Latest / Content, Briefly / Microsoft: Heike Young on career growth and creative fulfillment

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Microsoft: Heike Young on career growth and creative fulfillment · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  Hey folks, before we dive into today's podcast, I just wanted to let you know that the new and improved Superpath Pro is up and running, and it's awesome. So I'll just give you a quickie overview of what you get.
• 0:10
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• 0:20
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• 0:29
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• 0:38
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• 0:45
  Our goal is to make it the absolute best deal in content marketing. If you wanna learn more about it, it's all on the homepage, superpath.co. If you have any questions, feel free to hit us up. Thanks so much.
• 0:55
  I find that when you start creating, it's like it breeds more creation. Oh, yeah, yeah. So- That's awesome... if you stop, then you just become stuck and get in a rut. You don't remember how to do it anymore.
• 1:08
  It's like once you're in that flow, you... You're in that flow state. For me, the more I create, the easier it is to just keep creating more and more of that same work and just, like, improving my voice every time.
• 1:22
  Like, improving a way that I'm able to say it every time. [upbeat music] Hey, and thanks for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly. Really excited to share this conversation with Heike Young.
• 1:35
  She's the head of content and integrated marketing at Microsoft, and before that, spent eleven years at Salesforce.
• 1:41
  So as you might imagine, we talked quite a bit about enterprise content, what that looks like, her day-to-day work. Lots to explore there, and really interesting too.
• 1:49
  It's just so different than the startup-y, VC-backed content world that I've come up in. We also talk about Heike's LinkedIn. She has been posting these short-form videos for almost a year now.
• 2:02
  That's how I first came across her, and this wasn't the first time that we've met, and that connection happened as a direct result of some of the really cool content that she's been posting on LinkedIn.
• 2:11
  So it was just interesting to hear some of the ways that she's flexing her creative muscles, learning some new skills, some of the benefits that have come from doing this, and it's actually quite inspiring too.
• 2:22
  Lots to like here. It was really great to meet Heike. As always, I enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you do too. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Brevo. Wanna take your business to the next level?
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• 3:23
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• 3:34
  Hey, everybody. Jimmy from Superpath here today. Very excited to be chatting with Heike Young, head of content and integrated marketing at Microsoft, which I have tons of questions about. But first, Heike, hello.
• 3:46
  Thank you for being here. Do you mind introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about who you are and what you've been up to over the past couple of years?
• 3:53
  Thank you so much for having me, and it's always a pleasure to create any content for fellow content marketers. They're my favorite folks in the marketing community.
• 4:03
  I started my career as a book editor and made my way into the world of social and content marketing after that. But yeah, content marketing is really where I cut my teeth in this industry. You know, I never had any...
• 4:16
  I didn't take any marketing classes in college. I don't have a ton of experience in marketing. I come from an editorial and a writing background. I was an English major. I think, Jimmy, is your LinkedIn accurate?
• 4:26
  You were an English major as well. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
• 4:28
  So we could talk about that too, but that's really my background, and now, um, leading content and integrated marketing at Microsoft, you know, I think my heart is always the content side.
• 4:38
  That's my favorite part of marketing is creating impactful messages and narratives and just ways to connect with our audience.
• 4:45
  And yeah, I'm super inspired by all the work you're doing to connect this community of folks together, so excited to be here. Awesome. I have so many questions for you, but maybe let's start.
• 4:55
  We've never met, and- Yeah... I first came across- Just LinkedIn friends. Yes. That's the thing is like- Which seems to be, like, most of my friends these days are LinkedIn friends.
• 5:03
  [laughs] Well, you know, we had a few- As somebody who works from home, and yeah, like, is a parent, LinkedIn is my main, like, social outlet. Totally. I feel that.
• 5:11
  And there's been actually a few folks on the podcast recently that I found on LinkedIn, and I found you on LinkedIn specifically because of the videos that you've been creating and posting, which are great.
• 5:23
  And I would love to maybe just start by talking a little bit about that. What, why, how? You know, kinda like give us a story. What are you doing? Why are you doing this in addition to your job?
• 5:33
  [laughs] That's what everybody... That's what my friends and family all wanna know. They're like, "Why are you making more work for yourself and filming videos on LinkedIn?" So it's a great question.
• 5:45
  And yeah, if you're listening to this and you have no idea what Jimmy's talking about, I'm sure we'll put a link in the- We'll link, yeah... comments and, yeah, all of the places to my LinkedIn profile.
