Transcript
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Welcome back to the BV Growth Show. My name is James Carberry and I'm
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joined today by Shannon Curran. She's
the manager of content marketing at quick base
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and she's the host of the new
normal. Shannon, I'm really excited to
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chat with you. We connected on
Linkedin, I think it was just a
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few days ago, and I really
loved what you and your team at a
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quick base are doing with content marketing
in the wake of what's everything that's going
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on in the world right now with
covid nineteen. So shouldn't tell us a
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little bit about quick bass and then
tell us a little bit about your role
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in your team? So folks have
contact going into this conversation. Awesome.
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Thanks for having me. Just as
a warning, I'm typically on James's side,
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so I'm not going to put the
one being interviewed, but I'm willing
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to. You know, I'm up
for the challenge. So yeah, so
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I manage our content marketing team at
quick base. We are the only enterprise
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software platform for operational agility, so
we're bb software, just as many of
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you are in the lowcode category.
So we've actually our technologies been around for
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twenty years and we used to be
a part of into it. We divested,
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I think it was, I'm going
to have to check this mate,
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was like five or two years ago, and yes, we've just been growing
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ever since. It's pretty exciting.
It's a really unique opportunity kind of carving
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out our own category, which is
pretty cool. So I came to quick
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bass about a year ago and a
little over a year and I came in
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as a completely different role. Came
in the same day as a new CMO
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who I now feel very grateful to
have worked with. But my first week
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my boss left gave us notice,
so that was not great. So,
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but it gave us an opportunity to
really think about, like, what does
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content marketing mean at quick face?
And so that's the stuff I like live
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for, like I love this stuff. So I've built the function over the
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last year. So on my team
I have a writer, I have someone
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that runs social and then I also
have a video producer and then we also
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work with a contractor called work genius
and they are like a bench of freelancers
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for us that we utilize. But
we're still growing, like I have many
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recks that I would love to fill
moving in the next few years, but
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we're kind of just we finally have
like our strategy really set and we're just
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starting to move. So we really
do so at our core, quick base
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is enabling problem solvers and businesses to
run as agile quickly as possible, and
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it's sort of all of those like
unique workflows around your core systems that we
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are really there to optimize. Like
that's what we do. That's our bread
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and butter, right, like it's
all of those workflows that are really specific
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to you where we want to run
those. So a good example is like
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my content creation process that a lot
of people would use like a project management
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tool, like a Trello or something
like that to use and then maybe use
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like a publishing software to use.
I built all of our custom on quick
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bass and like I I can build
it, which I am awful at type
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of Shal So, if I will
tell you, I do get help sometimes
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or things that are really like specific, like really tough relationships or like formulas,
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but it is a really cool tool
to say that we like kind of,
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you know, the eat your own
dog food kind of thing. We
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use our own tools every day.
So we run our campaign's, we run
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our everything like that. So when
it comes to get back to sort of
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like what my team does is we
really are, I call us the matter
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meter, so we are sort of
like the clock of what, why does
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it matter and who does it matter
too? And we're the ones that are
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really the we craft the story and
put it out into the market. So,
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whether it's video content, social only
content, blog content, we're really
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trying to figure out how to humanize
exactly what we do, and that's what
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I love about what I do.
So doesn't really matter what industry work in.
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Like humans are buying whatever you're selling, so you need to talk to
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them in a way that sort of
you understand what keeps them up at night
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and who help them solve those problems
to make their lives a little bit easier.
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I love that idea of recognizing the
humanity and business. Yes, I
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say all the time my friend Eathan
bew wrote a book called Rehumanize Your Business.
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He's a cohost of this show,
and I say all the time we
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don't use the word friendship and business
enough. I just think we think of
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business is this as this thing where
it's, I don't know, it's cold
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and sterile and but we're all humans
and so I love the its and pipeline
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and velocity, and you're like what
it really is is, like your product
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is uniquely positioned to solve a problem
for someone that is like bashing their head
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against all every days, like that
is really what you're doing. And so,
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like what we're trying to do is
just tell those stories so that it
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can unite other people to also help
solve those same problems. And it's funny
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because I have a I didn't come
with the business background. I was a
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journalist for a little while Ork to
nonprofit, like a storyteller, communicator,
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and I did go to busines school, so I just finished, actually right
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now, I can grab it.
