Latest / Content, Briefly / Alloy Automation: Tina Donati’s Strategy for Mastering Technical Subject Matter

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Alloy Automation: Tina Donati’s Strategy for Mastering Technical Subject Matter · Content, Briefly

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• 1:37
  [ on-hold music] Hey, everybody, Jimmy here. Really happy to be talking with Tina Donati today. She's the content and partner marketing lead at Alloy. Um, Tina, how are you? I'm good. Thanks so much for having me today.
• 1:50
  Yeah. This is-- we've never met before, so we're breaking ground, and there's a lot to cover here. Would you mind just introducing yourself?
• 1:55
  Can you tell us a little bit about, about yourself, the work you do and, and some of your background? Yeah, yeah, of course. So I went to school for social work, thinking I wanted to be a therapist.
• 2:04
  Realized I loved writing fairly quickly, so I started focusing on just writing classes, which brought me to do a master's degree in journalism and communications.
• 2:12
  So it was doing both combined into one program, which was awesome. I knew right away, though, that I wanted to get into content marketing, even though it wasn't necessarily a huge thing.
• 2:21
  Like, there wasn't really a name for it at that time. Um, I just knew I wanted to do writing. It was fairly new, and so I actually didn't know that roles existed.
• 2:28
  I just knew I wanted to write, and I knew I wanted to do marketing, 'cause writing for the news just sounded so boring to me at the time.
• 2:34
  [chuckles] So I looked for marketing roles right away, which led me to getting into the e-commerce tech space, which ended up being a perfect fit because I'm a self-proclaimed shopaholic, so I love this space, and I get to do content marketing in it.
• 2:46
  So it's been, it's been perfect for me. That's awesome. So and today you're at Alloy, uh, Alloy Automation, although I think you shortened it to Alloy now. Yes. Can you tell us about that?
• 2:55
  I'm not really familiar with it other than just checking out the site. Could you, like, kinda give us an overview of, like, the company, w- like, what the product does, and who the customers are?
• 3:03
  So, um, Alloy actually works with both brands and other tech solutions. Um, and so we're an integration software. So for brands, that kind of would mean, you know, we're almost like the Zapier for e-commerce.
• 3:15
  You can think of it that way.
• 3:16
  And then for other SaaS companies, they come to us so that they can offload their integrations work, take it completely out of house so that they can just focus on building their core product, and then we do what we do best, which is build their integrations with other tech solutions that they're partnered with.
• 3:29
  That's interesting. I sometimes think of Zapier as, like, the world's most perfect business in the sense that to date they don't have a ton of competitors, and they make everybody's product a little bit better.
• 3:38
  So it's like it's a cool... It's like a happy, feel-good product to use, I think. Uh, do you find that with Alloy?
• 3:43
  And I guess kind of a follow-up question to that is, I'm assuming that verticalizing it allows you to go much deeper into very specific tools that e-commerce folks are using, whereas Zapier is just so broad that they're not ever gonna be able to cover all of the, all of those, like, really specific apps that your customers need.
• 3:59
  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 4:00
  Um, and, you know, that is one of our main selling points is the fact that we are so focused on e-commerce, and, you know, pretty much everyone on our team comes from some e-commerce background in one way, whether it's having led their own brand before or coming from another tech company.
• 4:14
  And so we're very, very well versed in the space.
• 4:17
  And I think that just also allows people to trust us a little bit more too, to say, like, you know, "We can also help recommend who you should be integrating with," or like, we've been through the process of building integrations before, which is such a tedious and can be a super frustrating part of any SaaS company.
• 4:31
  And so knowing that we have a group of experts on this space and we're focused specifically on this space just helps people trust us a little bit more because, you know, like, similar to Zapier, like on the SaaS side, there's other tools that we're competitive with as well, but they don't focus on e-commerce alone.
• 4:46
  And so everything that we can provide really is solutions for these businesses in this space. Okay. I'm understanding your title better now because... So there's content and partner.
• 4:56
  I, I mean, I assume there's like a hybrid thing there too, right? Where like I'll stop going on about Zapier, but their content story is sort of famous nowadays, right?
• 5:03
  Like there's so many possible ways to mix and match all the different apps. They like did this programmatic SEO thing. You know, then along the way built this really strong editorial arm to bring in more customers.
• 5:13
  Are you following a similar playbook or you're... I guess maybe more broadly, how do you think about the distinctions between the two groups that you have to communicate with? Yeah, it's, it's definitely...
• 5:24
  It's a great question because it is tough. They're very different audiences.
• 5:27
  You know, like on the brand side, we're talking more to marketers and founders, whereas on the SaaS side, we're talking more to engineers and product managers. So it's a completely different audience.
• 5:38
  And so I would say, you know, like I have been doing this by myself with this team for a while. Like we're a very small team.
• 5:43
  We've been a marketing team of two until, you know, very soon we're bringing on a head of marketing.
• 5:47
  And so it's been a lot of wearing different hats, which is why just recently I took on the partner marketing title too, 'cause it's something I actually had been doing already for the past few months, so it was just more about making that official finally.
