The B2B Content Show

EventShark
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The B2B Content Show is a weekly show from EventShark where Jake Clare and Ding Zheng sit down with marketers, founders, and business leaders to talk content strategy, LinkedIn, video production, and event marketing.  New episodes every week 🎧

  1. Sep 24

    She Has 342K Followers, But Her Company Doesn't Make Her Post

    How should a B2B company hire a creator or influencer? Alexis Bertholf has 342K followers across LinkedIn, TikTok and Instagram. She came up as a Cisco solutions engineer supporting 50 to 60 customers, and she's now the first-ever Global Technical Evangelist at Megaport. Her argument: a paycheck does not buy a creator's audience. She's proof of it. Alexis has zero contractual obligation to post about Megaport, set up that way on purpose, and she posts about them constantly anyway. That's about half a million impressions and 55,000 profile views a week on LinkedIn, with visible spikes on the company page every time one of her posts takes off. We get into what companies get wrong when they hire someone who already has an audience, and why posting quotas and "we own your image" contracts quietly destroy the trust that made that audience worth buying. We also cover what a full-funnel campaign looks like when social is one channel instead of the whole plan, and why almost nobody pulls one off. After three years of posting nearly every day, her advice for beginners is blunt: fix your audio before you buy a camera, and with a sub-second average retention rate, your face is the hook, not your opening line. The back half is the highs and the lows of digital nomading, and why it isn't all it's cracked up to be. Alexis has been on the road for a year and a half, 15 countries, never more than three weeks in one place. In her words, "it's definitely not all that it's cracked up to be." We get into the 80-hour weeks built around 6am calls with Australia and US calls running to 2am, how she got her company to say yes, and what you quietly give up back home to keep doing it. Full chapters below ⬇️ -- Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro Trailer 00:56 - Welcome to the show 01:55 - 342K followers across four platforms 02:36 - Aerospace engineering to a Cisco sales program 03:12 - What a global technical evangelist actually does 03:55 - She wrote her own job description 05:13 - Community go to market, explained 07:02 - Companies hire the unicorn without the infrastructure 08:24 - Unused content is wasted money 09:17 - Creator, engineer and executive in one title 10:39 - She came to Megaport for more time to create 11:36 - The AI stuff moves faster than you can learn it 12:19 - Staying current is the real job 13:59 - The lifecycle of a piece of company content 14:25 - Scenario one, her own page 14:49 - Scenario two, a brand deal 15:21 - Scenario three, her own company 16:56 - Three weeks to a month for one video 17:26 - Why she still wants a second set of eyes 18:01 - A publicly traded company cannot wing it 19:06 - Align social with the rest of marketing 20:45 - Have you seen the Brita account 21:52 - What brand is killing it on social 22:51 - Why big tech is scared to be that bold 23:47 - The right way to hire an influencer 24:21 - They think they are buying your audience 25:09 - Megaport requires zero posts from her 26:03 - Do not give them requirements, give them time 26:38 - Half a million impressions a week 27:48 - Why Gong's model survives departures 28:47 - Your employees are coin operated 29:33 - The bonus ladder that gets people over the hump 30:28 - Social is not the campaign 31:40 - Employee advocacy and influencers 33:17 - Departments are fighting each other 34:09 - There is no incentive to align 35:25 - Rapid Fire: LinkedIn, TikTok or Instagram 36:03 - Rapid Fire: Why LinkedIn lost its energy 37:20 - Rapid Fire: Real people you can actually meet 39:01 - Rapid Fire: Advice for your 20 year old self 39:16 - Post every day or only when it is great 40:21 - Ding was insecure about Delilah 41:18 - How important is a hook 42:46 - Nobody buys a GPU cluster off a hook 44:06 - A year and a half as a digital nomad 45:59 - Advice for someone who wants this 48:21 - How do you tell your company 50:26 - Be online when your team needs you 53:06 - Be intentional about a season in a place 54:18 - Co livings and the nomad community 56:21 - The Dolomites, Switzerland, New Zealand 57:29 - Blowing up her life and hitting the road 58:28 - Travel taught her to let go of routine 59:15 - Could the founders go nomad 1:02:14 - Maslow's hierarchy of needs 1:03:06 - Am I investing in my friendships 1:04:11 - Jake had the opposite experience 1:04:44 - Relationships are trees 1:06:24 - The friend you fly to Norway 1:07:16 - A forest of skinny trees 1:10:10 - What is next for Alexis 1:10:49 - Where to find Alexis Bertholf GUEST Alexis Bertholf, Global Technical Evangelist at Megaport LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexisbertholf/ HOSTS Jake Clare, Co-Founder and CEO of EventShark Ding Zheng, Co-Founder and The Sales Rapper The B2B Content Show is produced by EventShark, a B2B video agency in Austin, TX. Subscribe for new episodes on B2B content, video marketing, and building an audience in tech. #B2BContentShow #B2BMarketing #InfluencerMarketing #CreatorEconomy #DigitalNomad