Would have graduated tomorrow and so, but
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I think I come with a different
perspective than a lot of like marketing majors
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may have had, right, because
I was able to figure out like the
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story first, and that's why my
writer on my team is a journalist.
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I hired her. She's a journalist
with a Dallas News and because she tells
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such a compelling story. Like I
can teach her how to write a white
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paper, one pager or like whatever, like the format doesn't really matter,
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and I'll teach her about the sales
monnel, but it really matters is like
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how to crack the story, how
to tell the story, and who are
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you telling it for? And who's
better at that than journalists? Right?
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So, see, I think that's
probably why I think about a little bit
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different and I love that approach of
thinking about content marketers through the Lens of
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when you're recruiting talent for roles like
that, looking for people with those skill
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sets and you can teach the business
acumen and that that that is certainly necessary.
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They need to, over time,
learn the industry and learn the you
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know what words to say and the
content text of how that you know how
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to say it's certain phrases in a
way that doesn't make your brand look aloof
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but I think if they can tell
a compelling story, they're at least seventy
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percent of the way there. So
I love that you looked for that whenever
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you were looking to grow your team. Shannon, I want to I want
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to talk to you about your approach
kind of post covid nineteen, because you've
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had an interesting approach with your content. You actually went to your customer facing
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teams and you tap their shoulder and
said, hey, we want to know
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from our customers what are the problems
that they're facing because of what's going on
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in our world right now, because
we want to create the most helpful content
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we possibly can for them. Can
you walk us through kind of the thinking
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and the execution of how you went
about doing that and and from what I
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understand, you guys were able to
quickly execute on that and and you saw
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results because of it. So walk
us through kind of that journey? Yeah,
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absolutely, so we learned a lot. We would probably not do it
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exactly the same way again, but
I will explain to you sort of what
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happens. So we went remote a
little bit earlier than a lot of other
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companies because we are very well equipped
to work promote like we are. And
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you know, the first conversations around
covid were really around our user conference,
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which is actually coming up on a
second on June second, and so the
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first conversation about covid was like do
we need to postpone our conference because,
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you know, like all of the
big ones, that adobe one, like
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all that kind of stuff was happening, and then we were like wait a
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minute, no, I think we
need to like postpone our lives like I
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don't think anyone knew how big this
was going to get. So we all
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went remote and in that first weekend, I think we want promote on a
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Thursday at first weekend, I get
a like an email from a sales rep
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that's like we can do more,
and she seefeed like the chief revenue officer
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and my boss and Cmo, and
she was like what are we gonna do,
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like because we have so many customers
that were uniquely position so one of
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our greatest values is that we have
a really quick time to value, like
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apt built, working next day,
like this is not like a large scale
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digital transformation project. This is like
you have a problem, we can build
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a customer to help fix it,
or you really can build it, but
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we're going to help you and then
you're implemented the next day. And so
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there is there was a like a
hunger from our team to help. And
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so the best part about like our
jobs I didn't have to make up that
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story like it actually happened. I
was see seed on that email and of
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course I like call my boss.
I'm like that's not my choice to make.
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What a we can do it.
So he was like don't worry,
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we've been working on all weekend,
like like just I'll brief you on Monday,
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like go and also go. Okay, so on Monday we find out
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we're going to we've crafted this offer. We're going to try and give our
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product for free for frontline organizations that
are trying to come back covid. We're
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working on it. We should have
it spun up up by Friday. But
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we also have a lot of customers
that were just helping that are doing like
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amazing things with our product already,
and so there was like two sides here.
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So what I kind of did is, you know, I went on
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every slack channel of every customer facing
team and said, can you just tell,
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like drop a line of a story
of a customer that you're helping right
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now and what they're doing? I
just want to collect them, like let's
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and then then, of course,
my my like bandit experience turned into like
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product marketing, being like we probably
should actually create like some framework around this.
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Now it's like okay, okay,
so I would try to agree.
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So we gathered all this information and
we really did find that what there were
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seems right, there were it tracking
apps that were coming up because they had
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to send out computers to all of
these people that are now remote. There
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were supply chains that were like falling
apart, and so now we have companies
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that are asking us to extend applications
to other parts of their supply chain that
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they didn't originally use us for,
but they were spinning up the stuff so
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fast. And there were I think
almost seventy five volunteers and in our company
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that volunteered to work outside of their
current jobs to help a customers solve the
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problem. Right, and because we
have like whizzz of quick face that work
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in the I am not one of
them. So like I should never volunteer
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to help the customer build ups,
but there are some we have likes.
