Latest / Content, Briefly / WorkRamp: Fara Rosenzweig's multimedia content playbook

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WorkRamp: Fara Rosenzweig's multimedia content playbook · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  Anyone can follow, but that doesn't mean your content's really good. It's engagement. Is that content good that they wanna engage with you?
• 0:07
  [upbeat music] Hey, and thanks for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly. Today, we're talking to Farrah Rosenzweig.
• 0:15
  She's the head of content marketing at a company called WorkRamp, which is a learning management piece of software. We get into that. She explains how it works.
• 0:22
  It's really like bread and butter, SaaS, and there are kinda two themes that emerge from this episode. The first is multimedia.
• 0:28
  Farrah has a degree, actually, a master's degree in multimedia, and it's been kind of a through line throughout her career, so she talks in a lot of detail about how she uses audio and video in addition to text and even actually some interactive content, which she talks about.
• 0:42
  And the other is personal brands, which we only get into kinda later in the episode, but, uh, to me, I think personal brands are gonna be one of the hottest things in twenty twenty-four, specifically how companies invest or don't invest in their employees' personal brand, and so we get into a little bit of that, too.
• 0:57
  So those are kind of the, the two main takeaways. I think you'll really enjoy this episode. I certainly did. Thanks for tuning in, as always. Take care. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Teal.
• 1:09
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• 2:06
  Jimmy from Superpath here today with Farrah Rosenzweig, head of content marketing at a company called WorkRamp. I will ask you in a minute to explain WorkRamp, but first, Farrah, could you introduce yourself?
• 2:16
  Tell us a little bit about yourself, some of the work you've been up to over the past couple of years, and any background stuff you think would be helpful for folks. Sure. Thanks for having me, first off. Absolutely.
• 2:26
  My name, Jimmy said, Farrah Rosenzweig. I am head of content marketing at WorkRamp. I have been in the content world for, gosh, about twenty years, so I have seen how content marketing has evolved.
• 2:41
  I mean, I started out pre-social media, so it's been a whirlwind of a career journey, to say the least.
• 2:49
  And the past few years, um, been really focused on multimedia, like videos, podcasting, of course, SEO and all that stuff, and just really trying to stay ahead of the curve of different content marketing trends.
• 3:03
  So that's a little bit about me, I guess. I've take a step back. My journey has started out in broadcasting, traditional broadcasting, and I've somehow ventured into the digital marketing world.
• 3:17
  I've earned a few different awards for my work over the past twenty years. And yeah, that's, I think that's a nutshell of myself. Yeah, that's really interesting.
• 3:29
  You know, I saw on your LinkedIn that you have a master's degree in multimedia, and that was one of the first things you mentioned. So I'm curious, is that a through line throughout your career?
• 3:35
  And, and also, could you tell us a little bit about, like, studying multimedia? Like- Yeah... what was that like? Are things that you learned that are, like, evergreen still, that you're still applying today? Yeah.
• 3:44
  So like I had mentioned earlier, I started out my career before social media, really before digital marketing took effect. So I saw that curve.
• 3:54
  I was working at a television network, and everything was your traditional broadcasting. We still used tape to transcribe our content.
• 4:04
  We had to transfer footage from the videotape to a CD so we could work on our computers. And then that started to evolve to, like, thumb drives.
• 4:13
  And, and then we started looking at, oh, we could post some clips onto YouTube. And again, this was very, very new. Facebook was very new. I think even MySpace had just started around that time.
• 4:25
  So I saw the trend of these digital platforms as a way to distribute content, and short-form content started to become a thing.
• 4:36
  So I decided, hey, I learned a lot about storytelling in my undergrad degree, and it was primarily a lot about writing and video.
• 4:47
  So I wanted to figure out, how can I leverage my work experience and the foundations of storytelling in the digital world?
• 4:56
  And so that's why I decided to join a multimedia management program as my master's degree just so that I could, one, stay ahead, two, understand web development, what digital marketing really is, how I can encompass all different types of content onto this digital platform that is now all we know.
• 5:20
  It was a really good learning experience because I then had to learn everything about website. I learned how to code. I learned graphic design.
• 5:29
  I learned how to take a long-form content piece, repurpose it into a million different types of pieces, how to distribute it properly, how to even run a digital team, and the different components of how to run a media program.
• 5:45
  So I didn't really know I was gonna go into marketing at that time, but I knew that storytelling was gonna go to a digital world, and how do I manage a team like that?
• 5:55
  How do I take the traditional aspect of storytelling and turn it into a digital world? So that's why I went to the multimedia management program, and that's what I was able to get out of it.
• 6:05
  AndI really do use a lot of the foundations that I learned then to this day in my programs now. That's really cool.
