The Content Marketing Mistakes Costing Manufacturers RFQs, Ep #66

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This week I sat down with Brooke Laing, who’s just joined the MakingChips team full time as our new Content and Community Developer. You’re going to be hearing a lot more from her.

Brooke didn’t come up through marketing school. She spent five years boots on the ground, working as a fitter and welder on job sites, before she ever touched a content calendar. She built a following doing something nobody else in the trades was doing: showing what the job actually looks like, day to day. One 15-second clip she posted on a break, without thinking twice about it, ended up with 600,000 views by the time she got to her car that afternoon. That’s the kind of story that makes you want to chase virality, and it’s also exactly the trap she warns against.

So we spent this episode on a question I ask myself all the time: what are manufacturers actually getting wrong about content marketing? We break down what belongs on TikTok versus Instagram versus LinkedIn, why an unfinished or abandoned company page can hurt you more than having no page at all, and why every platform, at the end of the day, is just competing for your screen time.

We also get into the parts nobody talks about: how fast you need to respond to an inbound message, why your shop is competing with Amazon’s delivery speed whether that’s fair or not, and what I personally look for, right down to how clean the shop floor looks in a photo, when I’m evaluating whether a company is worth doing business with.

If you’ve ever wondered whether your shop’s LinkedIn page is helping or hurting you, or you just want to understand why marketing feels so much harder than it should, this one’s for you.

What’s Covered in this Episode

• (0:01) Welcoming Brooke Laing, MakingChips’ newest full-time team member
• (0:27) Brooke’s path: five years on job sites, Sisterhood of Trades, and her own podcast
• (1:11) The big question for this episode: what manufacturers get wrong about content marketing
• (1:21) Why cold calls and cold email don’t cut it anymore
• (3:30) Brooke’s edge: she markets to tradespeople because she used to be one
• (4:07) Knowing your audience by generation, and why that decides your channels
• (5:31) The clips nobody expects to blow up, including Brooke’s own 600,000-view TikTok
• (9:35) The platform cheat sheet: TikTok for behind-the-scenes, Instagram for the portfolio, LinkedIn for credentials
• (12:16) Every platform is really just competing for your screen time
• (14:22) Why chasing every platform is a losing bet, and why authenticity beats over-produced content
• (17:25) How Brooke onboards a new shop: auditing the site and socials, then building four content pillars
• (18:31) The content pillars that show up again and again for fabricators
• (20:10) Why people check you out online before they ever call, and why responding to inbound fast matters
• (22:41) The Amazon effect: manufacturers are competing with next-day delivery expectations whether they like it or not
• (27:09) Why a half-finished page hurts your brand more than having no page at all
• (28:41) LinkedIn rewards consistency and punishes breaks, and the scheduling trick most shops skip
• (35:16) The real ROI of turning one show into five pieces of content, and Brooke’s new job editing the episode she’s a guest on
• (38:03) What success actually looks like: impressions, then engagement, then followers
• (42:19) Why Facebook is the wrong platform for manufacturers, and the account-ban story that proves it
• (45:01) When content marketing turns into real RFQs, why manufacturing is a local business, and why niching down matters
• (50:02) What Brendon actually looks for when he evaluates a shop’s digital presence

Resources Mentioned

• HireMFGLeaders
• IMTS 2026
• Kennametal

Connect with Brooke Laing

• Connect with Brooke on LinkedIn