• 5:57
  But I would say we're not really looking to take anyone's playbook just because we aren't Zapier. You know, like I don't have a team ofSo many writers like they probably do.
• 6:08
  I'm still in the process of trying to build the business case and to prove the value of content, which luckily enough, I work some, for some founders that love content.
• 6:15
  They think it's, you know, like the most important thing for the business. They're a hundred percent believe in inbound, so that part is mostly done, but I think it's just about continuing to prove that value, show data.
• 6:27
  [laughs] So yeah, it's, it's super helpful to, to have founders that, that believe in the power of content. That definitely makes my life easier.
• 6:34
  But just because, you know, we're only a three-year-old business at this point, and so we're still trying to ramp up.
• 6:39
  We're trying to showcase the value, and then, you know, uh, maybe I will have a huge content team at one point, but we're just not there right now.
• 6:45
  So yeah, my, my playbook really is wearing a lot of different hats and just trying to keep focused on quality over quantity 'cause I think, I mean, that's a whole rabbit hole that we can get into obviously.
• 6:56
  But I think it's so easy as a small, nimble team to just like push things out so quickly and not really thinking about what you're doing or why you're doing it.
• 7:02
  And when I came in, I wanted them to stop doing that, and so that's been what I've been really focused on the last year is like, let's just do quality content. That... Okay, that's really interesting.
• 7:10
  I'm sort of curious. It what makes me think about the kind of the, the structure of the team. Like, what does the rest of marketing look like? And who do you report to? Are you reporting directly to founders? Yes. Yes.
• 7:18
  So, um, my first six months at Alloy was me and then a marketing generalist who kinda just did a bunch of different things with partner marketing, product marketing, everything.
• 7:30
  And then even before I came on, she was there for six months doing content marketing too in her role. And so that's why, you know, for someone in that type of role, like you're just... You're by yourself.
• 7:39
  You're really trying hard to get things done, to push things out, move on to the next thing. And so when I did come in, I felt like that was kind of the content play, was just like pushing things out.
• 7:48
  Um, and I noticed like, yeah, we are ranking for lots of keywords, but the keywords w- the keywords weren't really necessarily related to our product in a good way, and they weren't actually converting people the way that we wanted it to.
• 7:58
  And so that's why I was like, "Let's focus on quality." And then six months into my role, she actually had moved on to take a higher up position in another company, and so I was left by myself for a few months.
• 8:09
  And then in November, finally we brought in a product marketer, so now that side is completely taken off of me, so I don't have to think about product marketing anymore.
• 8:17
  And so that's allowed me to focus more on content again. And then now we have a head of marketing joining us, uh, fairly soon. Okay, cool. That's awesome. Uh, just a question about your career.
• 8:25
  Do you, past jobs that you've had, like are you attracted to early-stage companies where marketing... You know, basically where you do get to wear a lot of hats, or is this a relatively new thing for you? Yeah. It's...
• 8:35
  So it's a good question because I actually started my career working for a Fortune 500 company, and I was miserable. [laughs] I was sitting in a cubicle all day, every day, doing the exact same thing.
• 8:47
  I'd have all my work done by like Monday afternoon, and I would have to like find ways to fill the rest of the week. And I remember like going to my manager and saying, "I need more work to do.
• 8:56
  Like, please give me something to do." And it was never-- I could never take anything on because it was always seen as stepping on someone else's toes if you were to like assist other teams with things.
• 9:05
  And so I didn't like that culture at all. I was just so bored. I was listening to podcasts all day, and it just wasn't, wasn't for me.
• 9:13
  And so that's why I ended up going into the startup world because, um, I had interned at an agency prior to the Fortune 500.
• 9:19
  And like in like agency life is a little similar to startup life in a sense of like you're moving quickly, you're wearing different hats, and I always really liked the agency life. And so I was like, you know what?
• 9:28
  I'm gonna give tech startup a chance, and I haven't left. It's been nice. I love being busy. I love knowing that there's always gonna be an endless amount of work for me to do. That doesn't stress me out. It excites me.
• 9:38
  And so for now, this is where I'm, am in my career. I don't know if in the future I might wanna, you know, settle down, as I say, and take, take a more corporate job again, but I do. I love being this busy.
• 9:49
  [laughs] Yeah, I hear you. I've only had one corporate-y, uh, type role in my own career, and, uh, similar, you could get your work done pretty quickly.
• 9:58
  I skied 50 days that winter, which was like for me, just like, uh like a vacation. It was so much fun, and then I got bored. I needed to like go back to like more satisfying work.
• 10:08
  Um, I wanna ask you more about strategy and specifically the shift from quantity to quality. Um, but can we dwell for a moment on the team? 'Cause I'm curious.
• 10:19
  Uh, we're asking everybody how you communicate with your team. Obviously, it's different at smaller teams. I'm guessing there's probably a little bit more, uh, informality around it.
• 10:29
  Like it's just easier to get in touch with someone, jump on a quick call, Slack or whatever.
• 10:34
  But do you all have a structured set of one-on-ones, you know, weekly or monthly syncs, you know, pitch meetings or any- anything else that's like a regular event on the calendar where the marketing folks get together and, and brainstorm and plan?
