Birds of a Feather: Building Authenticity in Social Media with Christina Garnett

Dive into an engaging conversation with social media maven Christina Garnett on this week's episode of the Free Dive Podcast. From her roots as an English major and math teacher to her ascent as a top-tier marketing strategist, Christina shares her unique journey into the world of social media and community building. Discover the secrets behind her authentic online persona, her innovative approach to marketing at HubSpot, and her latest venture, Pocket CCO. Plus, don't miss her insights on the future of social media and the rising importance of human connection in the AI age. Whether you're a marketer, a Hokie fan, or just curious about the ever-evolving digital landscape, this episode is a must-listen!

Topics Covered:

• The importance of authenticity in digital campaigns
• The role of the Hokie Bird in Virginia Tech culture
• Christina's journey from social media to senior marketing at HubSpot
• Challenges and strategies for small business owners during the pandemic
• Tips for new marketers entering the field
• Emerging trends to watch for in the coming year

Follow Christina Garnett:

• Twitter: @ThatChristinaG
• LinkedIn: Christina Garnett

Additional Links:

• Pocket CCO
• HubSpot Academy
• Virginia Tech Hokies

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Chapters

• 0:00 Hokie Predictions
• 0:30 The Hokie Bird
• 3:29 Building Authenticity
• 5:35 Christina's Social Media Journey
• 10:40 SBDC Small Business Owners
• 11:58 Pandemic Burnout
• 13:12 Transitioning to HubSpot
• 15:00 Pocket CCO
• 17:45 Advice for New Marketers
• 21:52 Trends for Next Year