    She Has 342K Followers, But Her Company Doesn't Make Her Post

  2. Sep 2

    Demand Gen in 2026: What's Working & What Isn't

    Demand gen didn't stop working. It got optimized until there was nothing left to optimize. Paid ads keep getting more expensive, AI search is absorbing the clicks that used to land on your site, and a decade of everyone optimizing the same channels left every company running the same plays. The channels B2B built its entire playbook on are the ones that got crowded first. We sat down with Michael McEuen, Senior Director of Demand Gen at Mainsail Partners, where he advises a portfolio of vertical software companies on exactly this problem, to unpack why the precision marketing era is evolving and what he's telling those companies to do instead. Before Mainsail, Michael also worked at Gong and Dooly. In this episode, they get into: The marketing barbell, brand on one end and demand on the other, and why B2B loaded the demand side for a decade until every channel started to look the sameWhy 68% of Google searches now end without a click on anything, and what that does to the inbound model most B2B teams were built aroundThe first question he asks a portfolio company: when did you last secret shop your own buying experience?The value of buying four hours with someone in a room versus $8 to $10 a click for ten seconds of their attentionWhy MQLs are the most overhyped metric in marketing, and what to anchor the team on insteadWhy an agent is really just a scheduled task, and the documenting habit that builds one for you while you do the workTrying to figure out how to optimize your demand gen marketing this year? Michael has spent his whole career on the performance side, so this one's packed with takeaways. Stream now! Connect with Michael McEuen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelmceuen/  -- 00:00 - Intro Trailer 00:38 - Welcome to the show 00:48 - Guest introduction: Michael McEuen, Mainsail Partners 01:27 - Ding and Michael go back to the Dooly days 02:20 - What is the current state of demand gen in marketing right now? 03:57 - What actually happened to digital 04:24 - 68% of Google searches end without a click 04:44 - Cost per click is up 29% year over year for B2B SaaS 05:40 - The shift from an unsavvy buyer market to a savvy one 08:00 - How does performance marketing evolve in an age of agents or usage based pricing? 08:28 - Caviar, diamonds, and AI credits 09:21 - Seat based pricing breaks when AI shrinks the team 10:02 - Why Mainsail built a pricing and packaging team 10:42 - What he's advising the companies he's working with to do 11:13 - All companies: Go revisit your ICP 13:32 - When did you last secret shopper your own buying experience? 14:25 - Mainsail, and Michael's journey up until now 16:22 - Mainsail's thesis and vertical companies 17:32 - When your entire market is 6,000 companies and thinking about precision marketing 18:00 - What's something marketing related that works really well in horizontal, that doesn't work in a vertical business? 19:33 - Run your own roadshow 20:08 - We are in a trust recession because of AI 21:52 - Connected TV is the pattern disrupt nobody expected 22:15 - Quick and dirty iPhone testimonials can beat polished ads 24:23 - Rapid Fire: Creative or targeting? 25:08 - Rapid Fire: What is the marketing barbell? 26:12 - Brand is making a reemergence 26:44 - Earned media came back 28:16 - Rapid Fire: Next marketing trend? 31:00 - In-person experiences vs. $8 to $10 a click for ten seconds of attention 33:42 - Rapid Fire: A stunt you wish you pulled off, but didn't? 34:49 - Rapid Fire: Is the marketing funnel dead? 35:48 - Rapid Fire: The most overhyped metric in marketing right now? 36:13 - What is actually bad about MQLs: 135% to goal on MQLs, 78% on bookings 36:58 - You don't need the most expensive model for marketing work 38:18 - Everyone is in their own little chat environment 39:51 - This is a coaching problem, not a tooling problem 42:05 - An agent is really just a scheduled task 42:22 - The biggest unlock: Document alongside the work and the agent builds itself 43:38 - The two things to do if you're starting from zero with AI 45:00 - How to use Claude to read your CRM objects 46:13 - Are you nice to your AI? 49:09 - Coding models score better when you're mean to them 49:40 - What Mainsail looks for before investing in companies 51:45 - Founder prestige has died in the last two years 55:39 - Eleven Madison Park: When the meal costs $1,000 every touchpoint has to land, and the cognac trick 1:00:00 - Ding's 'Slim Shady' closing freestyle 1:01:49 - Michael's final thoughts: Get back to your roots 1:02:12 - Outro and where to find Michael