• 6:13
  And you know, if you go to WorkRamp's website and you hover over the Resources tab, it reflects exactly what you just described, like it's multimedia, and there are many different types of content there.
• 6:23
  I do wanna go deeper on that, but maybe first could you just explain WorkRamp? Like who is WorkRamp? What is WorkRamp?
• 6:28
  Just any kind of details on the product and who your customers are would be, I think, helpful context for people. Sure. WorkRamp is a learning cloud platform.
• 6:36
  We power sales enablement and customer education training, like learnings. We also power employee learning. So we have an employee learning cloud and a customer learning cloud.
• 6:48
  These products are allowing teams to learn efficiently, and they're able to help the business grow because they're developing skills that they need to do their job correctly, to educate customers, to adopt a product.
• 7:04
  It helps speed up onboarding. It actually makes a really nice onboarding for any new employee.
• 7:10
  Helps sales teams, sales reps just understand product a lot faster, so then they're able to go sell and drive in revenue for teams or for their organizations quicker.
• 7:20
  So it's, it's a learning cloud platform, and it's very, very exciting to be a part of this organization because the product that we have, like just to watch it evolve has been really fun to be a part of.
• 7:32
  That's really cool. It sounds to me like really bread and butter B2B SaaS. Are there certain types of companies that you sell to? Like is there a certain industry that this makes the most sense for?
• 7:41
  Or is there a certain company stage or life cycle?
• 7:45
  I ask that because the first thing I think of is like, well, I think probably a, a larger company has a greater need for this, you know, continuing education, onboarding, training, things like that, which then obviously trickles down into the way that you would market to those people.
• 7:59
  But is that true or am I kind of assuming too much or reading that wrong? No, you're not reading it wrong. We were more geared towards SaaS industry, B2B SaaS.
• 8:09
  That's the space that really does adopt into online learning. Primarily, we market to sales enablement, revenue enablement, like that world.
• 8:20
  We also market to L&D managers or any type of people leader, people team, and then anyone for customer success. We have been branching out and opening up to the tech space. People need learning.
• 8:36
  It's not just SaaS organizations. It's healthcare, it's, um, fintech, health tech, ad tech.
• 8:45
  Really any organization could use our product, but primarily the people that are responsible for continuous learning, which is like a peoples team, anyone that's selling, so a sales enablement team, and then anyone that's in charge of customer adoption, which would be like a customer success team.
• 9:01
  So those are the personas that we target our product for. Nice. Very cool.
• 9:06
  My wife works at a hospital, and they have to do tons of training and continuing education, and I should suggest WorkRamp to them 'cause the software that like whenever I like look over her shoulder and see it, like the software looks like it was built in like the eighties.
• 9:19
  You know, it's so bad. Yeah. It's been a, a learning curve for me when I came in because I'm so used to a lot of dated learning platforms, and then to see this platform, I was like, "This is so cool." It's so intuitive.
• 9:31
  Yeah, yeah. It makes learning fun. So yeah, if more organizations could adopt that, people would be excited to continue education. For sure. For sure. You know, you mentioned a few different types of customer personas.
• 9:44
  This is like the content stuff that I always-- like piques my interest.
• 9:48
  You know, there's like sales and revenue teams, you know, maybe healthcare could be a good pr- or like a health tech type company could be the right persona.
• 9:55
  There's a variety of different types of companies and personas that you sell to, but it's the same product, you know, more or less, right? How do you approach that from a content marketing perspective?
• 10:05
  Like, do you have to create specific content for each of those personas, or do you kind of create like, you know, for lack of a better term, like an atomic unit of content that can then be tweaked to fit different types of personas?
• 10:18
  Actually, this is a great question, and it can be across any, any content marketing team because most organizations are gonna have more than one persona and more than one industry.
• 10:30
  I like to break up my content program into different phases. So when I first joined- Oh. Oh, I'm-- Yeah, tell me more about that. That's interesting.
• 10:38
  So when I first joined WorkRamp, you know, we had these different personas, and the challenge was, well, how do we create content for each persona?
• 10:46
  And the big thing is, well, we need to just start creating content, and instead of us digging into each specific use case for the specific industry, which is gonna be time consuming, let's first create these high-level content pieces that
• 11:03
  can really cater to various amounts of different industries, but for the same type of role.
• 11:09
  So I like to start a little high level, and that also from an SEO perspective, we're targeting that specific keyword that we wanna go after.
• 11:17
  And then as we go down in different phases, we can then really fine-tune the industry.
• 11:24
  I don't know about you, Jimmy, but I tend to find sometimes when I'm trying to learn how to use a specific product, I wanna learn how that product works specifically for my space.
• 11:37
  So like when I was trying to learn Google Analytics four, or GA four, like there were all these YouTube videos, but it was not specific to like a B2B content marketing program.