• 10:48
  Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, um, we're predominantly asynchronous as a company, so, you know, we have a little like chart in our Slack channel that's like, "Could you do this?" If the answer is no, send a Slack message.
• 11:00
  "Do you need this?" If the answer's no, send a [laughs] Slack message. So we try to follow that.
• 11:05
  Um, [laughs] but we do meet, uh, as a marketing team every Friday at the end of the week to kinda like clear up our sprint, see what we accomplished, you know, celebrate those wins together.
• 11:16
  Um, then I have a one-on-one with my manager directly on Tuesdays. Um, and then as the head of marketing comes in, I'm sure we will, you know, have...
• 11:26
  You know, either she'll take over the Friday meetings, and the CEO can go focus on CEO things, and I'll probably have a one-on-one with her.
• 11:32
  And then I'm actually looking to hire a writer, so, you know, thankfully have made the business case. We see the value of content, so we're expanding the team a little bit.
• 11:39
  And so when that writer comes in, I would love to have just content-focused sessions, you know, maybe once every other week or once a month where we can really like brainstorm, you know.
• 11:48
  What are we gonna do for this month? What's the calendar gonna look like and why? What keywords are we going for? All that kind of stuff. Cool. That's exciting.
• 11:54
  We'll link to the role in the description in case folks wanna check that out.
• 11:58
  Um, any, any tools that you all lean on that you find to be particularly helpful either for asynchronous communication or marketing needs like-You know, CMS or distribution or anything else that you've, that you've kind of uncovered that you find to be especially helpful?
• 12:12
  Yeah. Yeah. So our tool stack, um, consists of obviously Slack for communication. Uh, we use Google Drive to kind of sort like keep all of our files, and then we actually use... I can't remember the name of it.
• 12:24
  I'll have to find it, but it's basically like an app for Google Drive that on my MacBook just pops up, and I can like start searching for the title of something, and then it'll just pull up the file for me, so I don't actually have to go to like the Drive website.
• 12:36
  So that's been for efficiency that we just added that. We use Notion for like our company source of truth, so kind of like the internal Wikipedia of everything about Alloy that you need to know is in Notion.
• 12:47
  Um, and then I'm trying to think. I guess like on the content side, I use, uh, SEMrush for, you know, uh, topic research, keyword research.
• 12:54
  Um, we use Clearscope for, uh, optimizing pieces, and then, uh, as of recently, we started using Jasper AI, which I'm a big fan of. So, um, yeah, definitely into the AI game as well, and I would say that's probably...
• 13:10
  I mean, we use Zoom obviously for, for meetings, but I would say that's probably the biggest pieces in the content marketing tech stack. That's cool. Can we talk about Jasper for a second?
• 13:20
  Are you able to share any of the use cases you found for it? Like, I'm finding that most people are-- they wanna use an AI generative tool, and they're starting...
• 13:29
  They, they get it, they get how it works, but they-- I think a lot of folks are having trouble finding practical applications for them. Yes. I am a big AI supporter.
• 13:38
  Um, [laughs] if you haven't been following me on Twitter or LinkedIn, uh, you won't know that, but I talk about AI all the time.
• 13:45
  Um, I think it's great, and you know, I'll just, I'll just share this tidbit because I think, I think there's a lot of fear around AI right now. I see schools pushing back on allowing students to use it.
• 13:55
  I see people writing about how it's taking over.
• 13:57
  I don't believe any of those things, and one reason supporting that is I was talking to one of my freelance clients and the two of us just like getting in the rabbit hole of talking shop, and we brought up AI.
• 14:08
  And he said, he's a CEO, and he said, "Even if AI got so good that it could write things start to finish and I wouldn't have to worry about it, I still don't have the time to manage our content.
• 14:17
  I still need content hires to be able to manage these tools, still come up with the topics, still manage the calendars, manage the freelancers."
• 14:26
  He's like, "I'll never have time to do that, and so like these roles aren't going away." And I was like, "That's a really good point." You know?
• 14:31
  Like people, just because you can have a tool that can maybe do it all for you doesn't mean the tool itself doesn't need to be managed. So I wouldn't worry. I, I see AI as an efficiency tool over anything.
• 14:41
  What are some of the ways that you're, you're using AI in your day-to-day work at Alloy? Yeah. So, um, a couple different ways.
• 14:47
  You know, like I said, it's mostly for efficiency, and it's definitely not for writing an article start to finish. Please don't just use it for that. Um, as, um, you know, as a writer, I like to use AI to curate topics.
• 15:02
  Um, so whether you're using a paid tool or a free tool, they'll all do this, where you could literally just type in like, you know, "Give me some subcategories on this topic," and it'll throw back tons of like SEO-friendly ideas at you.
• 15:14
  Um, and so that can be a helpful thing to then bring to your sales team and say like, "Hey, are any of these useful?" You know, "Have any of these things come up as common questions?"
• 15:22
  Um, always, please always check with your team before you just take what AI tells you to do and run with it. Um, and the other thing I like to do is after I write, actually like asking it to give me some better headings.
• 15:36
  So you know, if I'm really just stuck on a really good engaging title or a heading for a section, AI can actually help curate headings for you that are SEO-friendly. Uh, so I do love it for that.
