Marketing Happy Hour - Building a Social Media Presence That Actually Sticks | Eric Stark of Slate

Episode Date: February 12, 2026

Is social media a distribution channel or the heartbeat of your brand? This week, we’re joined by Eric Stark, co-founder of Slate and former NFL social leader, to unpack why most brands are fundamentally looking at social the wrong way. Eric dives into the transition from "posting for performance" to "creating for brand longevity," offering a masterclass in building creative workflows that empower teams rather than draining them. We explore how to maintain high-quality storytelling in an era of 3-second attention spans and why the "move fast and break things" mentality might actually be breaking your brand's reputation. Whether you’re a solo creator or leading a massive department, Eric’s "hill to die on" for 2026 will change how you view every piece of content in your library.Key Takeaways:// Social as Brand Identity: Why treating your social channels as a distribution arm for other departments is a mistake—and how to pivot back to brand-first marketing.// The "Stickiness" Factor: What separates the brands that own the cultural conversation from those that are just adding to the noise of the scroll.// Workflow = Quality: How optimizing your internal creative process actually yields better creative results, not just faster ones.// Short-Form Storytelling: Strategies for balancing the need for speed with the rising consumer expectation for high-production value and authentic narrative.Connect with Eric: LinkedInDiscover Slate: Website____Join the MHH Collective! The MHH Collective is a community for marketers and business owners to connect, ask real questions, and grow their careers together. Join for access to live Q&As with industry experts, a private Slack community, and ongoing resources: https://www.marketinghappyhr.com/mhh-collectiveSay hi! DM us on Instagram and let us know what content you want to hear on the show - We can't wait to hear from you! Please also consider rating the show and leaving a review, as that helps us tremendously as we move forward in this Marketing Happy Hour journey and create more content for all of you. ⁠Join the MHH Collective: ⁠Join now⁠Get the latest marketing trends, open jobs and MHH updates, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our email list!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow MHH on Social: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

I think it's clearer than ever that social really is like the front door to the brand, right? Like it's more important than many other marketing channels, if not all other marketing channels today. It's the easiest place to get your brand visibility. It's also the highest, like output you can have as a brand, right? Like you can create content every single day, which means you could like learn quicker, iterate quicker, and build up more like consistency. Welcome to Marketing Happy Hour, a weekly podcast helping marketing professionals and entrepreneurs, build better strategies and hit career goals. I'm Cassie and I'm Allie. We're marketers and your hosts through these unfiltered convos with your peers and experts in the space. Let's dive in.

Grab your favorite drink and let's get to this week's episode. Today we are joined by Eric Stark of Slate. Super excited to dive in and just hear more about Eric's story as well as what Slate is up to, what brands they're working with, what some of the recent just priorities in terms of social and marketing they have over there in the company but Eric welcome to the show super stoked to have you yes thanks for having me excited to be here we're going to dive into everything including your experience here in a minute but first we have to ask you what's been in your glass lately I have been into espresso lately I have my own espresso machine so I went I went love it a like one cup of coffee a day guy I'm just like I just need a cup in the morning to now it's like four shots of

espresso throughout the day at least, which is like getting a little much. So it's not that bad because it really won a latte is like two espresso shots, right? But now I definitely make the afternoon coffee. So maybe I need to start toning that back and like going back to tea or something in the afternoon. But I've just been when you have your own espresso machine and it's like fun to make them, I've just been like, oh, I might as well just make another double shot here. So yeah, it's been fun kind of getting into getting into that and saving some money on buying buying lottes out that's that's what i tell myself yeah yeah yeah and now you look forward to it right it's like that afternoon pick me up that you actually look forward to so then cutting it out you're like where's my little treat then

exactly come three o'clock you know yeah exactly that's awesome i i was literally it's so funny i was on Instagram last night, getting deep into espresso culture at home. I once upon a time, we're for Starbucks. So it's always been like a weird lingering interest of mine. But I'm curious what kind of machine do you have? I would just love to know. Yeah. So it's a, it's a brevel. So it's like an entry level espresso machine. I think it's called the infuser. It's not a super fancy one. Like you can go crazy. Hey, that works. The grinder needs to be as expensive as the espresso machine, which I'm learning now too. So I'm still very like entry level. with it, but it's been fun.