Transcript

0:01

all right welcome everybody to the free dive podcast uh we've got a special episode this week because one of my favorite social media people uh is joining us and that's Christina Garnett um hi Christina welcome well so I think the first thing we have to get out of the way before we start this conversation is what do you think the Hokey record is going to be this year I think it's going to be good I think we're going to have another bowl season I think it's going to be fantastic um Brent pry is doing a fantastic job of recruiting we just got a top 10 recruit the other day it's going really well it's gonna be a good it's gonna be a good season nice nice and the other question I think we've been asking in the office on the runup to this what exactly is a hokey um so it's two things so it's it's the Hokey bird is a turkey but what it comes from but what it comes from is a fight song that was actually created one of the students um eons ago and it's hokey hokey hokey high tech tech VPI solar X solar ey team team team and so that's what the Hokey part comes from but it's a hokey bird most people think about it they think about um this like really cute it's one it's my favorite mascot it's this big chunky turkey that just like Wiggles his butt and tail feathers and it's just adorable and so but that's what a hokey is that's awesome I think right there like we could just end the podcast and we've given value out value added done value added and maybe you've also recruited some virgin Virginia Tech fans out of this podcast I think that's the other thing do it do it I think if you're a Metallica fan come join us we we jump up we we actually register on the RoR scale for making the ground shake because are you serious yeah we've done it quite a few I think we've done like six or seven times where it's like 60,000 people that are jumping up at the same time to interand and it it literally does register yeah that's crazy yeah it's awesome it's it's it is my like just I will die on the hill of it is the best entrance in college football nice I I do love also you know it's funny I was thinking about you because I was watching fever pitch this weekend yeah and um I I love the fact that like your social media Persona you know as far as the most encouraging build community and someone who might find you on Twitter or X in like the middle of March is probably like this is the sweetest most upbuilding person and then college football season happens and go y yeah then then I well this what's funny is that you can tell the people who know me really well and who don't because they'll see me like middle of November be like what are you doing what is happening what is life and the people who know me are like it's okay Christina it's it's just a game and the other people who don't know me are like do you need anything are you feeling depressed like do you need help I'm like I I need help but not that kind of help I need my team to Rally I just need him to beat Virginia that's all I really need yeah just like I the the Lo like I just have a couple asks that's it yeah um and and getting back to what I was saying though about uh I think one of the reasons why we were we're so excited about having on the podcast um is just um I think internally we've talked about and I think a lot of people realize um you're I don't want to say it's an innate ability because I think you've really cultivated it and you really work hard on it um but your ability with social media I think two things one to be an authentic self um because you do have a lot of people that work in social media Community Management they work in social media strategy and their own personal usage of social media uh it's either such a plastic like yeah they're there they're um you know they're doing the things talking about Community they're talking about software um but there's that detach of their personal who they authentically are yeah um and then you do that well but in the same way again you hit hooky season and it's not a case of like everybody unfollows you um that I tell them to mute me though I do warn them like you can just mute me for a few months I'm gonna go barel have you ever looked at like your numbers like like do you ever see that you have a fluctuation during that period or I don't look it's probably better because that's you know again serve you well I think it's that but I also think that I think if I ever started tracking my analytics on social on like my personal social it would turn into work for me and then I'd overthink it and then I would be like what's my strategy and I'm like no no no no it's just it's just me just saying whatever I'm thinking on the internet which is sometimes great sometimes not so great sometimes beloved sometimes like Christina is stop like Del but that adds authenticity right yes a little bit for better for wor you get to see the real me so I I did want to I know we'd send some questions over and we'll probably get to a few of those specifically but um you know give us a a little bit of background how did you end up in in marketing you know what Drew you to it and especially you know on on the social side um you know where different Avenues people go down they may go to more technical that might go to um you know something that's more High strategy and you know it it feels like you've really excelled and you've really made a name for yourself in the industry um on especially with social soci media and I just love to get your background where what started your journey this way yeah absolutely so I have a bit of a weird background I was an English major in college and then taught math for four years one year public uh four five years but one year public four years private and I had met my husband he was another he was an art teacher at the time and um basically I would be watching we'd be watching advertisements like we'd be watching ads on TV and I would fix them real time and I'd be like that didn't work they should have done I would literally deconstruct in real time and he would always say because he had done graphic design he had done all these things he'd worked in DC for about seven years working with various agencies and working um working with different companies so he he knew what a marketer looked like acted like did the work of and so he was actually the first person like two weeks into US dating said you should go into marketing you actually have like an innate ability to to understand what this would look like what would resonate with people and I was like cool but I never really thought anything else