• 5:56
  And yeah, primarily since, I guess, January of 2024, I've been creating these videos for LinkedIn.About content strategy, about content careers, about marketing leadership careers, I guess would be some of the main areas that I focus on.
• 6:13
  But yeah, I guess if you think back to why I'm doing this in kind of the beginning of this year, it was sort of December twenty twenty-three, I guess, so long time ago now, time really flies.
• 6:23
  I was out on maternity leave. That was ten years, ten years ago, basically. I know. Exactly. I was out on maternity leave. I was pretty sleep deprived. I was not, you know, not working currently.
• 6:33
  I was on a break from work, and I was in a senior director of content strategy role at Salesforce, and I'd been working there for about ten years, and I think just personally and professionally just feeling kind of burnt out and stuck in some ways.
• 6:47
  You know, I was up at all hours of the night with a little baby.
• 6:52
  I was not working, and I was following along on LinkedIn with all the cool things that my colleagues were doing and events they were attending and having a little bit of FOMO.
• 7:02
  At the same time, I really perceived that there were some
• 7:06
  challenges and really kind of big obstacles that a lot of my friends in content marketing were facing, just questions that they'd never been asked before about the ROI of their efforts or how are they using AI, and everybody's, you know, concerned about their roles and the future of the industry.
• 7:22
  And so I guess all these things were kind of swirling in my head at the same time, and I began...
• 7:28
  I was also probably watching a lot of YouTube videos and TikTok videos at the time, not gonna lie, 'cause I was up at all hours of the morning- Yeah, yeah...with a newborn baby.
• 7:35
  And so I had this idea to sort of bring together some of these professional conversations I wanted to be a part of with some of the content that I was consuming in my personal life, which was these creators I really admired on TikTok and YouTube and so on.
• 7:48
  And so, yeah, that's where this idea came to create these videos, and they're, you know, pretty sure you'll have to let me know what you think if you're listening to this.
• 7:55
  If you've never seen one, you know, let me know if the format speaks to you or if there's anything you do and don't like about it, like, I'd love to hear your thoughts, um, just on the content itself.
• 8:04
  But basically, like, started putting these things together, and over time, yeah, just, like, finding my style more and more and just, like, leaning into the ways that I wanted to shape the videos, learning a lot about editing short-form videos in the process.
• 8:18
  Just as somebody who came from a more of a writing and editing background, I will say it's possible to learn how to edit videos. You can do it.
• 8:26
  So [chuckles] if you're listening and you wanna get more into video production as a content creator, but you're not sure how to do it, I definitely think it's possible to do so.
• 8:33
  And yeah, I mean, I've been super excited and inspired by all the folks that have reached out to me and said, "Oh, I, I don't wanna like your post publicly 'cause I don't want my boss to see it 'cause you called out some of the B2B content problems that we're having in my company, but I also- Yeah, that's so interesting...love what you're doing," and yeah.
• 8:51
  So I have... You know, I'm really appreciative of all the folks that have enjoyed it and told me so. In my own career, I found that as it has progressed, there is probably less creative fulfillment.
• 9:01
  Like, I'm not-- I too started out as a writer, it's like I don't write that much anymore. I have sometimes thought about, you know, how should I scratch that itch?
• 9:10
  Like, do you find that this scratches that itch, especially since it's a new medium, that you get to learn along with kind of the creative expression?
• 9:18
  Yeah, I definitely think that's true, Jimmy, and such an astute point, and I think if you are moving up in your career in marketing, I think regardless of if you're in product marketing, content marketing, campaigns, something else, I do think it tends to be the case for probably good reason.
• 9:34
  You know, the more you move up, the more you have to delegate, the more you have to remove yourself from the day-to-day creative process, and that's okay. You should be mentoring the next generation of creators.
• 9:45
  You should be leading by example, but you shouldn't be in every single Google Doc writing the words yourself and editing and creating, you know, day to day, and that, that's fine.
• 9:55
  And, you know, if that's your goal is to be in more of a leadership role, you should know that that's probably going to be the case.
• 10:01
  For me, like you said, though, I do find that the more I have moved into these leadership roles and the farther I've gotten from the day-to-day creative process, that has been sad, and I've had to grieve that and just, you know, miss some of that rush of coming up with an idea myself and posting it and refreshing every few hours to see the results and, you know, kinda get that inspiration of like, "Oh, wow, I just published this," and that gave me 20 more ideas and more things I wanna publish.