• 11:48
  And so I had to go down a very, very deep rabbit hole to find that specific use case. There was tons of high level content.
• 11:56
  So-I was trying to apply some of that stuff to what I needed to know, and then I finally found something more specific for a content marketing B2B program.
• 12:07
  And that's kind of the same approach that I am using at WorkRamp. The first few months going in there, it was very high level.
• 12:13
  I partnered with our growth manager, growth marketing manager on, "Hey, what are the high-level keywords that we're putting money behind? What are we trying to target here?"
• 12:22
  And then create the content that's gonna support that stuff.
• 12:26
  Now that we already have that robust library of very high-level content, we've been then digging into the trenches of, okay, what is a SaaS company doing in the people team, and what are their biggest challenges?
• 12:39
  And let's dig into that. What about, like, if we're going down, I'll use Fintech, for example. What are the challenges for Fintech when they're doing compliance training? What can we dig into there?
• 12:51
  So now we're in that phase where we're fine-tuning our exact industries and looking into those challenges that those in-- those people have, and creating content specifically for those challenges. So it's...
• 13:05
  We're like, I guess in like phase two now of, of that content creation part of things. So I think that's how you tackle different industries, different personas.
• 13:15
  It takes time, but as long as you have that high level backlog of content, then you can really dig into the nitty-gritty as you grow your content program. Yeah. You know what, I love that.
• 13:27
  And I love the phased approach because whenever I hear a content leader talking about a phased approach, like it tells you a couple of really important things about them and the company they work for.
• 13:36
  The first being that they're taking the long view, just like you said.
• 13:39
  It takes a while, and so by breaking it into phases, it allows you to, like, really focus on the individual parts that will make up the whole eventually.
• 13:46
  And the other is that typically, when there's a phased approach of this long-term view, it means that there's a proper strategy in place and that there's top-down and bottom-up buy-in on that strategy, which is probably the single most important thing that a team can have is just alignment over, like, what are we doing and why?
• 14:04
  And let's use it to say no to a bunch of other shiny objects that are gonna, you know, get in our vision from time to time.
• 14:10
  So I really appreciate that, and the phased approach, the way you described it, makes a ton of sense. How about the way that you chop up content by medium?
• 14:21
  So like I mentioned, you hover over the Resources tab, like there's text content, right? There's a blog.
• 14:27
  There's also a Downloads section, which I'm curious about, but then there's also podcasts, videos, webinars, and then a Learn section, which I'm assuming is like a academy-style program.
• 14:39
  Could you just kind of in broad strokes, like talk a little bit about how do you take the topic, take the persona, and then start mixing and matching content types as well? Mm-hmm. Yeah, totally.
• 14:49
  So this has been a lot of fun and a lot of learning specifically for our audience.
• 14:54
  Again, we have this multimedia approach because people digest content differently, and we have different pieces of content for different use cases.
• 15:03
  Now, the blog, for example, almost every organization has a blog at this point. It's kind of brands or organizations have been leaning into how do you create a media hub.
• 15:15
  And so a lot of organizations, this is not new info, a lot of organizations have tried to become their own publisher type thing. So that's... We're using our blog as kind of like we're the thought leader.
• 15:28
  This is the media hub for all things learning and development, and that's where we tie in our thought leadership content, any type of company news, our customer success stories, of course, SEO.
• 15:41
  So the blog is kind of like our home base, and then we go, "Okay, not everyone's gonna read this content. So what do we need to do to get people involved in our content program?
• 15:55
  Well, let's create different types of videos." Now, there's two different... There's probably now like three different ways I create videos. One, just create a video like on Riverside, like what we're doing.
• 16:06
  Interview some people, create a video, get information, take that info, create a blog post. There's also the way of we've done some great research on blog posts, now let's turn that into a video.
• 16:20
  And at my last organization, we would spend about two or three days in a video s- in a recording studio.
• 16:27
  We'd rent out a studio, have, um, a camera crew, and we would create different video content based off of blog posts that are performing well. And then there's our new video content. Cool.
• 16:37
  So there's a few different ways you could create video with the blog itself. And then, of course, we have our webinars and our podcasts, so then we're leveraging that content into our videos.
• 16:49
  So that's our video section because we can get different types of quotes, different facts, and put it in a video format. People like to watch videos, so might as well put it out there.
• 17:01
  Not everyone's gonna wanna read, especially if you're commuting on a train or you're at home and you don't wanna read, but you'll watch a video. So think about people to just humanize your content a little bit.
• 17:13
  You have to think about how are they gonna digest content, at what time of the day, that type of thing. So that's why it's, it's important to diversify, create a multimedia content program.