I'm sure you can find some niche Reddit community that will teach you all, everything you need to know. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I love it. Well, Eric, if you don't mind, tell us a little bit about yourself and just your journey to Slate. How did you get there to where you're kind of doing your own thing now running your own company? We'll just love to know your story. So I started my career working at the NFL in digital and social media.

And it was basically when, you know, social media was, I think, just. just starting to emerge as its own function and kind of marketing entity really back in 2012 is when I started. So I was kind of had one foot in like digital marketing, one foot in kind of, I could say emerging like social media marketing. And as my kind of career went on, it became more and more social and content focused. So I ended up going to work for a few different NFL teams, basically as they're like digital and social media managers. So kind of running their website. and also running their social feed. And then I ended up going back to the NFL to work on international marketing,

but, you know, kind of always fell back into like a social first mindset, even as a more broad sort of marketer of like, okay, how do we grow an audience outside of the U.S.? And social kind of became that main focus. Spent nearly a decade in that world. And I often found myself as a social media marketer, a digital marketer, having to create a lot of content, like be sort of hands-on keyboard designing an Instagram post or editing a video, creating thumbnails, you know, kind of the day-to-day stuff, and having to learn

a little bit of Photoshop and a little bit of Premiere and downloading a lot of creative tooling Canva and Caput and all of these different apps I had on my phone to be able to kind of patch together sort of a workflow for creating content as someone who's not like a trained graphic designer or video editor. And my co-founder, he was actually a video editor at the 49ers and was much more of the professional sort of editing, you know, in a editing bay with Final Cut Pro and was doing a lot of the more curated content for TV and for in-person events. And I would always be making requests of him for like social edits, you know? So it was like this constant tension between like, okay, I need to do some stuff myself, but can I do it like quality enough or on brand enough that would work as,

you know, working in social and needing to move really fast? Or do I put in like requests of the creative department to help me create content? And their job isn't always just to service the social teams right there, the creative department for the entire org. And so really felt like there was a need for sort of a creative home for social media teams, like a tool that made it really easy to create, which a lot of tools out there did and do, but they're more focused on consumers, a team-based version of that that was brand consistent, that had collaboration baked in, that was like kind of IT secure and safe for a bigger organization to use. So that was kind of the, I think, like insight me and my co-founder Michael had when we realized there really isn't a tool for this

like emerging type of creator, the social media manager basically. And they're all using consumer tools or having to learn pro tools. So yeah, we started slate about I guess six years ago now and given our background and we started kind of taking it to social teams in sports, which is obviously where we had a lot of connections. And there also is like a big pain point in sports because of how much content they're creating in real time, how important the brand image is and all that stuff. And that's really kind of what kicked off our startup and we ended up, yeah, like quitting our jobs for it and growing in sports and now expanding into other brands and verticals and other social teams that need like creative tooling, but are kind of sick of,

you know, tools like a cap cut, which are helpful, but not necessarily like that. built for teams and built for their workflows. So yeah, I spend a lot of my like days like talking to social media managers and teams and, you know, trying to kind of build our roadmap or specifically how they create content every day. And I, I want to double click on something you said there because I think it's really interesting. In terms of social, it sounds like you really see it more as a tool for brand marketing and should be treated as brand marketing versus just a distribution or just a performance channel. Where do you think brands are getting that wrong?

I think this is something that like social media. managers really like know and feel and are not trying to kind of like shout at the rooftops to like CMOs and marketers and CEOs about like what the role of social is. I think from a high level businesses and brands get it wrong when they think of social as either like a virality game of like, okay, well, we need to make content go viral or a side channel, a separate channel that's like secondary to like the main marketing campaigns that, you know, stuff kind of gets relegated or left to social at the end. I think it's clear than ever that social really is like the front door to the brand, right?