  3. Aug 26

    The State of LinkedIn Ads in 2026/2027

    LinkedIn and Meta take very different approaches to B2B advertising. Your company is looking to up their ad spend in 2026, and become more omni-channel. So, which one is worth your money? We sit down with Moby Hayat, founder of FireShow Media and a B2B advertising expert who’s helped clients add $1M-$5M in revenue multiple times through paid ads, to understand what 2026/2027 looks like for LinkedIn paid ads. Eventshark CEO and The Sales Rapper have Moby break down what you should know to maximize your ads/spend, Meta ads and how they fit in the ad market, why LinkedIn can get so expensive when you get the targeting wrong, and how to think about paid ads beyond just generating leads. They get into: - Why nobody really knows how LinkedIn ads work right now - LinkedIn targeting vs. Meta’s algorithm - Why the Boost button can limit your options - The $30K LinkedIn campaign that generated two leads and zero meetings - Why Meta is underrated for B2B - Named account targeting: The one thing LinkedIn does that Meta can't - Turning ad engagement into outbound opportunities - Speed-to-lead and why follow-up matters - A $10K ad budget, planned live on the show If you’re trying to figure out where to put your B2B ad budget, give this episode a listen! -- Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro Trailer 00:51 - Welcome to the show 01:05 - Guest introduction 02:20 - Why LinkedIn ads are suddenly top of mind 02:47 - NEVER press the boost button 03:45 - LinkedIn has no algorithm, so targeting is everything 04:43 - How to actually dial in your targeting 05:59 - The cost of not knowing who you're selling to… 06:40 - How big should your audience be? 07:42 - The state of LinkedIn paid ads in 2026 08:00 - $30,000 spent, two leads, zero meetings 08:40 - The 50/50 split for ad spend 09:40 - How do you measure success on LinkedIn ads? 11:55 - Building our $10K campaign LIVE 12:49 - Splitting the budget: thought leadership vs. direct offer 13:28 - Lead magnet or go straight to the offer? 15:20 - What every creative ad needs 16:38 - Speed to lead: call them within 15 minutes 17:22 - Why you hold back half the budget 20:34 - Why almost nobody gets results on LinkedIn ads 22:30 - The client who missed every target and made 8x 23:12 - Outbound isn't dead, it's just more difficult 25:13 - The ads-to-outbound play 26:55 - Enriching the list with Clay, Apollo and Instantly 28:26 - AI, MCP and the future of everyone running their own ads 29:12 - Meta ads for B2B are underrated 31:20 - A $100K a month campaign with zero targeting 31:37 - So why are we using LinkedIn at all? 32:38 - Guard up on LinkedIn, guard down on meta 36:10 - Meta's ads manager and unchecking all the boxes 37:04 - Rapid Fire: LinkedIn ads or meta ads for B2B? 37:47 - Rapid Fire: Most overrated way to target people 38:29 - Rapid Fire: Smallest budget worth using on LinkedIn 39:04 - Rapid Fire: Most used app on your phone 39:25 - Rapid Fire: Overall thoughts on LinkedIn ads in 2026 39:56 - Moby's newsletter strategy 40:54 - You rent your LinkedIn audience, you own your list 42:09 - Why Moby's newsletter is invite only 42:38 - The newsletter gold rush 46:10 - YouTube, TikTok and why omnichannel is important 47:42 - Moby's origin story 48:15 - The moment at Spryng that changed everything 49:03 - How Ding and Moby actually met 49:49 - Spryng, Drive and the Exit Five marketing community 52:09 - Where to find Moby 52:33 - Outro