• 17:23
  Same thing goes with the podcast. So our podcast is slightly different. You know, it's podcast first. We're leaning into top leaders in the tech world to be our guests. We interview them.
• 17:34
  We create videos from the podcast, and then we can create blog posts from that podcast.
• 17:41
  The next thing that I haven't talked about yet, but the next thing that we do is we take like different tips, different tidbits from our podcasts, our videos, our blogs, and then we create our downloadable asset.
• 17:54
  Oh, cool. We at WorkRamp include workbooks, like different interactive type content pieces, which are fairly new for us on our website.
• 18:03
  We just started releasing a lot of workbooks.And I'll go back to why we decided to do that. We have checklists and then your standard e-book.
• 18:13
  The workbooks we've found have been really awesome because so many people create e-books nowadays. It takes a lot of work. There's a lot of research that goes into e-books.
• 18:24
  Then you have your designer to design the e-books, and you create this landing page. It's a really great content piece if you wanna build a robust content and e-book. But the time it takes to create it sometimes
• 18:40
  is not the best for ROI. So we decided, let's create workbooks, and we can tie different workbooks to certain topics that are really hot. We can take info from a podcast, create a workbook that's based off of a podcast.
• 18:56
  We created a, a workbook based off of our learn event, and we took really valuable info, put some quotes in there. Of course, we linked to the original content piece.
• 19:06
  Then we have, like, here is how you can implement these three tips from leader blah, blah, blah. And it's interactive.
• 19:14
  It's type your info here, start brainstorming on this page, and so it's actually useful for people versus them just reading an e-book. An e-book is great.
• 19:26
  You can put so much information in there, and you can take blog posts and repurpose to e-books or videos, repurpose to e-books.
• 19:32
  There's different ways to create them, but the time it takes, and then really think about it, how many e-books do you spend reading? I download- Yeah, yeah... e-books, but I don't actually dig into them and read it.
• 19:44
  I skim it, and that's about it. Now, a checklist or a workbook I'm actively engaging in, and that's the type of content I wanna give our customers.
• 19:52
  I want them to have value so that they're gonna constantly come back to WorkRamp and not only think of WorkRamp as this great learning platform, but it's WorkRamp where they can get all the information to help them grow in their career by reading our content, watching, listening, interacting with our content.
• 20:11
  I love that. One of the things I'm just thinking about as you're explaining that is the, I guess I'll call it the project management overhead. Mm-hmm.
• 20:17
  Like, in order to do multimedia, in order to do a lot of repurposing and kind of chopping and distributing on different platforms requires really good process. Could you talk a little bit about that?
• 20:28
  Like, does it stress you-- like, it stresses me out a little bit, you know what I mean? There's, like, a lot of moving pieces, right? Yeah.
• 20:33
  So, like, you know, are you, like, spending a lot of time in, like, Asana or Notion or, like, somewhere where you keep track of all this stuff?
• 20:39
  Is there, like, documentation that other folks on the team have access to to keep all this stuff running? Yeah. So I'm big on Google Spreadsheets, and we use Trello. Those are my two hubs to stay on top of things.
• 20:54
  When we have a specific product or, or content launch, for example, we are learn programming. We have a big learn event.
• 21:03
  I leverage our, a spreadsheet, and it breaks down all the moving parts, who's responsible for what, and we do constant check-ins, and that really helps me stay organized.
• 21:14
  And then we take everything, you know, we take the high-level pieces and then put it into a Trello board, and that's when we can start moving. Okay, this is in pre-production, production.
• 21:24
  This is in post-production, and then it's shipped off to the world. So I break it up by different channels. Every board is somehow connected. It's really cool what Trello is able to do, but I have my podcast board.
• 21:36
  I have my video board. I have my editorial board. And so th-those cards interact with each other somehow. I forget the rule I set up in Trello, but each channel of the content program has a slightly different process.
• 21:51
  So I have the boards separated so that we know, like, where is the blog? Has it been fact-checked?
• 21:57
  Are we reviewing, getting individuals who gave us the quotes, giving them the opportunity to review, making sure the quote is right, they're okay with it, that type of stuff. So yeah.
• 22:08
  So it's a pretty robust process from all the way from backlog to pre-production. There's the production aspect, post-production review, ship it off, but blogging is slightly different.
• 22:20
  There's a few more steps in the middle just 'cause we wanna make sure it's correct, that the facts are there, the links are correct, it's optimized, there's multimedia embedded in there somehow, so that's a little bit longer of a process.
• 22:34
  So my long-winded answer for you is yes, there's a lot of moving parts, but I use Google Sheets and Trello to stay on top of everything. And, and how about team?
• 22:43
  Because another thing that multimedia introduces is a need for different skill sets, right? Like, many content teams are built around primarily text content. Mm-hmm. Meaning the team
• 22:55
  primarily is writers or kind of writers who have then layered on strategy and distribution and things like that on top of that kind of foundational skill. Does it translate well?
