Episode 5: How Do You Start Creating Content — and Get Your Team Involved?
Host: Joe Zappa
Guests: Jess Ness and Bill Brazell
Length: 27 minutes
Published: August 17, 2026
Joe, Jess, and Bill talk about how to get over the fear that prevents so many people, from CEOs to industry newcomers, from growing their personal brands and their companies by creating content. They discuss how Joe got started on adtech X and LinkedIn, what you should do to build a following, and why you shouldn’t fear controversy.
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Full Transcript
Joe Welcome to the AdTech Marketing Podcast, the only podcast exclusively devoted to the very niche topic of adtech marketing. I'm Joe and I'm joined by my team, Bill Brazell and Jess Ness. How's it going, Bill?
Bill Going great. Thank you. Thank you. Good to be here.
Joe Okay. Are you ready to do battle, Jess? Jess is like really, really game for the podcast now. She was scared, but as has been documented at great length on the pod, but she has overcome her fears and graced us with her presence.
Bill I was looking at it as more collaborative, but Jess if you want a battle, I'm ready.
Jess Now I'm scared again. So yeah.
Joe It's a battle in my eyes. I'm just like, all right, who's going to do the best performance on the pod? But, you know, don't let that rattle you.
Bill Only one can survive.
Joe Exactly. So I thought today we could talk about using content to build your career, because we usually talk about using content to build a company and to market adtech businesses. But obviously, we believe the best way to do that is through an individual profile, right? Like often we talk about with companies whether you should do LinkedIn or Twitter content through the company logo or through, you know, an individual, whether that's the CEO or someone else.
And I always make the point that people want to hear from people. You know, no one wants to comment on the like insert company, The Trade Desk brand page. They want to interact with, you know, Jeff Green or one of the other many brilliant people at The Trade Desk. And so that plays a huge role in how I built my career and Sharp Pen. And I offer myself up as a guinea pig or an example. And we can talk about sort of how that works and what the average person listening can do to use content to improve their own attention.
Jess Yeah, Joe, I have a question for you right off the bat. Do you see yourself as a creator or an influencer? And what's your relationship to attention? More attention, the best attention. You know, like creators in this creator economy are all fighting for attention. And how have you found like the best way to get attention? And what kind of attention are you chasing in your content creator career?
Joe Yeah, great question. I absolutely do not shy away from being like a creator and influencer. I think Ari Paparo, way before it was fashionable, used to have "adtech influencer" in his Twitter bio. I don't know if he still does, but I think part of why he did that was, you know, there was sort of a wink in it because being an influencer was often this maligned position. And, you know, when you think of influencers, you think of someone like posting photos to Instagram or whatever.
Look, I think that most people are invisible and have zero attention in their industry. Right. And that's even true for many executives and CEOs, right? Like no one's thinking about them. No one really knows they're out there. You know, they have their partners and their coworkers, but other than that, like they don't have much of a profile in the industry. And I think all good things start with attention. You want to attract great talent. That starts with getting attention and people knowing you're out there and knowing your POV and thinking, "Hey, that's a cool guy or cool woman with some like provocative and interesting like thoughts about the industry. I want to work with them."
And then the same thing applies to getting customers or partners. And to me, that's all part of this enterprise of generating attention and cultivating influence. And the way you do that more quickly than any other nowadays is creating content on social platforms, specifically in adtech, X, and LinkedIn. So I do view myself as a content creator. In fact, I would even say it is perhaps my favorite part of my job. And as I sometimes say, like the part of my job I would do, even if I weren't getting paid. And I think when you create content and you get in front of the right people and you comment on posts by other people in your industry who already have the audience you want, you ultimately over time build influence. And, you know, that that's really the basis for this pod and our entire company.
Bill That's great. And it turns out Ari Paparo does continue to say "adtech influencer" in his Twitter profile or X profile, as you prefer. So I'm getting, you know, one of the things that we run into sometimes, as you well know, Joe, is executives who are a little bit frightened of, "What if I write something and it isn't 100% accurate or I regret it tomorrow or I make an argument and somebody who's more influential than me or smarter than me points out that there's a hole in my logic?" Have you yourself experienced that? Have you had people say, "Joe, you're just wrong and here's why," and you looked and you're like, "Hmm, actually, they're right." And how have you dealt with that?