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Some of our solutions consultants are amazing, right and so, and we're not
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a professional services organization, but we
did step in. And so what my
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team did is we're like, all
right, so what's the messaging for our
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current campaigns? We should stay a
line to that. We know what it's
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resonating, but what do we think
those people are thinking about right now?
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They're no longer thinking about it six
weeks from now, six months from now,
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and we found that it was really
so we have a framework around like
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operational excellence, and we were like
how do we say, like what are
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the five things they need to look
at tomorrow to make sure that their operations
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are safe and set? And so
my writer, Julie, literally like she
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was like, great, I can
totally take that white paper that I wrote
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and turn it into a blog post
that is relevant for right now and I'll
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have a published by the end of
the day and I'll look at like we
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had our SEO team look at some
search terms, but if they were still
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so new right she was like people
are kind of searching for coronavirus, but
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they're kind of searching for covid nineteen, and I was like, okay,
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just putting whatever you can put in. We're going to send it out,
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and all of our outbound teams were
using that content to be able to educate
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the conversations they were having with customers. So that was really one part and
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since then we've just learned so much
and we've been augmenting. I think the
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thing is sometimes I think we're a
little bit sacred with content and we think
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that we're like making billboards or printing
brochures, and it's like that's not what
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we're doing. We're publishing something digitally
that that can be changed at any time.
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Honestly, Google loves when you change
stuff. They want you to keep
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updating things. So you should put
something out there and learn if it's not
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wrong, like it doesn't it's the
stuffy. You're saying isn't incorrect. It
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just may not be the closest,
but like get it out there, learn
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from it, especially on social like
you can learn so much from that audience.
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And so there was that, and
then there was this like really strong
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want by our team to tell the
stories of our customers, whereas everyone,
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and be tob knows that those are
the hardest stories to tell because you got
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approvals to got things like. There's
a whole slew of that, and we
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were like, what if we talk
to our customer facing teams internally about sort
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of like anonymously the work that they're
doing? And so that's the way we
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kind of got around that and I
was able to produce our first video series
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with my video producer. In one
week after we went remote, we published
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the first episode of the new normal
and now we've had an episode every single
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Friday and we now we've also interviewed
customers to be on the show, so
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it is evolving. I think the
big thing is all the stuff that you
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think is in your way as a
content creator, whether it's quality, gear,
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resources, time, a lot of
that was kind of just like thrown
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out the window. It was like, at this point, like I'm going
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to make a podcast on zoo and
that is it. Like that is we
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I do not send me your rig
I don't have one. I have some
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bad lighting and two pats running around, but like this is what we're going
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to do and we're going to see
how it works. You know, and
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I think as long as you're talking
like authentically to people about things that they
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care about, like, like that's
when content works, right. You know,
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I'm not going to tell you that
we saw Tenzero, you know,
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likes on our First Cup of our
first steps. Of course you didn't like.
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Absolutely not. But like it is
a growing every week. Yeah,
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and like is it continuing to gain? Because content doesn't go away. When
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it's weekly, right, people come
back and watch it and you can rerelease
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it on different platforms and like I
think that's the thing you just kind of
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keep to keep perspective that you're never
going to get a perfect for today's gross
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story, we're talking about all state. I'll stay offers best in class products
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All right, let's get back to
the show. We have people asking
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us that all the time. Obviously
us, you know, being in the
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business of podcasting, being a podcast
we've got we've got people asking us like
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well, well, we want to
we want to try it for three months
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and and measure the results after three
months. And it's like, that's not
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how this channel works. And and
we want to put out, you know,
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one episode every two months, and
it's just like that's not how it
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works either. Like you have to
put out content consistently. You have to
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be committed to it for the long
game to really see results from it.
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And I love that you what you
just said about the content is ever green.
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The content you put out three weeks
ago in large part, is probably
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going to be pretty relevant eight,
nine and ten months totally. And so
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thinking about content that way, I
also love that you talked about this.