of it and then we we moved to Virginia after we'd got married and got pregnant and so that we could be near his family um so they could be near their grandbabies and um I was a stay home mom for a few years and then had to reenter the workforce and had to figure out like what is the new version of me what does that look like and so it was really looking to determine if I wanted to go back into teaching or do something different and one of the jobs that I had was at an art Museum I was a um advancement coordinator where basically I was looking through databases and public data to figure out who would be the best people to be donors for us and how could we reach out to them what's important to them how can we align with those values um basically product Market fit without realizing what product Market it was and while I was there one of the one of my colleagues wanted to do an Instagram for the art museum there had been an account set up and so she wanted to do that and wanted to know if there was anyone who wanted to do any other social media and I saidwell I can do Twitter and Facebook um and i' really just played around with them as um as just like General users and what I wind up doing first is I'm very curious to a fault I was very much like Alice from aliceon wonderland for better for worse growing up and so I did a lot of social listening without knowing that social listening was a thing and so what I wound up doing was a lot of a lot of things that you're trained to know what it is but I was instinctively doing it so I was looking to see well how are people talking about the museum what does that look like and is it positive is it negative if it's negative what how could we even handle that what would that look like and so um the the museum in question is rather um it's rather aent guard for a very southern town it's not just a brick rectangular building in a downtown area it has this swooping metal roof it's absolutely stunning but because it is not in the vein of all the other things there was negativity around the Museum even just for that and I personally think if anything is going to piss you off an art museum should that makes sense that makes sense to me like be be mad it it it created an emotional response good that's what art should do and so I started thinking about how can we play a bigger role in a city that doesn't love us back and so it became a lot of what I was doing was I started sharing basically what I do with my own Twitter is I share a lot of the content that is celebration of the city because that's very much sending this message of you don't want us here but we are so honored to be a part of this area we are so honored to be here and we want to celebrate this city as a whole and it started to work and we it started to Showcase that it wasn't just this hey look how great we are hey look at this hey this is coming up it was very much this ecosystem that we were building around the city itself and how the museum was a part of that and so that was kind of my first lipus test into how do we build thoughtful connections based off of the kind of emotional approach that we want how do we want people to feel about us how do we build that emotion and so from there I was hooked because before I was very much like why would I get a Twitter so I can like reach out to Simon Peg and tell him I love him like is that is that what Twitter is and there was a time per use it for there is a time period like that was what Twitter was like you would reach out you would basically ping your favorite celebs and maybe they liked it maybe they did it and you just kind of go on about your day and it's really evolved into this really beautiful space where we can all connect with each other and um so just did more and more and more of that and was wound up um wound up being the marketing director for my local sbdc which I'm a huge fan of the sbdc network it's it's a branch under the SBA so if you were if you're listening to this and you've ever wanted to start a small business but literally have no idea how to get started you don't know what it would take you you have no idea what licenses or what paperwork you need to do what is a business plan you you ask um look for an sbdc in your area they offer free Consulting they're going to walk you through things they're going to give you guidance if you need to hire Freelancers or contractors or agencies they have recommendations they can provide for you huge and so was the marketing director there for about a year and a half and got to work with small businesses everything from doing our own marketing but also um really working with them and clients would come in anything from I had a dream last night about a small business what kind of marketing stuff do I need to know all the way to get me out of this thing I need an exit strategy what marketing what role could marketing play in that and so after that I went independent doing basically what I'm doing now but for small businesses and was Consulting and providing advice doing social media strategy all these things while I was doing that I was brought on to create playbooks for an agency um and they loved the Playbook so much that they hired me on full-time and so I joined ICU which is part of denu creative and I was working for Fortune 500 Brands to build out social strategy socialist listening plans how do we approach things and then the pandemic hit and I was about as burned out as you would imagine I would be because on social you're paid to be on you're paid to know what the room is saying and so at any given time I needed to know Christina read the room for me what's what's going on and you don't know if you don't know you have to plug in for that and so um what end up leaving the agency after being burned out trying to figure out what I wanted to do if social was going to be a part of my life or just a smaller part of my life um wrote a piece that wind up being um featured in the next web on how social media managers are struggling to unplug in a pandemic because we're basically being paid to stay plugged in and then really tried to figure out what I wanted to be and during that time period I was talking about HubSpot on on Twitter and Brian hallan who's um co-founder um he saw my tweets looked um looked up my stuff looked up on LinkedIn and um reached out to Kip the CMO to reach out to me to see if it would be interested talking about potentially joining the team and then joined um and uh was a part of building this really beautiful advocacy program called Hub fans and did the inbound correspondence program