• 23:05
  Like, do you find that folks who bring sharp writing chops can kind of pick up the other mediums and learn the tools? Or, like, when-- do you bring in specialized help as needed for things like podcasts and video?
• 23:20
  So those content marketing folks who specialize in writing, you know, they're gonna be great for storytelling, so they'll be able to tell that story.
• 23:30
  I would suggest bringing in individuals who know a thing or two about the specialties of multimedia to actually get those off the door and, you know, shipped and all that stuff.
• 23:42
  But it is a little bit trickier if you're just focused on writing and going from writing to multimedia because you're gonna have to learn all those aspects. The storytelling is slightly different.
• 23:52
  The way you capture someone's attention is slightly different. And then understanding, um, I'm gonna backtrack a little bit.
• 24:01
  If you don't understand how to communicate to people that are special in that, that medium, like example, video editing, if you don't understand the nuances that go into video editing, it's gonna be really hard to communicate with that editor.
• 24:15
  It's gonna be challenging to understand their process and then the time it's gonna take to produce that video content.
• 24:23
  So-It's really important for people that come in to a content program, and they wanna build out a multimedia content program that they should understand, go take free courses. LinkedIn Learn has some great ones.
• 24:37
  Go to HubSpot, they have some, some free ones, and just ask people in the space because it is a little bit trickier of a learning curve to go from solely text to this multimedia aspect.
• 24:50
  I'm fortunate my background is multimedia, so I'm able to go in there if I don't have the bandwidth to do the video editing anymore, the podcast editing, all that stuff, but I know how to hire the right people to do that, and I can have that conversation with them pretty easily, and I know what it takes to build out those content pieces.
• 25:11
  So when I'm mapping out my production calendar, I'm realistic about it 'cause I understand their workflow.
• 25:18
  So it's a little easier to go from a multimedia background into text and all the other avenues of stuff than going from text to multimedia, just 'cause there's that learning curve.
• 25:30
  But it can be done if you're willing to really understand and dig into the trenches of all that stuff.
• 25:36
  'Cause at the end of the day, both are gonna have solid storytelling, and that's what you need to do in a content program, is to have good storytelling.
• 25:44
  I'm so glad that you mentioned vendor management because I think that is one of the most underrated career skills out there, not just for content marketers, but, like, in this case, the situation you just outlined is a perfect example of that.
• 25:57
  Like, knowing how to source the right agency, how to communicate with them, how to give them good feedback, how to keep them on track is so, so important because, like, those are the people on the ground that are gonna help scale your content program.
• 26:08
  I sorta liken it to, like, a general contractor- Oh, yeah...
• 26:12
  probably could do some electrical work, but more importantly, knows how to find an electrician and communicate what needs to happen and keep the project running on schedule and get people paid.
• 26:20
  Like, there's a lot that goes into, whatever, building a house, building a con- it's kinda the same thing in my mind. Yeah.
• 26:26
  So I think that's-- I think it's really interesting, and you definitely don't want to be the person that hires an agency, and then, like, they send you a video, and you give them feedback like, "Make it snappier," or something where you're like, "Oh, God."
• 26:37
  Like, having been on the agency side, like, I've received feedback like that on writing specifically, and I'm like, "Oh, my God. How do I- [laughs]... what do I do with that?" You know what I mean? Yeah.
• 26:46
  Like, if someone says, "I don't like it," or, you know, "Make it quicker," or make it whatever, it's like you can't really do much with that. So, like- Yeah...
• 26:54
  being a good customer to your agencies is, is actually- Yeah... a really, really important skill. Yeah. Yeah. I've been on the vendor side before, and, you know, you're not a mind reader.
• 27:05
  You're coming in there to make brands look good. You're helping the business succeed by creating really cool content, but you're not a mind reader.
• 27:14
  So as a vendor, it's really important for vendors to ask the right questions, but then as the organization that's hired the vendor, it's super important to give them as much detail as possible just to make their lives a little easier.
• 27:27
  Because you have to remember, they're not mind readers. They're not living day to day in your organization. They have different projects to manage, so they're jumping around.
• 27:37
  So it's really important to over communicate and give as much detail as possible. And yeah, the feedback, "I don't like it," I don't care what industry you're in, that is not feedback. It's like, cool- Yeah, yeah...
• 27:49
  didn't like it. Like, what can I do differently? Or give me, give me the data so then I can make a better decision on how to move forward with the content.
• 28:00
  That's funny that you said it 'cause I've been in roles before where they're like, "I don't like that." And it's like, "Okay." Okay. What do you want me to do with that? [laughs] It-- that's- Collaborate, please.