Joe Yeah, I say dumb shit all the time. It usually works out for me. No, I think that people way overestimate the risk of controversy or conflict or saying the wrong thing. The first thing is that generally, if you say something that people disagree with, very few people take issue with it or openly confront you. But even if they do, it's usually a passing instance and then everyone moves on, right? No one's thinking about you as much as you're thinking about yourself. No one's thinking about your content or the conversations it's generating as much as you are. Even if you get people's attention, you're lucky to have it for a couple of minutes and then they move on with their day.
So I have had some confrontations over the years on Twitter or LinkedIn, but it is like one a quarter. And that is with me like posting constantly, right? And so I think it doesn't happen very much. And even when it happens, it has much less of an impact on the person's career than they might think. And I'll finish by saying this. I cannot think of really like a single time an adtech CEO or influencer has written something online that has like truly come back to bite them. Like you mentioned this on a previous pod, Bill, but it's like when someone has a bad take, they often just acknowledge it and everyone's like, "Okay." And then they move on. And everyone understands that if you are a take slinger, you're going to sling some that are incorrect and it doesn't, you know, tarnish your overall reputation.
Bill Yeah. I mean, and you know, which again brings us back to Ari, who multiple times has said, "Hey, this is what I thought was going to happen. I was wrong." And he moves on. And so everybody else does too. And I think that might be part of what helps is if the person themselves is willing to say, "This is just not a big deal. Like, this is not a catastrophe. I don't have to publicly flog myself for making a prediction that turned out not to happen or misconstruing something or whatever." If you yourself just say, "Yeah, sometimes I've been wrong."
Joe It's funny you say that, Bill, because I follow some people on X who have much, much bigger audiences than I do. And sometimes they will, they will do that self-flagellation. And I actually find the self-flagellation usually like more objectionable than whatever it is they initially said, because often it'll be like someone's disagreeing with them and then they're like, "Oh, someone disagreed with me. Now I need to take it back." And I'm like, "That makes me like you less." Like, I would rather that whatever you said, you know, you just stood by it or, or just said, "Yeah, like, oh yeah, this is wrong. I've moved on." But it's like, you don't need to do—you're not a politician. You know, you don't need to do like a public humiliation dance.
Bill And those things don't always work for politicians either. So like there's something—I forget where I was listening to this, but there was a big discussion of the public apology and how often it goes wrong. I think it was Sam Harris on his podcast talking to somebody about this. And just there's something about it. And the distinction they made, which I thought was useful, was if I have offended you personally, like Joe or Jess—Jess, let's imagine I said something to you that was just mean. I was grouchy. I said something. If I said it in front of 10 people, I should apologize in front of those 10 people. I should do that because they all had to see that happen. And that makes sense.
But if I do it in front of a thousand people, 990 of those people are going to say, "Why am I getting involved in this? Like, what did this have to do with me? Like, you know, okay, who cares? And now I'm annoyed. And now the only thing I know about that guy is he said something that offended somebody he worked with, and that's obnoxious." They sort of drew the distinction between a personal apology to somebody you have offended and covering those you did. Whereas the public self-flagellation where you're just like, "Oh my gosh, I have made a mistake," it often comes off very narcissistic.
Joe Right, right. It's interesting you land on the word narcissistic because I think, Bill, it is about like right-sizing the ego, right? Like it's like you, when you do like a public humiliation dance, you are saying like, "I am so important, right? That whatever bad take I had, that one person disagreed with or whatever, I need to do a public service announcement to like tell all of you that like, I don't think that anymore. And I've formally retracted." It's like, no one gives a shit. Just keep moving on, which is just to say, like, to go back to the core like point, there is so much value to be generated by being out there and sharing what you're—what you're learning or what you're working on, commenting on the posts of other people who have a lot of authority in the industry and have takes on what's going on.
There's so much to gain by that and genuinely so little to lose. And having a bad take is a perfect illustration of that because it would need to be a nuclear bad take to really have a sizable negative impact.
Bill For sure. By the way, when you talk about the fact you just keep going, you just move on and get on with it. That ability seems to me much more characteristic of founders. Because in order to found a company, you have to be willing to just keep going. Like things are weird at the beginning. They're rocky. You have to keep going. Whereas sometimes the CEO who's brought in later is somebody who went to the right business schools and has sort of calmly succeeded without taking enormous numbers of risks. And it makes me wonder if, in your experience, are founders more likely to kind of enjoy the give and take of social media? And are the CEOs who are brought in later maybe more conservative there? And just like, "I don't want to offend, I don't want to upset somebody."