Like it's more important than many other marketing channels, if not all other marketing channels today. And it should be treated like kind of the mainstay of your brand in a lot of different ways. It's the easiest place to get your brand visibility like day to day. It's also the highest like output you can have as a brand, right? Like you can create content every single day, which means you could like learn. quicker, iterate quicker, and build up more consistency. You're not like buying a billboard, you know, every single day or releasing a new commercial every day. But with social content, you have that ability. And it's also the place where you can like build up more consistency,

right? Because of the volume, you're able to tell stories like over time. And I think that is again, like goes back to kind of the initial point of where things go wrong is if you're kind of just pulling a slot machine and hoping one or two things go viral but you know you're throwing a bunch of stuff against the wall for too long like you're not actually building a memorable brand on social you would never do that on other channels like again commercials website you know those are all built around like brand image brand ethos and they're like obviously much more highly curated than social and social shouldn't be highly curated. But the goal should be like delivering a consistent voice over time that gets remembered

versus like one off like trend hopping or virality chasing. And I think a lot of like leaders almost are impatient with social in the wrong ways where they want it to be. Yeah, they want to see the big numbers. But they don't necessarily believe that social translates to business. Yet they still are like, hey, why don't you jump on this trend or how do we go viral or, you know, if a post does get like 20 million views, they get excited about that, but aren't playing the sort of like intentional long game with social of like, this is the message

we're going to build over time, this is the audience we want to curate, and understanding that like 50,000 views from the right audience is like way more valuable than, you know, two million views from the wrong audience. And yeah, I think that, I think that marketers and CMOs are starting to realize, like, okay, social really is. our main brand megaphone, and we need to like treat it with a bunch of like intention and investment and consistency over time, at least the more innovative ones are. Yeah, I like that notion of the brand megaphone. I think that's a great illustration. Kind of along that too, you already mentioned a few principles that that answer this question, but I'm just curious from

your standpoint, especially today and with the algorithm changes and some of those just foundational principles of what works with consumers in terms of content. What do you feel separates social that sticks from social that just kind of blends into the feed? And how can maybe going to your previous point, how can maybe marketers sell those content concepts to their higher-ups? You know, how can we kind of come back to with research and make sure we're really executing and ensuring the impact of some of our ideas too? I think it comes down to like how do you build trust on social and also like engaged audience over time versus like trying to be clever every single post. You know what I mean?

Like I think the best brands like feel familiar. They kind of carve out their voice and they're intentional over time about what they're trying to deliver. Brands that don't have as much of a strategy or even are like able to invest enough in social, often blend into the feed as like, okay, we're going to do the things we see everyone else. else doing that's working. And a lot of that kind of dilutes your brand over time. If it's just hopping on trends, if it's, there's, there's always a time on social to like test and iterate. But if it lacks consistency over a long enough time, there's nothing that, you know, says or there's no brand sort of recall there, right? It's, yeah, you might scroll past something, but it's

like, oh, this brand on Instagram, I follow because they deliver this and I'm getting deeper and deeper engaged. So I think it's more about like how do you build that familiarity than how do we again try to like figure out what could go viral and like you're going to have a lot of shots on goal to have posts that do go viral and there is a benefit to that. But there's also a bigger like longer tail benefit to just like, hey, we're going to build our voice on social based around like the audience that we want to capture and what will provide value or humor or like emotion to them and kind of build that for the long term than just like day to day coming up with like new ideas that are very disparate from each other. So I think it is all about building like familiarity

on social because it is like a brand recall exercise of like okay, how do we build like a more passionate audience versus just trying to game the algorithm. I definitely think this is like a big part of the job. First of all, like we have to like accept as like marketers, especially social marketers like a big chunk of our job is internal education and like selling of like okay here why here's why our channels are important and here's why we should get more investment and here's why we're doing the things we're doing because a lot of folks internally don't understand social or or they they think they understand social and have strong opinions on it but aren't necessarily like in the weeds day to day and they don't understand what it actually takes to run run social so

I think there is, you know, it first is almost like accepting and embracing. Like, okay, part of my job is to like internally educate without being like, eye-roly about it. I can't believe I have to explain this. Because it is, you know, as the expert, like it is your job to communicate and educate internally. I think the second piece of it is like leveraging the skills you already have as a content creator and using those to tell stories internally.

So it's all about like weaving a story internally that is engaging. And I think social media practitioners have skills that other business people don't in communication. And like, you know, the same things that make a piece of content entertaining on social is like, okay, what is entertaining hook or idea? And how do I execute on that in a way that would like capture people's attention and keep them around? You could apply those same things to how you communicate internally. And I'm not necessarily saying, like, make like a reel to communicate internally, but think about, like, creating something visual, creating an engaging deck that has certain things that would stand out from how other people communicate. And also, like, sitting back, looking at a week of content that had been posted and finding, like, what are the stories that would hook or engage my executives the most? And that could be like big picture data, but also honing in on like this one post had this comment from this, you know, celebrity, which was a huge win for us and here's why.