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The content of most of the content
we create is not this sacred thing that
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we need to nitpick apart and in
add months to the production cycle. Just
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get it out there and learn from
your audience. Learn what's resonating, learn
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what's not. Like I posted something
on Linkedin the other day about common mistakes
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that that companies are making with their
show and there was one particular thing in
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that list of five that I listed. It seemed to really resonate a lot
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of people commented on like, Oh, tell me more about this thing.
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Well, that tells me, Hey, I need to create more content around
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this particular mistake that we said.
It's free market research. Yes, great
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work at research. On top of
the Elevenzero views that the twenty minute status
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update that it took me to write
got for for our brand. So I'm
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super aligned with this. Shannon,
I think we're thinking about this in the
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same way. My question to you
is based on the obviously, you know,
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hopefully we never see a global pandemic
like this in our lifetime. But
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how do you apply what you've learned, what you and your team have learned
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through this season? How do you
then apply that to you know, to
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not use, you know, the
term the new normal to loosely here,
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but like when things do settle down, you know, a few months,
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six, eight months down the road, how do you apply what you've learned?
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You know, fast forward a year
from now totally, and I think,
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I think my cmo would watch this
and be like. Wasn't I telling
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you this a year ago? And
I will tell him, yes, that
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to be enough. That is so
that there are we're creating like artificial barriers
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for ourselves, right, like that
is what we are doing. I think
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a lot of I know, especially
in the content fields, there's a lot
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of us that are perfectionists. We
were writers for a long time. We
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wanted to produce. We were told
we had to produce perfect drafts, we
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had to we had to reach certain
numbers, make sure we're hitting metrics,
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like all that stuff is super important, right you, quality is still the
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most important right. You want to
put out something that's but the best you
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can, like always. But I
think the thing that I've learned is give
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yourself some brain space to think beyond
what you think you know, right,
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and you think beyond what you think
works or what hasn't worked in the past
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or all that kind of stuff,
and say you should always be running at
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least one test all the time,
right, so you have your natural patents
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of like we know we want to
put out a piece of pillar content every
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three months. We know we're refreshing. You know certain blood clost clusters like
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consistently like that stuff should always happen
right. Best practice is totally I'm still
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learning every day about what the new
thing you should keep doing is, but
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I think the biggest thing we've learned
is, like you should always have one
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le Gut seer test that you're always
running that will teach you something you couldn't
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have learned from a Webinar or something
that you're like that you're running all the
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time. Right. So you know, we are thinking about taking our webinars
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and cutting them into trailers and doing
that as a preview for the landing page
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to get people to watch the full
Webinar and then hopefully accelerate pipeline right.
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And that's something that, like,
we probably would have thought about a few
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months ago, but we would have
deprioritized because it wasn't like in the list
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of things we had to do that
we were accountable for. But I want
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to tell my team that, like
we are accountable for being creative, like
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that is what my team is meant
to do. We are corporate creatives,
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like that is what we are here
for. And so I know that's probably
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not a part of your O K
are and it's not a part of like
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the thing that you talked about at
the end of the year. Your view,
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but it is like the last thing
impact you're going to make on a
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company when you work on a brand
team is like how creative could you be?
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And so thinking about that as a
task every week, you know,
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like how can we run a test
all the time at that is aligned to
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the business goals and totally like should
be completely aligned a strategic but is a
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little bit left of center of what
you would typically do, and that's where
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you're going to learn and sometimes they're
going to fail, like but people will
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forget, because the Internet is like
just forgets. Every will like right.
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I think. I think we trick
ourselves into thinking that. Way More people
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are going to care then the amount
of people that I actually will care,
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and way more people are going to
see the little mistake that we that that
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we trip ourselves up over, even
when you're doing personal videos, when you
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do something like a bombomb video or
something like that, you we were just
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doing a training with Ethan yesterday on
this and he was telling us she's like
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so many people rerecord their video seventeen
times because they didn't say the right thing
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or they didn't you know, they
they think they didn't say the right thing
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and when, in reality, the
person on the receiving end of it,
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they've got screaming kids in the background, they've got a life happening. They're
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not they're not paying as close attention
as as you as you think. And
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so don't don't get tripped up on
it and don't let it keep you from
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from putting out content on a consistent
basis, because you're trying to perfect every
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little piece of it. So I
love that shade out like the thing you
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said there. We are accountable as
marketers in this organization to being creative.