Joe Yeah, I think that's exactly right, Bill. I think it is just the personality profile. So with founders, you get a higher risk tolerance and a higher failure tolerance. And so I think founders are much more likely to be okay, you know, taking the risk of looking stupid, of having someone disagree with them, of just getting zero attention and like having a post out there of zero likes and just being like, "All right, I'll do five more tomorrow and maybe eventually I'll figure out what resonates and then I'll build from there." So I do think, you know, the CEO of Evangelism Playbook plays disproportionately well with founders.
That said, I think it can work for other CEOs. And I also think it can work for the many people in our audience who are not CEOs, right? Like I always say, as an example, Eric Tilbury, who works at the adtech company Inuvo, he has built an amazing profile for himself by just sharing what he's doing as a programmatic media buyer. Vlad Chubakov from Programmatic 101 is another example. You know, AdTechGod is another example—the guy behind that, you know, he was not a CEO. All of these people, they just start commenting on what they're seeing in the industry, what they're doing, sharing best practices, inviting other people to join in a conversation with them.
And by doing that, they have increased their name ID such that when I meet with public company CEOs, they know who these people are. Because think about how amazing that is. Think about like, you know, 20 years ago, that never would have been the case that a public company CEO would know about a marketing manager at an agency or an adtech company, but nowadays it's possible. Jess, as a non-CEO, what do you think about the sort of hurdles to getting on social and sort of joining these kinds of conversations? And then what makes it more feasible, either in your experience working with others or from your point of view yourself?
Jess Yeah. Yeah. I have an interesting relationship to like creating content myself and putting it out there. I have actually a really funny anecdote to illustrate that. I'm like very at my core opposed to conflict or like being perceived as having made a misstep. When I was young, like in high school, I read this quote by, I think, Thomas Jefferson that said something to the effect of, "In order to avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, and be nothing." And my interpretation of that quote was, "Oh, well, that's all I have to do." And I think about that still. Like, that's the key.
Joe You're like, "That's right. Yeah.
Jess It's not that hard, really. And yeah, and I've carried that with me through my professional life. No, just kidding. But like, I find it actually quite difficult to get on a podcast and like discuss the industry and discuss my takes on the industry. So I can actually relate to someone really well who might be a bit timid or hesitant to start creating content that's going to go out there and, you know, build their professional profile. One easy way to do that is say yes to opportunities. Say yes to getting invited onto like a podcast. Say yes if someone suggests your name to like go up on a byline or join a conversation, maybe a webinar, or pick a thought leadership podcast. So not limiting yourself to opportunities that organically arise.
I think when it comes to LinkedIn, probably it is just starting small, you know? Well, this is actually advice I could give myself, but you know, start reposting things and start commenting on things, see how it feels. And don't be afraid to, you know, say something, do something, or be something, right? You can't avoid criticism, as Thomas Jefferson, I think, must have been implying, if you live your life like a normal human. But yeah.
Joe You said two things I want to double-click on. So one is that you joined the conversation by commenting. This is like a tactical thing, but for anyone listening who is like, "Oh, I would love to be like out there on X and LinkedIn and build my career and like find all these new job opportunities and whatever, but I don't know how, or I'm intimidated," actually, the best way to do it is to comment on the posts of others who already have the audience you want, because in the beginning, you have no audience. So even if you think you have the most brilliant ideas to broadcast from your own personal page, they probably won't reach many people in the beginning. So the way you generate that audience for your own ideas is by going to the people who already have the ideas. And then it's much easier to comment.
The other thing is people put so much pressure on themselves to say something like incredibly profound. You don't need to. It is extremely rare that anything I read on social, including from people who have profound things to say, is like the most profound thing, you know, they could have uttered or changes the way I think about a topic forever, whatever. Like it is less about sort of doing a mic drop, right? To talk about that way that ChatGPT writes LinkedIn posts. Like it's less about doing the mic drop. And it's much more about just like participating in a conversation.