the after our show George B Thomas and just other activations to really celebrate the customers of the Hub spota system and then cut to today so I do want to get to what you're doing today because I I talk about that in a second but yeah I I that HubSpot period and and I think that's you know again we're a HubSpot agency kind of in that ecosystem as well um what was that transition like going you know again you worked on larger Fortune 500 clients um but what was that transition kind of going from the outside from an agency experience to going inhouse to a large company a beloved company with a lot of you know passionate fans like what was that transition like going into that um it's kind of like drinking from a water water host because there is so much information and the larger the company is the more paperwork and documentation and processes have probably been put in place and so you go in there and it's so much that you have to learn so much that you have to realize is there a structure for this if so what is it how do I find it how do I move on from there and so um it it's a huge learning curve it's very much a huge learning curve and trying to figure out how how can you do the work that you need to do within the processes that are in place and is that a situation where you need to recommend changes in in the processes or is that a situation where the guard rails are in place and it's like this is perfect I know exactly how to navigate um what I need based on what's currently in in place and so um but definitely drinking from a water hose nice and then now so how how long were you at HubSpot for a couple years um almost three years almost three years so you know you've transitioned back um and I know you're working on some other projects so yeah can you fill us in kind of where what you're working on now yeah absolutely so when I was thinking about uh what I wanted to do next I was very thoughtful about um like who do I want to work with what does that look like and while I was at HubSpot I had a lot of people try to poach me and it kind of all um followed the same kind of messaging we would love to have you we know you could do this for us but we don't think we can afford you and then something to the effect of I wish I could just pull you out of my pocket whenever I needed you and so I created pocket CCO because when I looked at the work I was a marketer who didn't want to be a CMO I I I feel like and it's it's not cmo's fault but there is a pattern of the CMO coming in and because they have such a short life cycle they come in and they have to do something splashy so they have a legacy and what that usually looks like is a bigger logo or a different or a Rebrand or something like that and it doesn't really move the needle it just gets press and that's about it and so I want something different and with the work that I've been doing through social and the work that I'd done at HubSpot I realized how much the customers mean to me and how much I really want to improve that overall experience for them and so I I wrote my job description I wrote my dream job what does this look like what are the kpis I want to be responsible for what are the tasks who do I wantan to who do I want to um like direct to like what does that look like and then I put it in chat TBT and ask chat TBT what is this person like what is the title for the person that I'm describing here and it said this is a chief customer officer I like amazing that's great and so I really thought back about the people that I had wanted to work with me and it was all startups and agencies who needed me but could never afford me in a full-time capacity and and wouldn't need me in a full-time capacity but they believe in what I can do and so my goal is to offer Chief customer officer Chief experienced officer services for startups and agencies who really want to nail the customer experience Elevate what they're currently doing figure out where there's opportunities for optimization and efficiency but also build out something so they're really building core relationships when they're talking to people how they're talking to people how they're taking care of them and so that's where I'm at now and it's been it's been an absolute pleasure and my clients are amazing I I I couldn't be more grateful awesome and it's you know it just seems like it's taken off and you know everyone you know on social you know I think just really values your work and you know from feedback I've seen so I I I'm glad to see it's taken off for you thank you I appreciate it I would ask though um kind of coming back to like as you were saying what advice would you give to someone especially you know we we we've talked in the past about women in marketing specifically um someone in the same situation is you um what advice would you give him you know someone maybe didn't do the traditional marketing college track maybe they you know again they did something from a different field they like to get into marketing like what advice would you give to them so the first thing would be curiosity is always going to be your best weapon always there's it's always going to open more doors for you it's always going to push you harder and I find that the people who are the most curious or also have the least egos because if you are curious about anything there is an innate understanding that you don't understand or know at all therefore you must be curious because you know there's something else out there so curiosity is everything look at everything from different perspectives and realize that you need to get things from different resources and different um different perspectives in order to really figure out what the truth is so the whole idea of like I did research but that actually is like a little as but said it's like I saw a Tik Tok like I need you to do more than that I need you to do Tik toks I need you to read I need you to go on HubSpot Academy or do semrush Academy or like the internet is such a huge huge equalizing Force if you use it correctly there's so many free courses out there there's so many tools that you can try there's so many opportunities to really kind of Deep dive into what you want to do and the the curiosity is also going to play a role too because at the end of the day marketing is the one role that you will not be bored because tomorrow there's going to be an update that you that's going to completely change your entire strategy your entire plan your entire budget whatever that looks like or there could be a variable event that you have no control over and that's