• 15:49
  And then, um, also summarizing.
• 15:51
  You know, if I have written a huge piece of text on something and I'm like, "This is way too long," I just throw it in the AI, ask it to summarize it, and it'll give me, you know, options on how long I want it to be, and it'll help me do that.
• 16:04
  Um, so it's for efficiency there.
• 16:05
  And then this is probably my favorite use case, but there's parts of articles that you just like have to write for, you know, sometimes it's SEO purposes or sometimes it's for flow where it's kind of like I, I call them like definition sections.
• 16:19
  So they'll be like what is X or like, you know, um, even like little, you know, tiny intros to certain sections. I hate writing those parts of articles 'cause they just feel so like redundant to me, like not exciting.
• 16:33
  I love adding like the story and the unique angles to articles, and so like these like must-have parts are just so like frustrating [chuckles] for me to have to do.
• 16:42
  And so I actually use AI to like curate those parts of articles too just to like get them done out of the way, and then I'll go in and like kinda add my own spice or flavor, um, to those sections after so that it, you know, still reads well and making sure it's factually correct and all of that 'cause we've all seen, uh, we've all seen AI spit back some incorrect information.
• 17:01
  So you know, always fact-check things.
• 17:03
  Um, but I would say those are probably the ways I use it the most, and it has definitely helped me with just being more efficient, um, with research, with, um, you know, drafting certain sections that are not necessarily exciting for me to do and just speeding up the process.
• 17:22
  I love that. I am curious. Actually that, that, uh, reminded me. I wanted to ask you about, you're bringing on a writer. To date, where has the writing, quote-unquote, "muscle"Come from? Like, are you writing yourself?
• 17:32
  Do you have freelancers, agencies, contractors, other people helping you out? Yeah. Yeah.
• 17:36
  So it's been completely me, and this is what I'm used to in, in all of my previous roles as well, because I don't feel like I have found an agency that I would fully trust, um, especially when you're working at a tool like Alloy that's, like, so highly technical.
• 17:51
  Like, I feel like you really do need to understand the product very, very well, and I-- only a full-time writer would really be able to do that well.
• 17:58
  Like, we could use freelancers for some top-of-funnel stuff, but with the more product-focused articles, like, we really do need someone that's here full-time in-house understanding and actually using the tool every day.
• 18:09
  And so I have dabbled with freelancers in the past too, with some of my past roles, and, and that's great, but yeah, we definitely just needed a full-time hire for this position because we really are ramping up with writing, and AI is just gonna help us be more efficient.
• 18:22
  And I can jump into the some of, some of the use cases that I, that I do use it for, but it has helped me sped up the process of not just the article creation, but, like, the planning behind it as well.
• 18:32
  Yeah, that's awesome. I would love to dive in a little bit on the technical aspect of the product. I mentioned to you before we started recording that So-Superpath runs this marketplace.
• 18:39
  The primary reason that people reach out to us for help is because they're struggling to find a writer with a deep enough subject matter expertise to write about whatever their thing is, and often it's some level of technicality.
• 18:50
  Like, the, the writer doesn't need to be able to write code snippets, but they do need to be able to ask the right questions in an interview.
• 18:56
  They need to be able to write in a way that, you know, doesn't, like, sort of give them away as a non-technical person to a, a reader who hopefully is a technical person. How have you personally approached that?
• 19:07
  I'm wondering, I guess, is it just brute force? Like, do you just have to get in there and just, like, really embrace the product and the technicality of it in order to get over that subject matter expertise hump? Yes.
• 19:17
  Yeah. Um, so when I actually first joined Alloy, we didn't have this product that was for the SaaS audience.
• 19:24
  It was just, like, the auto- the automation tool that was for brands, so still technical, but far less technical, um, not trying to speak to engineers with that tool.
• 19:33
  And so when I first joined, it was, it was fine for me because all my past roles, I had been writing for brands.
• 19:38
  You know, the e-commerce space is one that I know very well as a writer and from interviewing tons of subject matter experts over the years in it.
• 19:45
  And so that switch to suddenly having this product for SaaS teams and trying to market to engineers and product managers was, like...
• 19:53
  So it was just, like, a culture shock for me at first because it was like, okay, like, these things that I've been doing are no longer relevant because it's not gonna work for this audience.
• 20:02
  They-- Engineers and product managers can, you know, smell bullshit from a mile away, and they are probably the hardest target customer to convert as a marketer because they just, you know, they, they so easily roll their eyes at, at marketing speak and whatnot.
• 20:18
  And so it was a difficult transition, and the...
• 20:20
  I think the only way I got through it was, like you said, I just had to have so many calls with our director of customer success, with our chief technology officer and co-founder, and just ask questions shamelessly.
• 20:32
  You know, like, not feeling like maybe I'm making myself look bad by asking these questions 'cause I clearly don't understand these concepts.
• 20:38
  I think they actually respected that a lot more, knowing that I was capable of doing that.
• 20:43
  And I remember, like, my manager saying to me, like, "You probably ask the most questions out of the whole company, but, like, we love that." And so I was like, okay then, you know, it's, it's good.
