaker 4 (26:29):
I think that the longer life like shelf life you
can have there is best, And especially with the algorithms changing,
where you know, you've got LinkedIn showing posts that are
three weeks old. Now, yeah, you kind of need to
have things that are going to be longer to be like, Okay,
maybe this shouldn't be so timely. It's not that you
shouldn't have that timely content, but you know, you never
(26:50):
know what the algorithm changes. So shameless plug, where can
people find you and you know, like your next upcoming
big things that you want to like in here?
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (27:01):
Oh thank you? You can find me on LinkedIn I'm
most active there. It's Robin Nissum. I'm sure you'll link
it somewhere from there. In my link in bio you
can find everything. I also challenge myself to start showing
up more on Instagram so on all other social it's
at I go by Robin have a newsletter that I
send out weekly if you're just interested in getting some
(27:23):
raw hot takes that are sometimes a little too spicy
to post on the internet. IM with my community, and
I'll be running another master class. My master class is
like a three hour masterclass that is just a taste
of what my larger group training program feels like. In
October with the Social Media Strategy Summit, and then I
(27:46):
actually just announced today I will be speaking at the
Commerce Roundtable, which is a conference that Gary Vaynerchuk is headlining.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
So I than you goodness, so jealous.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Very exciting me.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Oh my god, we've made it type of thing.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
Yes, so cool. I'm very excited for you, very well deserved.
Thank you so much for being on the podcast. I
think people are going to be very interesting to hear
what you hear. Eric here what you have to say,
and thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Yeah, thank you, Nicole. I appreciate it. I love being here.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
I hope you love this conversation with Robin as much
as I did. Her ability to combine creativity, strategy and
bottom line results is exactly what brands need to hear
right now, especially in a world where social moves at
lightning speed. If you want to hear more about Robin's work,
check her out on LinkedIn, sign up for a newsletter,
and keep an eye out for upcoming masterclass.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
And speaking appearances. You'll also find links to her social
proof training in the show notes. Thanks for tuning in
to talk digital to me and I'll see you next episode.
Speaker 5 (29:00):
App
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