• 28:09
  [laughs] Absolutely. I find that when it comes to kind of agency and in-house teams working together, it's just incumbent on both teams to understand what their roles are and do their best to help the other party win.
• 28:25
  You know? Like, if you're assigning whatever type of content to an agency, you really have to be very specific about what you want. And on the agency side, you gotta ask all the right questions up front. Totally.
• 28:35
  It should never be in a situation where, like, you're hoping for a miracle, like you really wanna impress somebody because it should be like by the time you have done the research and understand the brief of the project, the next part is easy, actually.
• 28:47
  Like, creating the content, that should be the easy part, you know? Totally. Having worked at agencies for many years, I could talk about that for a long time, but I'll- [laughs]... spare everyone from my ranting.
• 28:56
  I do wanna ask you, Farrah, about data. Yeah. What, what numbers do you care about? You know, what are you measuring every month? And any tools you find to be particularly helpful for collecting those numbers? Yeah.
• 29:07
  So I am a big, big fan of data. I'm using GA4 for most of my data collection. From an organic standpoint, I'm looking at what organic traffic is coming to the blog. I think that's standard.
• 29:21
  That's-- you're gonna look at your keyword rankings, what's moving, what rankings have you won, what rankings have you lost, what's stayed, what's being clicked on, what's being searched.
• 29:30
  I think every content team needs that because organic is pretty big, even though there's the discussion of ChatGPT and is SEO going away. Right now, present day, SEO is still very, very important. Yes.
• 29:43
  It's not going away. I think the way organic search in the future is gonna happen, it will evolve. I don't know what that is.
• 29:53
  But for right now, we still need to track those keywords, look at the organic traffic, what's moving, what's being clicked on. By looking at that and looking at your top content pieces, then you can,
• 30:04
  one, look at, okay, what are existing content pieces that we can quickly repurpose? Like, what little quick wins can we do to move it up, you know? Is it a piece that we can add some video content into?
• 30:17
  Is this a content piece that we can create video content or create a podcast topic around or create an e-book?
• 30:23
  So look at the stuff that's performing well, look how to repurpose it.And then like, and look at what little changes can we do to bump it up if we start losing ranking.
• 30:34
  Looking at page views and visits, super important, but I look at time spent and your bounce rate or exit rate. If that's low, then that means I'm doing a good job with my content, keeping people on.
• 30:47
  The page views are s-certainly important, but that doesn't really tell me as much as are people interacting with my content, staying on the content. I know the content's driving people, but what are they doing next?
• 30:59
  What's the behaviors? That stuff's really important for me to dig into. This is a big one. I think it's a hot topic.
• 31:06
  Currently, it's been a conversation for a while, and it's really tricky to figure out how does content get attribution to the overall revenue goals, to MQLs, SALs, SQLs, all the things.
• 31:18
  And so that's where I've partnered with our marketing ops, and we're leveraging HubSpot right now to figure out that piece of the puzzle.
• 31:29
  So a big thing is, you know, we're trying to figure out is the organic content helping somehow attribute to a demo request? What content pieces are the last touch before someone requests the demo?
• 31:44
  What content pieces are like the first touch? If they come on a content piece and immediately click a demo request, what are those pieces? And we start analyzing those content pieces.
• 31:54
  And for clarification, when I say content pieces, it's primarily the blog, but we are leveraging like our video as well and, um, podcasts too.
• 32:04
  And then, of course, downloadable assets, we have to capture their email, so we're able to attribute that into the funnel as well. It's still a work in progress because it's not something I can control.
• 32:15
  I have to lean on my marketing ops person to figure out that puzzle piece. And then the other thing is, well, who gets the actual credit? Is it content? Is it paid? Is it outbound?
• 32:29
  So [chuckles] there's a few different conversations to be had, and I think every organization needs to define it on their own.
• 32:37
  But I like to look at what content pieces drove content in, and then I can look at the behavior, and if they eventually clicked, I can say, yeah, our content at least brought people in and kept them on the website, and that helped attribute to something.
• 32:50
  And then the last touch, like, are these content pieces like the last straw that they needed to click Demo Request? At a different organization, we had free accounts, so I was able to attribute a little easily
• 33:06
  the content that attributed to just sign up for free. And then I could say, here's the potential revenue that we are able to get because we drove in a free account.
• 33:17
  So there's different formulas to master this, and it's a work in progress, and it's not just the content person figuring out that. You have to lean into people who are leveraging other tools.
• 33:31
  After this long-winded answer, for the record, we're using GA four and HubSpot to capture a lot of this information, and that's just solely on the content that's on our website.
• 33:40
  Of course, we have content on YouTube, on Spotify, on what other platforms are we at?