If you think about it, if you think about it as just like a conversation you would have with colleagues like at a happy hour or in your office, like at the proverbial water cooler, like people aren't looking for you to say something like totally profound and earth-shattering. In fact, if you tried to, they might be like, "This guy's a little weird." You know, like it is, it is actually by just meeting other people where they're at and sort of making the next thoughtful comment that you build a reputation for yourself and push the conversation forward.
Jess Yeah. And also I think like not everyone is meant to be super profound. And like some people maybe are meant to like share very intellectualized takes on the industry, but some people, I don't know, maybe they want to be funny. Maybe they want to be relatable. Maybe they want to make memes with AI, you know, like kind of pick your personality and don't try to share the most profound takes. Make it authentic, I guess, is kind of the point there.
Bill I totally agree with this. I mean, and the conversation analogy, I think, is the right one. If you picture yourself in a room where there's a bunch of people talking, you could hang out near the wall and try to hear the conversation, but you could also join it and try to chime in and see if there's something that would catch somebody's eye or, or just even just say, "Wow, that point you just made was really interesting. Tell me more about it." Like that's kind of how you make friends in real life. And it reminds me a little bit when I used to work with bloggers. The beginning of blogging, just like the beginning of social media posts, is a lonely experience because nobody cares about your blog at first. And like you said, Joe, you could write the most profound thing possible, but it doesn't really matter because nobody's like following you at that moment. But over time, they do. And over time, if you connect with other bloggers, just like if you connect with other people on social media, then you start to develop some social capital and they start to highlight something interesting that you had said or had written.
My analogy is entering a high school as a transfer student from somewhere else. There are a bunch of cliques that have already formed and you don't immediately have any social capital, but you can get some by talking to people and often not by trying to talk to the most popular person in the school first. Maybe start by talking to the person next to you. And over time, if it's important to you to become better known in the school, that's great. But work your way up to that because the most popular person in the school doesn't really need you to be their friend. They have friends, but other people do.
And so it's another way to sort of think about it is, "Gosh, I'm going to make a profound comment on Ari Paparo's social feed," to bring Ari back into this. Well, Ari's got a lot going on, but maybe I make a profound comment on somebody else's social feed who doesn't have as many followers. And they're like, "Oh, that's an interesting point." And suddenly there's something happening there.
Joe Well, but there's something else in what you said too, which is that you're essentially doing whomever you're commenting on a bit of a favor by lending them your attention and also giving them the algo boost of someone interacting with their content. And, you know, social platforms are not like they used to be. Like it is somewhat hard to get attention nowadays. So most people, as long as you're like thoughtful, and again, that doesn't mean necessarily like super profound or original, but just like, you know, personable, thoughtful, people are happy to enter into a conversation with you.
And like, that is how I built my reputation, such as it is in adtech, was like, I was like relatively unknown. I had been a trade journalist in the industry. And I noticed like there was really a community on adtech Twitter. And so I just started like being a reply guy, right? And I would like reply to what Ari or Eric Franchi or anyone else with an audience said. And eventually they started like noticing me and they were like, "Huh, this guy has an interesting thing or two to say." And also I carved out a niche because it's basically like me and one or two other people who are talking about adtech marketing.
So you'd also be surprised, and this is maybe new territory, at how easily you can carve out a niche if you want to like kind of humble yourself and be like, "I'm not going to try to be Scott Galloway or like Neil Patel." Like I'm not, I'm not going to try to just talk about like marketing, you know, and be like, because there are lots of people with millions of followers who do that. But there's probably like two people who talk about adtech marketing. Could I like, so if I'm out there talking about it every day, maybe I can be one of the two or three thought leaders in that space. And that is essentially what happened for me is I just like, I was like, "I'm going to fully commit to this niche."
People often say to me, they're like, "Oh, well, what you're saying doesn't just apply to adtech." I'm like, wink, wink, "Yeah, I know that." But if I'm just out there talking about marketing or even B2B marketing, I'm one of 10,000 people talking about that. If I slap adtech on everything I'm saying and use adtech examples and adtech people and all of that stuff, then my content becomes super authoritative for the niche of like 300 companies I'm trying to reach.
Bill No, it's totally true. Now, Joe, do you ever find that you just can't think of anything to say that day?