• 20:51
  If you're working for people that respect that, then that's obviously a green flag. And so it was like, that was my opportunity to say, "Okay. I'm just gonna keep asking questions.
• 20:59
  I'm gonna keep pressuring on the why behind certain decisions or certain technicalities in the product. I'm gonna ask what specifically they're for. I'm gonna ask how to actually do them.
• 21:08
  I'm gonna ask people to walk me through it." And I continue to do that even. You know, it's been eight months since we've launched this tool, and I still am learning every single day, and that's okay.
• 21:17
  Like I said, it's like just shamelessly asking these questions because it's gonna be far better off that you try to do your best to understand things than to pretend that you don't and be, like, silently struggling while you're working.
• 21:29
  Yeah. That's awesome. I love that. I'll... I'm gonna take this moment to just highlight that actually.
• 21:33
  Especially for companies who are in the process of trying to hire or find whether it's full-time or freelance talent they're looking for, there are so few people who are already trained up and ready to go to write about your product or industry.
• 21:46
  If you have a, even a mildly technical product, you should be prepared to train basically everybody on your team, especially the, you know, marketing, sales, customer success, et cetera, the people who are not actually building the product, because it's going to continue to be a problem for the life of the company unless you really lean into that.
• 22:01
  There was, there was one company we worked with at Animals, I won't call out their name, but they had a pretty technical product.
• 22:06
  They had actually built a course for anyone who was gonna be working on marketing or sales that would run through a, like, kind of update of the industry, run you through the product, gave you all these resources because they knew that they had to be able to kind of guide these people along and just help them do it a little bit more quickly.
• 22:20
  So I think that's really cool. I think it's cool that you've done it, and I think it's cool that Alloy has, has empowered you to do it as well. And it actually makes me think that, you know, you'd mentioned this...
• 22:29
  Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I didn't mean to cut you off. I was gonna say another thing, like, the founders do that I think helps with this, like, thinking about the course that you mentioned.
• 22:36
  They actually send weekly challenges to our go-to-market team, and they're like, "Hey, like, this week, your weekly challenge is to go in the product and build this integration or build this workflow, and please make sure, like, you know, you spend 15 minutes doing this and, like, send me a screenshot."
• 22:49
  And that's just another great way, like, on a weekly basis to, like, actually go in and, and use the product and be told to try different features of it as well and then see where you get stuck and just ask questions.
• 23:00
  Cool. I feel like this getting up to speed on the product in part explains the shift fromQuality to quantity because you're sort of forced to slow down.
• 23:08
  Or like once you say, "I'm gonna get myself up to speed on this product, I'm gonna be the one doing the writing for now," it forces you to slow down, I assume.
• 23:17
  Simultaneous, uh, simultaneously though, it sets the tone for all the other folks who are gonna join the marketing team over the next couple of years.
• 23:23
  And I think that's really important because as people are applying and as you're interviewing and, and building out your team, the work that you, that you've published in the early days kinda becomes the bar for quality, and then you're always trying to beat that bar.
• 23:34
  So you're like, you start yourself from a much higher place if you take this approach of, you know, focus on quality, which is easy to say, hard to do, right?
• 23:42
  Uh, but then also to have you do it yourself so that you, you can, you can be the one that kind of like guides the next person or group of people through that too. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
• 23:50
  I a hundred percent agree with that. And you know, like I said, it's, it's like I was able to bring the data to my manager and say like, "You know, we've been publishing this many times a week using..."
• 24:00
  Before I joined, they were using like kinda like a freelance tool that it was super cheap and the quality was not good.
• 24:06
  And like I, I even said, I was like, "I'm spending more time editing these pieces than we are actually like getting worth out of using this tool to write them."
• 24:13
  And you know, I was able to bring the data, like I said, to say like, "All these keywords are very random, and no one's actually converting from these pieces, so like let's slow down and just see what happens."
• 24:23
  And it was just watching over the next six to eight months to say, "Okay, like look, look what's happened as we've slowed down. Look at these keywords that we're now ranking for.
• 24:30
  Look at the, um, conversions we're seeing from people landing on a blog to like installing a gated piece of content," and things like that.
• 24:37
  And so, yeah, it's, it's easy I think if you can actually make sure you're bringing data to the table to show.
• 24:43
  But then yeah, like you said, you know, I want people that come in in the future, um, that I'm gonna be managing to look at this content and say, "Okay, like this is what I need to be doing.
• 24:50
  This is the level that I need to be executing at."
• 24:53
  And I think that's just gonna be really important for Alloy's brand long term as well, just to, you know, not be seen as a source of content that you can already find on the first page of Google with all the other 10 listed pages, but actually having really unique angles to every article, actually having subject matter expertise from our team, but also people that we're interviewing in the industry and really bringing to the table something that you haven't actually learned before from all the other articles ranking on that topic.
• 25:21
  Yeah, that's cool. I'm curious about cadence. How often do you publish content, and has that changed? And I've... The reason I ask that is because I feel like that's the starting point.
• 25:29
  Like if you're going from publishing every day, and then you go to publishing once a week, suddenly you're like, "Oh, I have time now. I, I can make this article good because I don't have to rush to get it out the door."