going to change how people your customers are reacting it could be that the banks there's a there's a startup bank that implodes or there's the pandemic or there is something but it's going to change your customer behavior in a way that does it impacts you but you are not responsible for it and you still have to navigate how do we do that and curiosity and really having that listening ear is going to be Priceless in how you grow second I would say and this is going to get me in hot water but it needs to be said I think the nonlinear marketers are the better marketers because it found them not the other way around usually I find that if the work finds you it's because there is something innate in you that Drew you to it so you have this natural capacity so you didn't go into marketing because you thought it was easy or you thought it was cute or you thought it was sexy or it was lucrative you got into it because there was a part of you that just naturally connected to it and so I think that there's a lot of a lot of the work that you would do intuitively like what I did at the I I was doing social listing I didn't know that was a thing I didn't know that was like its whole sort of methodology until later but I was intuitively doing it because that's what made sense to me and I find that nonlinear path marketers do a lot of that intuitive stuff because they just naturally have that mindset for how would I want to learn about this what would I want to do next here's how I can do that and so I find that they do a really great job because they're they're naturally attuned to what that looks like 100% agree with you you know I come from a nonlinear background as well um and you know it's interesting because like sharing exper experences at conferences you really do see kind of that that pattern of those that and there's strengths and weaknesses both sides but you know that that same feedback of like that passion and that in desire for actual marketing um comes through I think in those situations completely agree yeah and I think that so you know I think we're coming up on time on here but I think the other question I got for you is what do you think are going to be the big trends for 2025 as far as especially in the social landscape I think AI is still going to play a huge role um but I think you're going to see more push back for AI and I think you're going to see I think what AI is actually going to do is it's going to create a lot of damage but it's also going to create a lot more need for Humanity and so I think you're going to see a bigger push for authenticity you're going to see a bigger push for people being unap unapologetically human and trying to reconnect in a way that feels special because in a world where AI can basically do everything it's the human touch that's going to differentiate that's where the Mo's going to live and so for people to say and I think that's also where conferences will play a huge role you've seen those sessions before you've seen the webinars you've you've listened to the podcast most people are not going to conferences anymore and haven't been going to conferences since the pandemic for the sessions they're not going there to learn they're going there to connect I want to see soand so I haven't seen them in forever I can't wait to have drinks with so and so it's the human touch and so I think next year the human touch is going to be absolutely Paramount and how we talk to each other how we connect to each other who we trust and I think AI is playing a huge role in that but not in the way that it was intended to do you think you're going to see more emphasis on video in that regard as far as personal video I think you are but I think also because there are AI videos I think you're going to see a separation of what that looks like and I think I think what's also going to be um interesting is I think on LinkedIn specifically you're going to see the less polish and we're already starting to see this it's like the Tik Tok generation really kind of established that raw actually it does better than something that's like hyper polish and branded and I think we're going to see that on LinkedIn too as more and more people are trying to be influencers as marketers we know that packaging matters but there is such a thing as too much packaging it's too perfect it's I can see the filter on your face I can see that that's not what you really look like and I need to see the human behind the mask that you've kind of created for yourself I think that's going to be huge I think you're going to see more and more video but I think you're going to see more raw video yeah I agree with you I you know it's it's it's funny I think the push with AI is because everything is so perfect and so homogenized and we've gotten to this point of filters that it's almost the imperfections and the blemishes on us is what is what shows authenticity now in in the in the fil in the filtered World um well think about this way AI is AI is aggregating all of this stuff from the internet and then you're having it right for you you're having it do all this stuff so what it's doing is it's aggregating content on the outcome side too to the point where everything is beige so in a beige World be very bold it's the easiest way to stand out time for some chart yes um well we really appreciate you being on today any parting any parting words especially for newer marketers um before we sign off today um I would just say listen go in there and listen go in Reddit see what people are talking about go in quora what are people talking about Twitter LinkedIn all these things look and see don't just dive in first do a lot of listening and see what kind of conversations are being had the best marketers can read the room and there's no degree for that there's no numbers of years of experience for that read the room once you know how to read the room you're Priceless awesome so again we've got Christina Garnett on with us today and if you don't follow her on Twitter or X um do so because I don't call it X either it's like a prince thing like the the social media formerly known as Twitter um yeah um find her on Twitter she's delightful um and full of insights and also is a great Aid in building community in the marketing World um so there's a lot of value in that in in following her in for for meeting other and finding other really really smart people um she helps to expose so another thing I really appreciate about her work that she does in the community for marketing so thank you for so much for being on with us today thanks for having me