  4. Jul 28

    He Built 55K+ Followers on LinkedIn by Ignoring Every “Best Practice”

    Everyone tells you to post consistently, stay in your niche, and use AI to scale. Every “best practice” is really about optimizing. JC optimized one thing instead; Meaning it.  In this episode, Jake and Ding sit down with JC Pollard, sales leader at Gong with 55K+ followers on LinkedIn, to talk about why it's more important to be authentic than to optimize your content for analytics in search of virality, how you can grow and scale on social media without religiously following all the advice you see online, and more: Why niching down isn't as necessary as everyone saysThe problem with letting AI write your postsWhy chasing virality is the wrong goalWhat it means to build a brand people trustHow to handle criticism onlineWhy you shouldn't be so obsessed with your analyticsThis episode is proof that there's more than one way to build an audience and grow on social media. Tune in now to find out how! -- 00:00 - Intro Trailer 00:53 - Welcome to the show 01:01 - Guest introduction 01:41 - Who is JC in 30 seconds 02:31 - JC's golf YouTube channel and why he stopped 02:57 - Wanting to be the CEO of YouTube 04:21 - How Ding got into rapping 05:19 - How long has JC been making content on LinkedIn? 05:58 - Why did JC start making content? 07:15 - How he's thinking about making content now 08:10 - Tactical vs. Personal approach to LinkedIn content 09:55 - Dispelling the myth about Gong 12:45 - Why 99% of great sellers never post 14:53 - The Berlin Marathon 16:02 - Building a home gym 18:19 - Good Ole Days Golf YouTube Channel 20:10 - The YouTube golf community 21:10 - The other type of content JC's doing 22:35 - Ding Freestyle Segment 25:22 - How cold calling made him a better freestyler 26:09 - JC's cold call opener 26:50 - Why he loves cold calling 27:50 - The Masters hat gifting story 29:53 - Rapid Fire: Sales or Golf Content? 30:12 - Rapid Fire: A creator you're studying right now, or watching? 30:59 - Rapid Fire: Which is better at getting people's attention, comments or DMs? 31:21 - Rapid Fire: Most underrated LinkedIn advice JC has for people on LinkedIn 32:32 - Are we losing original thought? 33:16 - How Ding actually uses AI 34:06 - Your brain is a muscle 36:02 - Handling hate online 38:58 - Crabs in a Bucket 40:16 - Favorite way to work out 41:15 - Running and letting go of the ego 42:40 - Don't turn your hobby into a second job 43:38 - Outro

  5. Jul 15

    B2B Marketing in 2026: AI Wrappers, Infinite Content, Service as the Moat & Claude Brain