And look at like, or these customers engaged with this post and like weaving stories out of what's happening versus just like impressions and data. So almost thinking about that from a content lens internally of like, okay, my job is to create content for my executives about how social is performing. like what are the best themes, like what's the best way to tell that story and like using that muscle for something that doesn't normally feel like content. I think it's like an important skill to build up. And again, like already a leg up for social media teams and social media content creators who are more creative than your average employee, right, in other areas, which can make you stand out with how you communicate internally if you use that in the right way.

Before we get back to the episode, we wanted to take a moment to tell you about our latest offering for marketing professionals. We get asked all the time where marketers can actually connect outside the podcast. So we built it, the MHH collective. Monthly live sessions with us and industry experts, real career conversations in a Slack space that's actually helpful and not noisy. If you want to learn with people, not just listen, we'd love to have you. If you want to join us, you can find the link in the show notes below. Oh, that's great. Yeah, thank you for those tips. And speaking of storytelling, we're going to dive into that here for a moment.

So, you know, consumers nowadays, their attention spans are really short. However, they're expecting more entertainment, more quality, more value from us as brand builders. And so in terms of storytelling, how are you kind of approaching telling stories within that scope of how the consumer behavior is today? I think there's definitely a lot of kind of talk about how attention spans are short. short, which they are, but I also think it's less about attention spans and more about just like the platforms are built to quickly consume and quickly like pass content, right? Like people still consume longer form content on different platforms. Like YouTube is going to be longer than like TikTok or Reels and you know, Netflix is going to be longer than YouTube. You know, like so there, it's less like about, okay, people, people don't have attention spans anymore, but more.

about there's so many choices at each level and there's a lot of choices on social because you could so quickly scroll through choices that like you just have to earn their patients a little more you know like there's just a lot more choices to be had so i guess i put it less on like the consumer and more on like okay how do we earn the like patients of you know and attention of the folks that were trying to reach and obviously there's clear like strategies for building and in formatting content that meets the platform that will, like, you know, engage, right? Whether it's like making sure there's, like, clear up front hooks that can frame what the story is about and, you know, reducing filler and making sure, okay, I'm making a piece of

content that somebody who is, has the mindset of I'm scrolling on social will, will want to consume. But I think it's more about like people not disliking long content and just not having, like, their tastes are too refined for content that is like unclear or unfocused you know like so you have to create content that actually has like is like very tight and good because there's so much of it out there that everyone's bar is a lot higher versus like attention span getting lower so I think it's just like reframing that of like okay like we have a high bar to clear to create good content there's a lot of good content out there and then honing in on like what is our audience and what do we have to say that's

specific to them. What's worked for us at Slate, which is like a very small scale version of it, because we're not like a massive brand. Like we're, you know, a smaller like B2B tech company. But we've really focused on just like humanizing ourselves as the people behind Slate and who understand social media managers and how they do their jobs. And like leaning into that, we think that's like our differentiator with some of like the bigger creative tools out there that people don't necessarily have like one-to-one relationships with or there's like no faces behind those brands as like, oh, I could see myself in you because you've done the job that I've done. So we've like leaned into that across like a variety of different like formats.

Some of it's more like thought leadership of just like, hey, how can we help you do your job better? But a lot of it too is just like having fun with our team making like stupid TikTok videos for social media themes, but it all comes down to like, okay, we really want to be super clear and make sure there's no filler and also be like really, really human and everything that we create, which continues to feel like a differentiator as like more and more content is like automated and feels like less human. And I think it is a differentiator. I just want to like press on that a little bit because what that means is that you also have

to improve your creative workflows internally, right? And so how does that change the quality of the work that you're outputting, not just becoming more efficient as a team? I mean, I think if you have good creative workflows, it frees up more like time and space to be creative, right? Versus being bogged down and like the creative doing. And like it allows you more like opportunities to have like bad ideas and flops. And like, you know, you kind of need to get through that stuff to get to the stuff that is. successful and feel like you have the bandwidth to try a lot of things because that is going to ultimately lead to like the five you know bad or average ideas that end up being the one really good

one and being like okay with like more output that um is like iterative and like honing in on like okay what is our voice like what has worked and kind of weeding through that stuff to then start to build up what truly is like, okay, this is our voice. This is like how we want to communicate. And I feel like, yeah, honing in on your creative workflows to be able to just like get through more ideas and execute on more ideas just like gives you those like faster feedback loop. So it's not just about, okay, well, this will make us be more efficient, but it also like speeds up the creative process in a real way that helps you like evolve quicker as a creative team. So, yeah, I definitely think it's really important and it's something that obviously like our tool helps do.