• 10:31
  Like, I'm gonna make notes in my phone of that. Like, just that whole... I find that when you start creating, it's like it breeds more creation. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's awesome.
• 10:41
  So if you stop, then you just become stuck and get in a rut. You don't remember how to do it anymore. It's like once you're in that flow, you...
• 10:49
  or you're in that flow state, for me, the more I create, the easier it is to just keep creating more and more of that same work and just, like, improving my voice every time, like improving a way that I'm able to say it every time.
• 11:03
  And so, yeah, I think whether it's creating for LinkedIn or another hobby, you know, you get into painting or sports or whatever it is, there's so many ways to be creative.
• 11:13
  And so if you are in a leadership role, and you kind of find that it's a struggle for you to let go of some of that control, it may be that you should regain some of that creative control in another way. Yeah.
• 11:24
  That's cool. I love that. You know, I find myself kinda yearning for that creative fulfillment sometimes.
• 11:30
  And when I think back to, like, times in my career when I was creating a lot, I also think those are the times when I was the sharpest too because, like, the act of, like, the... in my case, writing, like, it...
• 11:42
  you spend a lot of time thinking through stuff, clarifying things, and by the time the piece is written, like, you really have a much better understanding of whatever that topic is.
• 11:50
  And then it's like, I just remember feeling like at that time really sharp. Like, I could jump on a call and talk about this. I could help coach someone else on this. I could sell using these thoughts, et cetera.
• 12:00
  Like, whatever. There's sort of like this trickle-down effect of-I got this idea now there's other ways I can kind of use it. Hundred percent. And I think, um, it was one of my favorite quotes.
• 12:11
  I used to have it above my desk back in the day, but it was like, you know, a David McCullough, the historical author quote. Oh, sure. Yeah. "To write well is to think clearly," which is why it's so hard, right?
• 12:24
  And if you're not writing, if all you're doing all day is reporting on results, making slides, you know, you're not really putting your pen to paper, you may be missing.
• 12:34
  And also just sitting in back-to-back meetings all day, you may be missing those opportunities to think deeply.
• 12:40
  And so, yeah, for me, that is a huge part of the creation process, is it forces you to have something pointed to say. Yeah, I love that. So we're gonna link to your LinkedIn. I want people to go check it out.
• 12:53
  You know, like, the videos are awesome. They really are good. They have kind of like TikTokky vibes, but like B2B, they're awesome.
• 12:59
  I do want to ask you about Microsoft and Salesforce, and obviously there's, I'm sure, plenty of differences.
• 13:04
  In my mind they're sort of lumped together in this kind of broad sense of large companies, you know, and at least the content marketing world that I grew up in was very startupy.
• 13:14
  You know, it's like companies using content to grow and like, they might not really have other great options available to grow. Like, so there's a lot of pressure on content to make that happen.
• 13:24
  I'm assuming that's- It's like a cheap- Different... easy, free lever to use. Yeah, that makes sense. Totally.
• 13:30
  And I'm just sort of curious, like, again, this is like pretty broad strokes to start at least, but like, what does content look like at Salesforce and Microsoft?
• 13:38
  Like, are you trying to accomplish more or less the same goals that a much smaller company is, or is it serving a different function? It's such a great question, and the answer is, it depends.
• 13:48
  It's the typical, you know, marketing answer, but it's like, I think at these big companies, what you've got to understand from the outside is it may be, you know, in your mind it's like, oh, it's Microsoft, it's just this, this monolith.
• 14:03
  Within a Microsoft, within a Salesforce, within a Google, there are so many sub-teams and subdivisions and tentacles within that, that each one has its own micro problems and micro goals, and the sales process is different.
• 14:18
  You know, the selling, maybe the sales team, it's like, we're global.
• 14:21
  We need this very global content strategy, so we're looking for you to have this hyper-localized plan and, you know, all these different versions of everything that we can use in the regions.
• 14:30
  Then you might bounce over here to a different department and they're like, "Well, we don't care about that.
• 14:34
  We've got one specific brand campaign that we need to land, because in this area, nobody knows our brand and our awareness sucks."
• 14:40
  Then you travel over to this other region of the company and they say, "We have a conversion problem, so we need to be creating a bunch of consideration and decision content for our prospects."
• 14:51
  It's all of these mini problems and mini companies almost within these huge companies, and so it really depends where you are, where you sit, you know, do you report to...