    Standing out in B2B used to come down to having a louder campaign. But in 2026, when everyone can ship features and spin up content overnight with AI, it means the game is changing. The teams winning are competing on service, distribution, and how well they actually know their customers. We sat down with Jay Desai, Growth Lead at Navattic and a former solo marketer, go-to-market operator, and former SaaS founder, to unpack how B2B go-to-market is shifting under all this pressure, and where the advantages are within tools like Claude's MCP connectors. In this episode they get into: - Why service is becoming the real moat in B2B, and where the handoff from sales to customer success quietly breaks - The move from selling tools to selling outcomes, and what "services as software" means for how you package and price offerings - How B2B pricing is being rewritten, from seat-based to usage-based AI models, and what that changes for buyers and vendors - Winning content in a noisier market: why you don't need to go viral, just the right customers watching, and why testimonials and mid-funnel win - The distribution trap most teams miss, and why your best channel might be a rep sending the right asset - Buy vs build: the maintenance trap teams could fall into when they try to build everything in-house Whether you're rethinking how you sell, price, or show up in a market that gets noisier by the day, this one's packed with takeaways. Give it a listen! -- Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro Trailer 00:37 - Welcome to the show 00:50 - Guest introduction 01:34 - What Japan taught Jay about B2B Marketing 03:23 - Why service is the real differentiator 03:43 - From software as a service to services as software 06:25 - Why B2B companies struggle with service quality? 08:11- The sales to customer success handoff gap 09:40 - Reading account signals before things break 10:24 - Seat based SaaS model vs usage based AI model 12:41 - Will subsidized token spend last? 13:55 - The AI adoption bell curve 14:22 - What actually counts as a wrapper company? 16:57 - Privacy and security risks of vibe coded tools 17:35 - What content breaks through the noise? 19:20 - Why EventShark's video offerings have changed 20:01 - Shift to middle and bottom of funnel content 21:18 - You don't need to go viral 22:18 - The distribution trap most people miss 22:36 - Quadruple your content and store it 23:37 - Advice for solo and small marketing teams 25:07 - The best Claude prompt to find what to automate 25:28 - What EventShark is building with Claude 25:59 - How vibe coding has evolved 27:52 - The best way to use AI day to day 29:07 - How the documentation process has changed 29:57 - The document everything blind spot 30:45 - Sharing Claude skills across the team 32:35 - A two layer system for AI context across accounts 34:31 - One prediction for the next 12 months 36:11 - Outro

  6. Jun 25

    Winning Outbound in 2026, the Phone Comeback, Going All-In on Claude, “AI Slop” Problem, & Event Strategy (ft. John Eitel)

    If everyone has access to the same AI tools and can scale outreach faster than ever, how do you stand out from all the noise? We sat down with John Eitel, Chief Growth Officer of Orum and a 7x sales leader, to talk B2B sales, AI adoption, and why human connection is becoming the real competitive advantage. In this episode they get into: - Cold calling making a comeback - Running events that are prioritizing connection - The cost of handing your whole sales team access to AI & more AI makes good sellers better, but it doesn't create them. If you want to know how to use AI to sell smarter without losing the human side of selling, give this episode a listen! -- Timestamps: 0:00  Welcome to the show 0:32  Guest introduction 4:00  How is B2B selling changing right now? 6:35  Usage-based or seat pricing – which wins? 8:42  How do you break into accounts in 2026? 11:19 Selling a sales solution as a seller 12:55 Why don’t buyers buy tools anymore? 13:24 When is a prospect not worth your time? 15:06 Is cold calling really back from the dead? 17:07 How has cold calling gotten harder? 18:26 Do top execs really take cold calls? 19:27 Breaking into your target accounts in 2026 21:16 Why are in-person events suddenly back? 23:40 Throwing events in 2026 26:10 Putting John’s entire sales team on Claude 29:10 Is “token-maxxing” just hype? 30:26 Is AI quietly making reps worse at selling? 31:15 Who should own your AI tools? 33:29 Where does AI create real sales value? 34:45 Why is AI just a “PhD-level intern”? 35:55 Rapid fire - best cold-call opener? 36:27 Rapid fire - worst sales advice still around? 37:26 Rapid fire - biggest red flag in a hire? 37:48 Rapid fire - most underrated sales methodology? 38:44 Rapid fire - a CRO’s most important job? 39:19 Rapid fire - the one metric that matters? 40:44 Can Ding freestyle a sales rap on the spot? #b2bsales #b2bmarketing #coldcalling #salesstrategy #aiinsales