• 25:38
  Yeah. Yeah. With, with the tool, when I first joined, they were doing two articles a week.
• 25:43
  And again, this is one person that was managing this as well as partner marketing and partnerships and product marketing and social media. So like even two a week for them was kind of incredible.
• 25:54
  Since I have joined now, it's trying to publish at least once a week, but sometimes, you know, still, still me by myself, so priorities do end up shifting if I have, you know, a partner marketing thing that I need to focus on instead or if I'm working on a huge white paper that I need to release in the next two weeks.
• 26:11
  So I try to do once per week, but sometimes it can end up being every other week. Yeah. Curious about white papers because that makes me think of, um, other content types. What types of content are you working on?
• 26:21
  Obviously, I'm sure blog content, some gated assets. Anything else? Yes. Anything that involves words. [laughs] That is the best way to describe my role.
• 26:31
  So, um, I am managing our social media channels and our social media calendar. I am managing our company's newsletter and welcome flows or I write all of our welcome flows.
• 26:42
  I do all of our gated campaigns, so white papers, um, different guides, uh, obviously anything that's partner marketing related, so webinars and videos, um, and obviously the blog and the strategy and the calendar for the blog.
• 26:56
  Um, some PR here and there if they like, you know, if we're launching something that I need to, to write a press release for. And then [laughs] it's... Uh, honestly, the list can go on.
• 27:07
  That's why I just say anything that involves words I'm involved in. [laughs] Yeah. That sounds like the life of a one-person content team. That's really funny. It's exciting though too. Like I, I sort of, I feel you.
• 27:18
  You know, like I would so much rather have all that stuff on my plate than not enough. What about... So you mentioned data too. I wanted to touch back on that. Have you settled on a handful of metrics that you report on?
• 27:31
  You know, I'm, I'm always curious, like different teams end up kinda landing on a different set of numbers that they feel like roughly indicate the success of the content, and I say roughly because it's like these things are so imperfect.
• 27:41
  Everyone, I feel like, has to just like be okay with agreeing on, you know, one or two numbers. Like if these go up, like we're probably doing the right things.
• 27:49
  Have you found a couple of numbers that you all feel good about, and do you have a formal process for reporting on them, or is the team small enough that it can just kind of happen in your existing, uh, like meetings or async communication?
• 27:59
  Yeah. Yes.
• 28:00
  It's a great question because, like i- in all honesty, data's an endless battle, and I think you, you'll probably hear this from so many content marketers 'cause I think that this is probably the hardest part of our job is the data part.
• 28:13
  And so for us, you know, we have a lot of work to do with cleaning up our data. We use HubSpot, um, for all of our, our, you know, kind of internal stuff.
• 28:22
  So like our CRM is HubSpot, and then a lot of our dashboards are in HubSpot. And then we use Mixpanel as well, which our developers actually have to go in and manually code things if we wanna track them in Mixpanel.
• 28:34
  So like, like I said, if someone lands on a blog and then ends up downloading a gated asset, like that's all tracked through Mixpanel. Um, and then obviously like Google Analytics, uh, that kind of stuff.
• 28:43
  But I really try to avoid vanity metrics. Like I don't look at things at like time on page or bounce rate that much.
• 28:50
  Um, I'm really more focused on, and this full credit to Tracy Wallace to- for this 'cause she laid this out in one of her newsletters a few months ago, and it's been really, really helpful for me, and I actually used her framework to share with my team how we could improve our metrics.
• 29:04
  But it is the fact that as a content person who's working on, you know, mostly like top, mid, some bottom of funnel stuff, you are responsible for driving-Vis-visits on the website to leads, and then leads to MQLs.
• 29:19
  And then one more that I'll tack on, tack on for myself, 'cause this is different at every team, is actually getting those MQLs to book a demo is also where my content comes in.
• 29:28
  So those are the main things that we are looking at, and the main things that we are tracking in HubSpot.
• 29:32
  We can get nitty-gritty, like I said, in Mixpanel to see, you know, blog to gated asset download, blog to demo, uh, install, which I do like looking at those things.
• 29:41
  Um, and obviously looking at like heat maps and whatnot to see how far people are going down on a page. All right, let's stick a gated asset there, see if they download before they drop off.
• 29:49
  That kind of stuff is helpful, but for the most part, I am looking at those three metrics. I'm looking at lead, MQL, and demo conversions. That's really interesting.
• 29:57
  I am curious about the MQL-to-demo piece of that in particular. Does Alloy have a sales team? Do you work with them? Like do you have any...
• 30:05
  I mean, is, is the team small enough that you, you can just like kind of, quote-unquote, "bump into" some sales folks in Slack and, you know, collaborate a little bit?
• 30:12
  Or do you have like any sort of scheduled time to kinda understand like what's happening on calls? How can we kind of take those insights and then package them into content and create resources for them? Yes. Yeah.
• 30:22
  We are small enough that we talk all the time, and I actually have a weekly sync with our sales team and our customer success team to go through exactly those things.
• 30:30
  And one thing I forgot to mention to you actually is, you know, past the demo, I also want to see, did the people who downloaded content actually convert into a customer down the road.