• 15:01
  I've reported through brand marketing, I've reported through product marketing as a content leader. I've reported into more of a sales facing team, working on content that's used in sales contacts as well.
• 15:11
  And so it depends so wildly on where you sit, but I also think that's a really cool opportunity.
• 15:17
  If you enjoy creating content, you know, you find a company that you really like, you can take your knowledge about that customer journey, um, everything that you know, and stay within the same company.
• 15:29
  Just flex those skills, um, at different parts of the organization. And that's what I've really liked about working at these bigger companies, to be honest, is the opportunity to kind of stay there.
• 15:36
  You know, you keep your same benefits. You're not starting from scratch with a new role with decks of colleagues.
• 15:41
  You have a baseline there, but you're able to try some new things and try some new ventures and put a little bit more pep in your step. And that's why I never set out to stay at Salesforce for eleven years.
• 15:50
  That's probably why I stayed there for so long, was just because, um, I did have the opportunity to bounce around. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like you're doing the exact same thing for eleven years.
• 15:59
  How-- I'm curious about eleven years at Salesforce, like what was that experience like? When you came in, what were you doing? And then when you left, what were you doing?
• 16:08
  Yeah, it's, I mean, such completely different things. Are you familiar with Kyle Lacy? No. So Kyle hired me to work at this company called ExactTarget, and it was an email marketing- Yeah.
• 16:22
  Oh, yeah, I remember ExactTarget... software company based in, yeah, where I lived and where I grew up. I was the first content marketing writer hire on that team. Content marketing is brand new.
• 16:31
  You know, I had a little bit of experience working at an agency on social and content and a little bit of book publishing experience, but I was pretty green. I was pretty junior.
• 16:40
  And so I was brought on as like the first content marketing writer that they really had at ExactTarget. Three months after I started working here, it was acquired by Salesforce. Gotcha.
• 16:48
  So I didn't have a lot of experience working at ExactTarget. I barely worked there. And once it was integrated into the Salesforce machine, all of us at ET, ExactTarget, were kind of...
• 16:58
  Some people interviewed for different roles at Salesforce, some people were reorged into different functions.
• 17:03
  I was really fortunate to be able to go over to the brand marketing team at Salesforce and work on the kind of like blog and e-book stuff.
• 17:11
  And it was kind of that traditional model of filling the top of the funnel through the blog, and then people fill out a lead generation form to access an e-book, and then we send them some, you know, nurture emails to move them along in their consideration and decision journey.
• 17:27
  And that was kind of how I got started, was just working on a bunch of different types of content.
• 17:33
  You know, I had the opportunity to work on multimedia content, hosted and produced a podcast for Salesforce for a couple years. Oh, cool.
• 17:40
  I worked on a lot of research and insights content, like our state of marketing, thought leadership reports.
• 17:45
  And so yeah, I guess that's kind of what just kept it so interesting for me was when I, think when I started, Salesforce had maybe around seven thousand employees, and by the time I left, it was over seven thousand.
• 17:56
  So I saw a lot of change and just a lot of growth during that time. And yeah, I was super fortunate to do so. I think around the time I hit like year ten-I felt like I could use something a little bit different.
• 18:10
  I was also on the cusp of having my second baby, you know, just wasn't the exact right time.
• 18:15
  And so, yeah, it was kinda like between years ten and eleven that I thought, all right, I gotta do so-- I, I owe it to myself to just try something else. Love my colleagues, love the company.
• 18:27
  It's a wonderful place to work. To this day, I get a lot of people reaching out to me for referrals to jobs at Salesforce.
• 18:32
  I'm always happy to tell them it's a great place to work, but you kinda know it in your heart when it's time to try- Yeah. Yeah... something else.
• 18:39
  And so, yeah, that sorta led me to Microsoft, and there are differences certainly between the companies, but I do think they're both pretty large companies, stable cultures, and great leadership, great products.
• 18:51
  Both of these companies understand that content is critical to reach their audience in the way that the culture moves today. Like, you've gotta be part of the social conversation.
• 19:02
  You've gotta be creating content in a timely and relevant way. And so I, like, I always say, you know, for me, I get more inspiration from my FYP on TikTok a lot of times than I do from, like, other B2B companies.
• 19:14
  That I just think there's so much more that B2B brands can be doing when it comes to content and social.
• 19:20
  And so, yeah, I'm just like, I'm grateful for the opportunity to, and I work with some brands that, to understand that, and we may not get it right every single time.