• 33:45
  Like, all of our social media stuff, and that's a whole other ballgame, and we're tracking different things there, but primarily engagement. Like, how long are people watching our videos on YouTube?
• 33:54
  Are they clicking links below? Are they commenting? Are people commenting on our social posts and engaging and re-sharing?
• 34:01
  That's really important 'cause then that means the content you're creating is valuable as opposed to looking at just followers. Anyone can follow, but that doesn't mean your content's really good. It's engagement.
• 34:14
  Is that content good that they wanna engage with you? That's great. And you're so right. There's just no perfect answer to content measurement or attribution.
• 34:22
  Like, every company has their own journey of figuring it out, but that was a very good explanation.
• 34:28
  You know, I wanted to at least briefly ask you about the WorkRamp Podcast, which is hosted by the CEO, which, as we were chatting before we hit record, just kind of piqued my attention, you know?
• 34:40
  Like, I could imagine that being like, wow, you know, top-down buy-in on content, like, to the point where the CEO wants to be involved in it.
• 34:47
  And then I could also imagine, like, this other end of the spectrum where it's like CEO pet project that's like a massive distraction from the other stuff we have to get done.
• 34:55
  And I, I'm only queuing this question up 'cause we've already clarified ahead of time that it's not that, but could you talk a little bit about it? Like, what, what goes into producing the podcast?
• 35:03
  And two, like, what do you hope to get out of it? And- Yeah... for context, there was an interesting thread in the Slack community recently, that exact topic. Like, you create a podcast. Why? You know what I mean?
• 35:13
  People don't discover it in search. Like, you're not necessarily promoting the product. There typically are not really strong calls to action, so it's like w- there's a longer term view on it, I would imagine.
• 35:23
  But I'd be curious, like in your own words, like what, what do you and WorkRamp hope to get from it? When I was interviewing to join the WorkRamp team, I wanted to make sure I was very clear with the CEO on a few things.
• 35:36
  One, it had always been a goal of mine to create a podcast. So as I was looking around for my next career journey, I was talking about, I wanna create a podcast.
• 35:47
  So in my interview with Ted, our CEO, he asked me, "What's one thing you wanna do here at WorkRamp?" And I was very clear. I wanna do a podcast. I don't know what that looks like, but I wanna do a podcast.
• 35:59
  And I had spent probably a semester in a podcast class at UC Berkeley, so I was like really well-versed in it. I was drinking the Kool-Aid. I'm a podcast junkie. I listen to podcasts all day long.
• 36:14
  So I told him, "I wanna do this." [chuckles] And, and I was manifesting it like right then and there.
• 36:20
  That was one thing, and the other thing, when I was shopping around for where my next opportunity would be, I wanted to make sure I was going into an organization where content was notBottom of the totem pole, it was not just, oh, we need to throw up words on a blog post and call it a day.
• 36:39
  I was looking at joining an organization that r-truly believed in content and understood that content is needed in so many different aspects of the organization, from supporting paid media teams to creating the copy, the messaging, to sales teams who need support creating those sales decks and one-pagers.
• 37:01
  So, you know, that was really important to making sure that they understood content touched so many different avenues of the business, that I had the support, and it wasn't just, "Oh, you're a pretty writer making things look pretty."
• 37:15
  That to me is not... It's not gonna be beneficial for my career, and I've been in organizations where content was not a priority, and it was very frustrating.
• 37:26
  So I think for anyone that is wondering how do you get the buy-in from top down, it's really starting from the beginning of your journey, making sure the leadership team supports content programs, and they're not looking at it as like, "Oh, it's just a blog post, anyone could do it."
• 37:43
  Because that's-- sure, anyone could do it, but not everyone can do it well. Sure. So that's I think two really big things that were clarified from the get-go.
• 37:56
  And then as I was building out the content program, you know, PR is part of our content program. PR sometimes sits on different teams.
• 38:03
  PR sits under the content program, so I was thinking of, you know, as I was working with our CMO on what's our story, what's the WorkRamp's overall story, what's our message, how do we wanna do this?
• 38:14
  Really, the face of the company has always been Ted, our CEO, so we wanted to lean into that and share the story with him involved. And so that was the step one.
• 38:28
  First identifying who's gonna be the face of the organization. Not all the time do organizations have faces.
• 38:33
  Sometimes it's a character, but for us, the face is truly Ted, and so we leaned into that, and then we were, you know, put together different presentations on why this is the way we wanted to go.
• 38:47
  And then after that, you know, he was definitely sold on that. That fortunately wasn't a hard buy-in for me. But a lot of organizations, especially in the B2B space, are leaning into personal branding,
• 39:01
  so it's not necessarily... It doesn't have to always be the CEO, but there usually are a few stellar spokespeople for the organization, and they're really leaning into their personal branding.