  7. Apr 21

    Your Best B2B Content Isn’t One That Goes Viral

    Millennials have the trust and credibility but can't generate demand while Gen Zs have the audience but can't generate revenue from it. . And right now, neither of them knows how to bridge that gap. In this episode, Jake and Ding sit down with Jonny Rose, founder of The Story Club and video coach to 86 B2B founders across the UK and Europe, to talk about why millennials and Gen Zs are stuck on opposite sides of the attention-to-revenue problem, why the US is years ahead of the UK in B2B content, and how the right video strategy can make your sales process a whole lot smoother. They also get into:  The UK's "no pitching" cultureWhy the most unsexy videos are often the most effectiveThe trust recession and why AI content is making it worseIn-house creators vs agenciesAI's impact on agenciesWhether you're struggling to get attention or turn it into revenue in a market that's getting noisier by the day, this episode is packed with insights you can take back to your content strategy and sales process.  Tune in now! #b2bmarketing #b2bcontent #videomarketing #founderledcontent #contentmarketing #contentcreation #b2bpodcast -- Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro 1:38 - UK vs US video marketing 3:37 - Why people keep putting video off 5:26 - Time is a bigger barrier than money 7:43 - Why inbound beats cold outreach 9:37 - How long before you see results? 10:11 - Using video as a sales tool 11:46 - Content that arms your sales team 12:41 - What kinds of videos are a waste? 13:38 - The $100K launch video is dead 16:27 - The worst type of video out there 18:17 - UK vs US — the sales friend zone 22:41 - The generational content gap 25:00 - Attention without a clear offer 26:38 - Having a leaky funnel 28:26 - You need something to actually sell 34:09 - Hiring an in-house creator 37:48 - Why video matters for your business 39:00 - Stop chasing virality 42:08 - Sell the problem before the solution 45:19 - Make B2B boring again 51:05 - Agencies vs awards vs actual results 56:09 - AI is changing the agency game 1:09:38 - People will always come back to people 1:11:24 - Why video case studies > written ones 1:13:27 - Getting video testimonials that land 1:14:08 - Word of the week — Tall Poppy Syndrome

  8. Apr 13

    What’s Working on LinkedIn for B2B in 2026

    Turns out B2B content CAN go viral ⚠️ In this episode, Tas Bober (founder of The Scroll Lab) & Tim Davidson (founder of B2B Rizz) from the Notorious B2B show join Jake Clare and Ding Zheng for Ep. 5 of the pod. They talk about what it takes to build an engaging B2B show, how to grow on LinkedIn, and get sponsors to fund the show without giving up creative control. They also get into: Notorious B2B’s viral clip that hit 2.9M impressions on InstagramHow they landed Exit Five as a sponsor without a pitch deckNavigating sponsor approvalsLinkedIn content formats driving the most growth in 2026If you're a marketer, a content creator, or just someone trying to build an audience in 2026, this is a must listen! 🎧 -- Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 0:31 Meet the Notorious B2B crew 1:42 What Tim & Tas learned after 53 episodes 2:10 The clip that hit 2.9M impressions 3:07 Why timely content beats evergreen 6:25 Zigging when everyone else zags 7:38 B2B edutainment explained 9:29 Be a content hoe 10:33 Try new content formats 11:27 LinkedIn vs. other platforms for building a show 12:36 Personal brand vs. company page 14:19 How often Tim posts now vs. before 15:14 Staying visible without posting  16:30 How Tas gets business from commenting on posts 17:04 LinkedIn comment impressions are wild 18:49 How the Notorious B2B landed their first sponsor 20:29 Controversial content and sponsor red tape 22:00 Creative autonomy in sponsor contracts 23:38 Repositioning the show without changing it 26:09 Making an engaging remote podcast 28:26 Tas's top content tip right now 29:14 What makes an infographic go viral 31:02 Dwell time on LinkedIn explained 33:46 Connor's B2B content tip 34:56 Tim's LinkedIn video format tip 37:56 Ding's spicy take on the either/or question 39:43 Lock in your foundation before swinging big 40:48 Don't be afraid to fail and repost 41:52 Post consistently and let the data tell you what works 44:34 Wrap-up + outro

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About

The B2B Content Show is a weekly show from EventShark where Jake Clare and Ding Zheng sit down with marketers, founders, and business leaders to talk content strategy, LinkedIn, video production, and event marketing.  New episodes every week 🎧

Information

  • Creator
    EventShark
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    36
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The B2B Content Show
  • Show Website
    The B2B Content Show