• 19:29
  I poke a lot of fun in my videos of content voice, B2B buzzwords. You know, I love to kinda... Like, I'm part of the community. Like, I think people, most people know that when I post my videos.
• 19:39
  Like, I'm laughing because I'm part of it with you. I'm in the community. Like, that's why I know how to make the jokes. It's 'cause I do it. Yeah.
• 19:47
  [laughs] That's why, that's why I'm able to write these scripts is 'cause I'm intimately familiar with the way that B2B companies, with the way that they, you know, kinda use these terms like digital transformation and AI powered and ever-evolving digital age.
• 20:01
  Like, I know that better than anybody else. Of course, I'm also part of an effort with many of my fellow content marketers to kinda galvanize us and say, "Hey, we need to bring clarity for our audience, you know.
• 20:12
  How can we do that?" Yeah. Wow. Okay, I'm sorta stuck on seventy thousand employees. There's, in the county that I live in, there's about fifty thousand people.
• 20:21
  So I'm just, like, trying to imagine every single one of them working for the same company. [laughs] Yeah, and imagine all of them want blog posts written. [laughs] Wow. Yeah.
• 20:32
  I'm gonna have a night- I'm gonna have a nightmare about that. [laughs] Yeah. The- Exactly. You're part of the, like, resistance. You're like, "We can't publish everything."
• 20:39
  That's what brand marketing is at a company like that.
• 20:42
  You know, one thing I'm so curious about, it probably applies to both Salesforce and Microsoft, is, like, content has been so insane the last, like, eighteen to twenty-four months.
• 20:50
  It's been, like, a crazy, disruptive, chaotic, it's just whatever. And in some ways, like, not that fun too, you know what I mean? Like, not all these changes have been happy ones.
• 21:00
  And I'm just wondering, is there more stability, I guess, at an enterprise company, where you're not switching up tactics all the time based on the latest algorithm change?
• 21:09
  Like, stuff happens over longer periods of time. The investments are probably larger. I, I don't know.
• 21:15
  This question is getting off the rails a little bit, but I guess, is it different in an enterprise role than at, like, a smaller company where the budgets are tighter and the pressure is probably higher on the content team?
• 21:25
  It's a good question, and for the past twelve years-ish plus, I haven't been working at super small or mid-sized companies, and so I can't say with exact personal knowledge what it's like to live that day-to-day, but I, I do have a lot of friends, a lot of, you know, colleagues who have been in those environments.
• 21:44
  And I think that in the enterprise space, the headwinds are exactly the same, but sometimes it takes longer for them to catch up to the enterprise companies. Like, sometimes- Yeah...
• 21:57
  it's like they're hitting the small companies first. Like, it's just like, yeah, it's gonna get you real quick if you're in a smaller company. Mm-hmm. You may be in, you know, sort of a
• 22:06
  walled garden if you're in a big enterprise, but I think it's, it may be a little bit slower, but I think the headwinds and challenges are similar. And I think when you're at a big company, yes, you may have more budget.
• 22:18
  You know, there may be bigger investments being made in content, but I also think there's a lot more accountability to what that investment is being made into.
• 22:27
  And so if somebody's saying, make these numbers up, but if somebody's saying, "Okay, Heike, you're getting, you know, sixty thousand dollars this quarter for content, and you can make whatever you want," that's great, but we are, need to be pretty accountable to what we're spending all that money on, um, and it's gonna match up with that level of investment.
• 22:48
  Yeah. Yeah. Got it. That makes sense. How important is prioritization for you? Like, I'm just thinking back to what you said about, like, all, you know, everybody wants content, you know.
• 22:57
  At a larger company, is that, like, a constant
• 23:00
  thing that you're sorting through, like, what is the most important thing me and my team can be doing today or this week based on, like, our own work plus things that other parts of the company want from us?
• 23:13
  Well, now you're getting into my philosophy a little bit on content strategy- Oh, yeah. Okay. Tell me... and what the role is of a content leader, but I think
• 23:23
  ideally, if you have a strong content strategy in place that aligns with marketing objectives and your broader marketing OKRs, there shouldn't be that many random ad hoc content requests being made of the team.
• 23:39
  What I'd like to do as your content and marketing leader is to say, "All right. It's the beginning of the year. We're doing our annual planning.