But you know, also like as a newer marketing team that we've put together at slate, we're also still trying to figure out the best ways to like unlock our own creativity. Oh yeah. Absolutely. Well, Eric, this has been awesome as we head into 2026, but just curious what marketing hill are you willing to die on in 2026? If you were to choose one, what would come to mind for that? Okay, I think the one that I recently posted about, it may be somewhat contradictory to some of the stuff I just said. But I'm a really big believer that, like, creative output is more important than, like, coming up with a perfect strategy. I guess it's a little similar to what we just talked about, especially for a newer brand or smaller team trying to find their footing on social.

So much work is often done internally on, like, planning a content calendar or, like, pitching a strategy or kind of convincing other stakeholders. If you're actually freed up to just create more content instead of creating like what feels like the perfect strategy, you will start to develop your like taste and voice that leads to our strategy now after having done X for three months is clearly going to be this and here's why. Output to me is always like more important than like coming up with a perfect plan. And it's something that, you know, With our marketing team, we've really, like, prioritized just, like, doing stuff versus having it have to be, like, the perfect right thing. And through just, like, more activity that actually is, like, public activity, we're able to then see, like, okay, here's where we want to, like, move.

And here's where our strategy is, like, based on. So I'm not saying it's just, like, throwing shit against the wall, but it's also, like, a lot more biased towards, like, getting stuff out there. then like making a perfect plan, a perfect campaign, making sure everyone's aligned, especially for social content where, you know, you really just need to be like posting more to be like learning and getting better at it. So yeah, I think, you know, I think I said in one of the posts like I'd rather have, you know, four pieces of content posted on, on social than like four slides in a strategy deck made to then pitch somebody internally. There's obviously like a balance because if you have the right strategy, you can move faster.

But I do think a lot of busy work gets spent, like, talking internally versus actually just, like, creating and putting stuff out there and starting to kind of build that muscle. It's so true. And it involves, you know, I think there's a lot more flexibility to iterate and optimize and test when you have that creative freedom to go and actually, like, have a bias towards action, like you said. So I think that's a really, really good lesson moving into 2026.

I think we've, we've, the pendulum has swung the other way when we've had this sort of like analysis paralysis of needing all of these like big strategic decks and moments when the strategy is fairly simple if you know your audience and you know the type of content you want to create, right? Exactly. I think that's, that's huge. Yeah, exactly. That's huge. Well, Eric, this has been an incredible conversation. We're so grateful. You're able to join us.

I would love if you could share where everyone can follow along with you and then also follow along with Slate and what Slate's up to. Yes. For me, LinkedIn is the primary place where I'm active and posting. So Eric Stark on LinkedIn, if you search Eric Stark Slate, I should come up. For Slate, we actually just started a substack. So it's the social social club on substack. Carmen from our marketing team, who is amazing, is writing that. It's going to be a weekly substack on all things happening in the social world that we think will be really valuable. And yeah, if you subscribe to that, you'll probably get a lot more info about other things. we're doing with Slate, like webinars and events and things like that that we're doing to try to bring the social community together. But I would say, yeah, me on LinkedIn and Slate follow the social social club on Slack. If you want to consume our content, if you want to learn more about our product, that's slateteams.com. And you can see what our product's all about there or request to demo. And we'll show you how it works on a Zoom.

And we'll have everything linked in the show notes as well for everyone to check that. Eric, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We're so appreciative. Thanks. Yeah, this was fun. This was really fun. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Marketing Happy Hour. If you enjoyed it, make sure you're subscribed to the show and sign up for a weekly newsletter with insights and marketing resources. We also invite you to check out the MHH collective, our community for marketers looking to connect, grow, and learn together. Check out the links in the show notes. We'll see you next time.