• 30:39
  So that one also is obviously important, 'cause at the end of the day, we want paying customers. So that is an interesting metric to, to look at. But, um, yeah, I would say everything on the content side...
• 30:49
  Like majority of the things that I'm working on and writing about do come from those two teams solely because the customer success team has a really good idea of, you know, what questions are coming up all the time with our customers and things that I could be doing to help retain them longer through marketing.
• 31:04
  And then obviously on the sales side, they're hearing from prospects all the time. So you know, what features do people wanna be hearing about the most?
• 31:10
  You know, what pain points are they actually experiencing daily in their lives that we can make sure we're talking about more in the things we're writing about?
• 31:17
  Yeah, I would say like majority of my ideas actually come directly from those two teams. I love that. That's awesome. That's awesome. Just such like a nice like holistic way to think about content marketing.
• 31:28
  I'm curious, are you able to tease any of the stuff that you're thinking about over the next, say, six months or so? You know, like especially like as you, you're gonna...
• 31:38
  There sounds like there's a marketing leader coming on. You're bringing on someone to your team, too.
• 31:43
  Kind of a like, a vision for like how, how the content and partner marketing is gonna evolve over the next couple months. Yes. Um, super exciting. So, uh, I think for now partner marketing will stick with me.
• 31:54
  I know we wanna bring on a partnerships person to come in and actually like be the person managing the relationships with partners, doing the lunch and learns, all of that.
• 32:02
  And then I'll focus more on the content around partner, like partner marketing opportunities.
• 32:07
  I think my vision is, you know, like, yeah, I wanna bring on this content person, and I wanna start, I wanna start scaling content back up again.
• 32:14
  Like it, it has been difficult for me to try and manage everything, um, as one person, and I wanna make sure we're getting blogs out on a weekly basis, if not twice.
• 32:22
  Like I would love to get back to that point with actually producing quality content though.
• 32:26
  Um, and so I think, yeah, that would be my vision is just like having someone come in to help, you know, not just execute on the strategy but have enough of a background too to even give me ideas on ways that we can be improving our blog content and other channels too.
• 32:41
  So that would be great. Um, I think, you know, things I'm working on, there's, there are a couple things I'm super excited about. Probably number one that I will tease is I, I...
• 32:51
  It took me so long to work on this 'cause it was [laughs] it's this interactive page.
• 32:56
  So, um, when people land on it, they're going to click, you know, what role they work at in their company, and, um, what type of app they work for. So is it like a loyalty app? Is it an SMS app, an email app?
• 33:09
  And then after they answer those questions, um, we're spitting back this entire landing page experience that is completely customized to those first two things that they answered.
• 33:19
  And so I had to do so much digging and work with our sales team and customer success team to like make this page come together and be able to pull like information that was actually gonna be beneficial for each person as they fill this out.
• 33:32
  Um, and it's just gonna be this really immersive, interactive page experience, and I'm really excited about it. And then near the end we're saying, "You know, what's in your integration roadmap?
• 33:41
  You know, tell us about it." And then they're gonna be able to write back to us, and then that actually gives our sales team an opportunity to have something really targeted that they can reach out to that prospect with.
• 33:50
  That's fascinating. Are your developers custom building this? Or did you find another SaaS tool that kinda enables you to create those pages? Yeah. Yeah, so our whole website is actually custom built.
• 34:00
  So one like tiny pain point I probably have in my role is it's, it's awesome to have developers that are capable of doing this because we can do some very incredible, unique things.
• 34:09
  But obviously there's a little bit of a hold-up, you know, from things going from writing to InDesign to the developers actually making time to be able to tackle these things, 'cause they're also working on our core product too.
• 34:20
  So they're trying to balance their time. So yeah, it's all custom built, but I, I think it's gonna be a really fascinating thing, and I'm trying to...
• 34:27
  I've come up with a big list of ways that we can distribute it, and, um, don't know if we're gonna make this happen, but I would love to dabble in direct mail with a QR code that sends people to the page. I love it.
• 34:39
  I love it. I think that's so cool. Like what a, like what a well-rounded approach to this. When that's ready, please let me know 'cause I would love to share it in Superpath.
• 34:46
  I think people would really get a kick out of that.
• 34:48
  I find that anytime marketing and engineering can get together, put their heads together and like real- and really like collaborate, awesome stuff pretty much always ends up coming out the other side. Yeah. Yeah.
• 34:59
  I'll absolutely share it. I always love, you know, helping inspire people in some way 'cause, you know, t- things like Twitter and LinkedIn have helped me a lot in my career.
• 35:06
  So it's always, it's always nice to have people share these things. I love it. Uh, two questions for you. Um, I wanna be respectful of your time.
• 35:12
  One is, is there anything that you've changed your mind about regarding content marketing since you've joined Allo- Alloy? That's a good question. Things I've changed my mind aboutOkay.
• 35:23
  I think, I think sometimes we worry a lot about fluff, and I almost feel like one thing I did when I joined Alloy was just focus more on the story than focusing on am I adding too much fluff to these pieces.