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Yeah, here enough marketers saying things
like that. There's been this big movement
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toward being data driven and we obviously
need to be mindful of data, but
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I think, I think there's so
much power or that can be had from
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tapping into creativity and yourself. I'm
seeing more and more. I see a
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lot of marketers like saying grambajer a
terminus and kyle at lesson Lee and Dave
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Gearhart, I don't know where he's
at now. Use a drift before.
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Yeah, I think he's that whole
privy, marvy privy. Yeah, I
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can remember the name of the new
public. So folks that are really advocating
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for being creative. What you've done
with the new normal, like pivoting,
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like starting, starting a video show
that then turned into a podcast on a
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dime. Really I mean that.
That's the kind of creative that I think
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is going to push our organizations forward
and ultimately help us reach, you know,
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our buyers more effectively. So I
love part. Yeah, it is
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fun. Yeah, it's really fun. It's yeah, it's more than just
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loading something up into your you know, in a Marquetto or like or looking
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at data and Google analytics like.
You get to do really fun work by
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doing pressing in and doing the creative
work, and I think that CMOS are
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being held accountable to creative, to
their organs being creative, and I'm sure
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somebody's going to come up some metric
for how to measure it, but at
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the end of the day it's you
know, I love that that message for
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marketers being you are accountable to your
organization for being creative. I want to
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ask you a question, channing,
that I always I always love getting the
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responses to this, but is there
is there a commonly held belief as it
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relates to content marketing in a two
thousand and twenty environment that you just passionately
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disagree with. There's probably a bunch, honestly, like I think that there's
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a misunderstand there's a misconception that a
bunch of functions of content marketing are independent
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of one another, like that SEO
is different than copywriting, which is different
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than content writing, which is different
than podcasting, which is different than video.
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And sure, to each one of
those things take a different skill set,
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a different interest, but I think
they're all in service to the same
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thing, right, and I think
that there's this people. I think people
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also sometimes think of content as like
separate from the business, like it's some
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separate arm that like it's just functioning
to bring in and bound traffic and like
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who knows what happens then. You
know what I mean? Like I think
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there is this like understanding of like
content just brings in traffic and then the
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business figures out what to do with
the traffic. And I think the best
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content marketers that I've met are the
ones that are so clued in with the
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value proposition of the business and how
the business works and they are a strategic
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partner to the business. Like that
is how I like to think about my
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like my role, which is very
like I'm a little bit of a more
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of a consultant, roll across like
like across teams to say, like,
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how can we craft a really compelling
story here? Let me think about the
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channels that it probably will go best
in, and then how can we decide
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if we know that it's working or
not? Right, like, those are
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really the things I'm accountable for,
and I think there's a misconception that,
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like, well, if we just
like my favorite thing is to like Seo,
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something I'm sure you guys here all
the time. I'm like that is
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like not a thing, like to
be clear, just not a thing,
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like it's and I have the best
relationship with our digital experience manager who does
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our seoing, and her and I
work in complete lock step because we have
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to, like there is no other
choice, right, because to serve the
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business, like we have to be
collaborative and strategic, like that is just
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what it is. And so content
and creative is not just like arts and
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crafts. It is like how we
are strategic partners to the business. It's
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in my perspective, we're doing it
right. So I think that there is
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there's a few things in there,
like the bifurcation of what we do,
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plus the fact that people think sometimes
just, you know, painting and feathers,
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which I do think sometimes happens to
so shanned in. My last question
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will be what are some common mistakes
that you see content marketers in other organizations
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making? Yeah, I think the
big one is deciding what your story is
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and then just telling it and not
thinking about the story is not yours,
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it's theirs. So like, what
is their story and how can you be
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a part of the conversation? And
I think that there's I've seen a lot
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of content strategies that have no persona
information in them. That wild me out.
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I'm like, so you just came
up with like you have your core
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values and your core story that you
think is really important and you want to
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put it out in this market in
a really like coordinated way, making sure
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you tell four stories a week about
these four pillars and you know, and
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making your internal stakehold is really happy. But if you're not talking to your
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to the people that it matters to, then it's just going into a void,
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like it does not and I think
that that's the biggest mistake that I
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see and then also not having like
a real painence of knowing if your stuff
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is working. However, you define
that right, like I know we did.