• 39:13
  So for the organization to support employees' personal branding, and so I wanted to help Ted. We discussed, "Are you trying to ramp up your personal brand?
• 39:22
  Let's have-- Let's help you build that up, and WorkRamp will support it." And then we have a few individuals also. We encourage WorkRampers to build their personal brand up.
• 39:35
  One, everyone should have a personal brand because if you're focused on your career journey, that's gonna help set you up for success. Two, employees are micro-influencers for the organization.
• 39:47
  So after getting Ted on board with the personal brand stuff, helping clean up his social profiles and all that stuff, then it was like, "What's next? We wanna do a podcast. Can you be the face of it?"
• 40:00
  And we broke down the reasons why of how it's gonna grow the WorkRamp brand and then how it's also gonna help lift his personal brand. Which is, again, in the long run gonna help out in so many different aspects.
• 40:11
  So that's how we got buy-in for Ted from the content program. That's how we got buy-in for him to be the face of our podcast. Of course, there's a few other elements to get buy-in from a top-down. Talk numbers.
• 40:24
  You always have to talk revenue. What's the ROI of a content program?
• 40:28
  If anyone listening struggles with getting buy-in, you have to flip the script and not talk about, "Well, this is gonna be SEO ranking and this and that." You have to really start talking about the numbers.
• 40:40
  I early on started to partner with CFOs or VP of Finances, just understand their world so then I knew how to talk to leadership about revenue.
• 40:51
  Figure out the formulas, talk to anyone in the finance team to help you really understand how do I bridge organic traffic into an ROI that can talk dollar.
• 41:04
  Because CEOs, even if they're not a hundred percent bought into a content program, they're gonna understand numbers, they're gonna understand business growth, and that's gonna get them interested in the content program.
• 41:15
  So everyone just maybe go take like a LinkedIn learning finance thing or something. Learn how to understand that language so that you can get buy-in from leadership on that aspect too. Again, I was fortunate that
• 41:29
  I set the foundation from the get-go of that was important, and I found an organization that knew content was gonna help be the driver to build their brand to the next level.
• 41:39
  You had asked what's the purpose of our podcast. Our podcast primarily, like you had mentioned before, it's really hard to tie attribution into anything.
• 41:50
  People are listening, working out on the go, maybe cleaning their house, I don't know, but they're not actively clicking links to get to that CTA.
• 41:59
  So with that in mind, we were very clear that the podcast is not necessarily gonna be a traffic driver. It's not gonna be something that we're gonna rely on for leads.
• 42:12
  However, it is gonna be something that we're gonna lean on for brand awareness. And brand awareness eventually trickles down to a lead.
• 42:20
  So if we could build our audience in the podcast world, then we know we'll eventually build that brand awareness that the goal to be a household name.Through this one medium, and then that can trickle down to maybe they'll join us on a YouTube episode or find us on LinkedIn and eventually click into WorkRamp somehow.
• 42:44
  So that's the primary goal is brand awareness for the podcast. That's awesome. I'm gonna take this clip from this podcast. I'm gonna post it in the Slack thread related to this topic because that was an awesome answer.
• 43:00
  Farrah, thank you so much for your time. It's so interesting to hear your perspective. Like, my hope for this podcast is that for each episode, there's a kind of a different, slightly different narrative, right?
• 43:11
  And like multimedia is, is it for this one, you know, and you've done a really good job describing like the why and the how behind it. And you've given me personally a lot of ideas.
• 43:21
  Like I have this itch to do more multimedia at Superpath. I'm a little caught up on the how part, but you've given me some really good ideas, so I appreciate that.
• 43:29
  And I would really encourage folks who are listening, go to WorkRamp's website. Now that you've heard about the behind the scenes, go see the front side. Like go see what it all looks like. Check it out.
• 43:37
  Listen to the pod-- you know, just to like draw some inspiration from all the things you've described today. So thank you. Thank you. We will definitely-- we're gonna link to WorkRamp in the, in the show notes.
• 43:47
  Where can we send folks to connect with you? Social handles, a personal website or anywhere else? Um, so you can connect with me on LinkedIn. It's Farrah Rosenzweig on LinkedIn.
• 43:56
  That's pretty much the social platform I'm active on. I don't really use anything else these days. And then I'm building out a personal website slash portfolio. It's gonna be called thecontentcoach.co.
• 44:11
  That is under construction right now. Hopefully 2024 that launches. But for right now, you can find me on LinkedIn, workramp.com. You can follow WorkRamp's LinkedIn.
• 44:22
  It's just @WorkRamp, and that you can see a lot of the moving parts of our content program on those two channels. Perfect. We will have links in the show notes for people. Farrah, thanks so much, and take care.
• 44:33
  Thank you. [outro music]