Joe Yeah, I do feel unmotivated. Sometimes I think everyone goes through that, you know, writer's block, whatever, but that is where the beauty of social comes in, because again, it's a conversation. And so there might be days where I fire off like eight posts of my own on X and LinkedIn. And then there are days where maybe like I only do one or two. And instead, I'm just going to go through my feed and see what other people are talking about and interact with them. And honestly, again, even for me as someone who like has a bit of the audience I want, right? And again, it's not huge, but I have, you know, the attention of the 300 people who matter more or less, like I am going to get further by commenting on what other people do than by broadcasting. So that's what you do if you're not sure what you want to say.
Jess Joe, I think that you are such a good person to like give people advice to get started with this. It's definitely like part of our bread and butter with our agency, but I think some practical advice could be really good. Like how many posts per week should you start with? How many comments per week? And also like, how much time do you spend creating content? And has that changed over the years as you have built your career around content? And like, yeah, I just think about, you know, the level of dedication it takes if you really want to dive in, because that is something that's important if you, if you want to build your career around content or build your career by using content.
Joe I think you can start really simply by blocking off 30 minutes a day, Monday to Friday, and doing, let's say, I don't know, five to 10 comments on other people's posts. And then, you know, let's say a couple posts a week of your own. And what you're going to find is you'll get faster and faster. So like, honestly, what I just said, it's ridiculous to me because I can do like a post every 30 seconds. Like I'm like, I've done it so many times that it's like very easy for me to rattle them off. In the beginning, it'll take you way longer. But as you get used to it, you'll find that it's just less and less work. And then what happens is most people who really love content creation, they end up just doing it all the time because they like it. And so they like get a sense of the conversation. And then like throughout the day, they're just like creating content sort of continuously. But I really do think you can make a massive difference for your attention in your career or building your company by just being out there for 30 minutes a day.
Bill It also seems relevant to say a little bit of something is better than nothing. So if you can't find 30 minutes, see if you can find five. Start. Just do something and do something again and see, because what can happen, I'm sure it's been your experience, Joe, it can be rewarding. Like suddenly somebody interesting responds or somebody gives you an interesting take and that by itself makes you want to go back and do one again. But along the lines of what Jess was saying, I'm curious, do you ever feel like the algorithm would reward me more by putting me in front of more people if I posted less? Is that a thing?
Joe I do think it's a thing that if you post like once a month, that post probably gets more attention than each post if you post every day for a month. But the overall amount of attention you get if you post every day for a month is much higher. So it's—it's counterintuitive, but I think you're better off just like being consistent. And again, as with all these other things we're talking about, like not overthinking it and not worrying too much about like, "Am I getting a ton of attention on each post?" Like, especially, again, nowadays it's hard. Like, four years ago, when I was much less successful and had much less like authority from a business perspective, I would get like, you know, 50 to 100 reactions on like the average LinkedIn post. And if you, if you dwell on LinkedIn, you'll see creators talking about how that has changed for almost everyone. Like very few people are getting even that now. You put out a lot of posts that get like seven likes.
And so part of it is like not overthinking and also humbling yourself and remembering like, as long as the right people are commenting, you're probably fine. And it's worth like remembering, you know, if you're listening to this and you're a CEO and you're building your company, you know, how many deals are you trying to do? Like most companies in adtech, you know, you're not doing like hundreds of deals a year. You're doing like, you know, the couple dozen, each of which could be worth, you know, seven figures and that are going to like really move the needle for your company. You know, for us, right? It's like for me, I'm trying to do like, you know, 10 to 20 good deals a year. So do I need to get in front of 10,000 people? No, I need to get in front of, again, the right 300 people. Same thing with podcasts, email, et cetera. So that's kind of the beauty of B2B is you don't need to go viral. You need to get in front of the right people. And, you know, being out there on a regular basis is the path to getting it done.
Bill Very cool. Is that a good note to end on?
Joe I think it is.
Jess Brilliant.
Joe All right. God bless. Don't be like the subject of Thomas Jefferson's admonitions. Get out there and share what you know. If you're a CEO, send this to your team. Encourage them to get out there. That’s when you really crush it. It’s when you’re not only out there as a CEO/entrepreneur when your whole team is doing the same, virtually no one does that in adtech and remains a huge underutilized opportunity. So get out there, don’t over think it and if someone is mean to you, it’s okay, everyone will forget about it sometime. Thanks guys.
Jess Thanks Joe
Bill Bye-bye
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