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Like I don't want my team to
get so bogged down on metrics that
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like they're looking at a ticker every
day, but we do want to see
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what's resonating, because that's like an
indication that we were talking to someone about
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something to care about. So we
should then talk more, just like you're
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saying about your Linkedin Post. Same
thing. And so I think that there's
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if you forget that what I keep
on back to this, but if you
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forget the humans on the other side
of the equation, like you might as
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what, you're just wasting time,
like and you're probably writing great stuff,
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and I feel bad for your writers
because I'm sure they're doing a great job,
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but, like it's not going to
someone that it resonates with, yes,
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or you just get lucky, which
is no one wants to get up,
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you know, and and and I
love what you said earlier about content
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marketing being a very strategic function of
the business. It's not art in crafts.
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It's not painting Your Company's Narrative in
twenty seven different ways. It's understanding
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the persona that you're trying to serve
or that you know your product service can
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serve best, understanding them so well
and having a deep desire to actually help
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them do their work better and if
you can play a part in making you
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know, we spend a quote that
we throw around around here a lot.
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You know, the average person spends
ninetyzero hours of their life at work,
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and our mission at swee fish is
that we don't want people's ninetyzero hours.
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We don't want ninety thousand hours of
anybody's life to suck, and so we
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can create content that helps you get
better at work, then we're playing a
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significant part in helping you enjoy a
huge chunk of your life. And so
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00:26:25.930 --> 00:26:29.809
I think content marketers that tap into
that and understand it and genuinely have a
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specific type of person in mind that
they know they can help and seek to
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create content that helps those people,
we're going to be in a we're going
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00:26:37.880 --> 00:26:41.160
to be at a much better spot
and and you're going to see an influx
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in demand for your product because totally
we're going to see that and they can
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sniff that from a mile away.
So should this has been a fantastic conversation.
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00:26:48.190 --> 00:26:52.109
Thank you so much for joining us
and being on that side of the
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00:26:52.230 --> 00:26:56.509
MIC for weird I call him.
Sorry, no, no, I love
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00:26:56.589 --> 00:27:00.619
it. How can folks connect with
you? Learn more about Quick Bass,
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00:27:00.900 --> 00:27:04.380
find your show? Share with our
listeners how how they can do those things?
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00:27:04.460 --> 00:27:07.819
That? We'll wrap it up.
Yeah, awesome. So you can
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find quick face at quick BASCOM,
don't? We all love that? And
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00:27:10.900 --> 00:27:15.569
we also have all our social channels
on twitter, Linkedin and facebook. So
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typically we put out an episode of
the new normal native on linkedin every Friday
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morning, but we also put the
full length interview up on our Youtube Channel,
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which is just quick based on Youtube. Lucky, for being an older
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00:27:27.569 --> 00:27:30.440
brand, we now have we have
all of the stuff we need. And
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00:27:30.559 --> 00:27:36.039
then for finding me, I would
say I'm probably most active professionally on Linkedin.
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00:27:36.160 --> 00:27:38.319
You can just find me at Channon, parentheses, tweeny, my previous
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00:27:38.319 --> 00:27:44.000
name current. Yeah, and I
love talking to other sort of professionals in
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00:27:44.079 --> 00:27:45.829
this environment about what they're doing,
what they're work what they're working on.
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00:27:47.029 --> 00:27:49.910
I'm learning something new. I could
probably do this interview every Friday and have
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00:27:51.029 --> 00:27:53.549
something new to say because everything's changing
so much, so so yeah, would
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00:27:53.589 --> 00:27:56.390
love to contain the conversation. Awesome. Thank you so much, Shannon.
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00:27:56.430 --> 00:28:03.099
I really appreciate it. Thank you. I hate it when podcasts incessantly ask
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00:28:03.180 --> 00:28:07.619
their listeners for reviews, but I
get why they do it, because reviews
434
00:28:07.660 --> 00:28:11.420
are enormously helpful when you're trying to
grow a podcast audience. So here's what
435
00:28:11.460 --> 00:28:14.410
we decided to do. If you
leave a review for be tob growth and
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00:28:14.490 --> 00:28:18.009
apple podcasts and email me a screenshot
of the review to James at Sweet Fish
437
00:28:18.089 --> 00:28:22.890
Mediacom, I'll send you a signed
copy of my new book, content based
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00:28:22.930 --> 00:28:26.529
networking, how to instantly connect with
anyone you want to know. We get
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00:28:26.569 --> 00:28:27.200
a review, you get a free
book.