• 35:37
  Not to everything, but to some blog pieces that are more like thought leadership, top-of-funnel pieces.
• 35:41
  And I do feel like sometimes we've, like, swung the pendulum a little bit too far on, like, what fluff actually is, and we almost cut things out that, like, make pieces really exciting and engaging.
• 35:52
  And I'm like, "Come on, like, you can leave that part in. It's a joke. You know, it's a pun. It makes people read. It helps them get to the next line because you made something engaging for them.
• 36:02
  You're not just throwing, you know, facts at them and hoping that they're gonna get something out of the article." I, I actually don't mind having some fluff if it's done well.
• 36:11
  And so I think that's something that, you know, when I came to Alloy, it was like I'm gonna dabble in this a little bit. And for a lot of the top-of-funnel storytelling pieces, it's like I'm gonna add a pun in here.
• 36:20
  I'm gonna maybe add a line that, you know, is extra context on this, or I'm gonna add a bit of storytelling in this part that, you know, maybe isn't necessarily needed, but it just helps keep the reader engaged from top to bottom.
• 36:33
  And so that's one thing I will say is sometimes I feel like we worry a little bit too much about fluff without actually understanding what fluff really is. That's actually so interesting.
• 36:42
  I haven't really thought of it in that same way, but Sierra, our content manager, and I just two days ago were having a, a kind of similar conversation because we're gonna be opening up the Superpath blog for contributions.
• 36:55
  And we were trying to decide, like, how do we decide what gets published and what doesn't? Because it's just gonna be really difficult to, to...
• 37:02
  I mean, we're not gonna adhere to style guidelines 'cause we're gonna have contributors from, you know, lots of different backgrounds or whatever.
• 37:07
  So, you know, the kind of framework that we were kind of honing in on was let people tell an interesting story in their own words. Like, we're not gonna nitpick what the words are.
• 37:18
  W- we're just gonna make sure that the story's a good one to tell. Um, we're hoping that will make our life a lot easier. But I think, too, that I think you're right, that people do care about some of the small details.
• 37:27
  Like, I d- I find myself still, like, um, I used to read James Clear's blog all the time, and he had footnotes.
• 37:34
  And you could kind of keep track of them throughout the article, and th- to me, those were the most interesting parts. Like, they would all be new tabs, right?
• 37:40
  It's, like, stuff that didn't really belong in the article, but he sort of, like, gave you this way to, like, go a little deeper if you wanted to. And to me, it's kinda like the same thing.
• 37:47
  It's like give people as much of the detail as they want. As long as the story's good, like, that, that's the thing that really matters, right? Yeah. Yeah.
• 37:53
  A hu- 100% I agree because, like, you know, as an example, I think a lot of writers, similar to, like, the fluff thing, right, a lot of writers are like, "Hey, intro, 150 words max. That's it."
• 38:02
  Like, you don't wanna, you don't wanna drag it out.
• 38:04
  And I once wrote a 500-word intro, like, last year on an article, and it was an entire s- the wh- the whole intro was a story about an amazing shopping experience I had with my favorite brand and, and why it stood out to me so much and how it made me feel and how that's made me loyal to this brand.
• 38:21
  And it was, like, 500 words for me to get through this story, and people shared that article.
• 38:25
  People loved the story because they were like, "This is so amazing that this brand did that, and I wanna make an experience like this with my brand now, and thank you for sharing this."
• 38:34
  So, like, people, yeah, we, we worry a little bit too much about fluff and about things like grammar, which is hard for me to say 'cause I love grammar. I love people using grammar properly.
• 38:43
  I love a good em dash, and I will fix these things. They are the first, they are the first thing I see when I am editing.
• 38:48
  But sometimes we just focus on these things so much, and we're forgetting, like, okay, but is this actually a good piece of content? Like, is it valuable?
• 38:56
  Are we sharing a good story that people are actually gonna care about? And I would rather focus on that. I love it.
• 39:02
  I l- I think it's such an, like, a fresh perspective on something that most content marketers deal with every single day. I love it. One last thing for you. Where can people find you, follow your work, Alloy's work?
• 39:12
  I mean, we'll of course link to Alloy and the blog. Um, you had mentioned that you're pretty active on Twitter and LinkedIn, so we'll definitely mention that as well. Is there anywhere else that we can send people?
• 39:20
  I would definitely say Twitter is where I'm most active, and they're... So bad, I don't have my profile name. It's just @tina_donati there.
• 39:31
  [chuckles] Um, and I try, I, I'm a little bit less, um, this year so far than I a- last year I tried to tweet every single day, but this year it's been a couple times a week. But I am still very active there.
• 39:41
  Trying to get more active on LinkedIn. Um, and I am looking into launching a newsletter at some point this year maybe. We'll see if that happens. Okay, cool.
• 39:49
  Let us know because I wanna read it, and we'll make sure that we pass it around to Superpath members also. Tina, it's, it's been so nice to, to meet you officially, to chat, to get to know about your work at Alloy.
• 39:58
  Really appreciate you taking the time. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. This was a lot of fun. Awesome. We should do it again soon sometime. Yeah. Thank you. Cool. Awesome. Thanks so much and take care.
• 40:07
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