• 23:47
  We understand the broader objectives that this marketing team is responsible for. We understand the revenue numbers we're responsible for. Like, we know exactly what we're here to do and to measure and to create.
• 23:58
  We are gonna make a content strategy that's a unified content strategy across product marketing and events and campaigns and channels like blog and social, et cetera.
• 24:08
  We're gonna make that one unified content strategy that's all-encompassing."And that includes our pillar asset plans, our distribution strategies for the year.
• 24:19
  It doesn't include every single blog post title, but it's like those broad strokes of like these are the key moments that's gonna happen in our calendar year.
• 24:27
  This is how our pillar assets are mapped to that, and we know that we're gonna take a LinkedIn first and a blog first approach to distributing or their... whatever that might be.
• 24:36
  I wanna proactively create that plan as a content leader, and then everybody's bought in on it. And they're like, "Yes, we love this. We're all rallied behind the plan."
• 24:45
  Three months later, when Bob is like, "Hey, I saw this really cool thing on LinkedIn, and we should do a blog post about it."
• 24:53
  I'm like, "I love that idea, Bob, but this year we're focusing on prioritizing our content strategy. Remember, this is the strategy that our EVP blessed back in March," or whenever it was.
• 25:04
  Like, this is what we're focused on. And so there shouldn't really be... Like, I don't like to get too in the weeds on things like briefs and intake forms.
• 25:13
  Like, you have to have some of that stuff just to run a sound operation, and that's fine. But I don't like to open the door for everybody just thinking any good idea deserves a brief or an intake form or whatever.
• 25:26
  It just lends itself to this place where, you know, content is just, we're all making random ideas happen like little prairie dogs at any given time. [laughs] And instead, it's all- I love that. [laughs]...
• 25:38
  mapping back to this content strategy that we set out to achieve together at the beginning of the year. Wow. Okay.
• 25:43
  That's so interesting because what I'm absorbing from what you just said is that as a content team, if you know yourself, others will know you.
• 25:51
  You know, like if they see you responding to everybody else, they'll probably start asking for stuff also. Like, I actually spent- Mm...
• 25:58
  a very brief period at Intuit working on the QuickBooks content team, and like I couldn't believe how often people were asking us for content. And, um- Yeah...
• 26:06
  my solution was make a form with a lot of fields, and then- Yeah... people didn't wanna fill it out. They kinda like- A lot of people see the form-... lost interest halfway through... and yeah, they get scared. Exactly.
• 26:16
  Awesome. Yeah. [laughs] Once people see all the questions, yeah, they kind of back away. And that's... I mean, that is a good tactic. And like I said, you always probably have to have some type of intake form.
• 26:24
  I don't think you're ever gonna really get away from it at these...
• 26:27
  But other bigger small companies, I'm sure, any, you know, small companies too, people feel a lot of sense of ownership of the voice of, you know, in the market and that they wanna really be part of that, and so they're probably submitting a lot of ideas.
• 26:40
  But overall, the team should be focused on that unified plan that everybody agreed to. And of course, there would be changes.
• 26:49
  You know, oh, a new product roadmap, oh, a new this or a new that, and we could be flexible enough for that for sure. But we don't wanna just be in a position where the success of our blog is dependent on random ideas.
• 27:02
  Mm. And I'll use an analogy from a example from running the podcast for Salesforce for a couple years.
• 27:09
  You know, I was still pretty junior when I was running that podcast, and there's things that I think I did really well, and there's other things I would do pretty differently.
• 27:16
  This was also kinda early days for podcasting. Like 2017 is when I started doing it, and there weren't as many B2B podcasts out on Apple Podcasts then as there are now. Things were a little bit different.
• 27:27
  But one of the things that I did that I would do differently today was I was very reliant on my guests for the quality of the content. Mm.
• 27:36
  It was like if that person happened to be really good, that was gonna be a great episode.
• 27:41
  If that person didn't happen to be that good, well, that episode probably wouldn't be so great 'cause I didn't have that much editing in place.
• 27:48
  I didn't have n- that much vetting of the guests beforehand to really understand what quality of content they were going to deliver. And I think if you're listening to this, you're like, "Oh, that makes sense.
• 27:59
  You know, it was all contingent on the quality of the guest." That's the same way for your corporate blog.
• 28:03
  If you're just relying on random people around the team, random product marketers, whoever, to contribute content, it's not gonna be very good.
• 28:12
  You, as the content team, you know, ideally you would be the bastion of quality, and you would be the person, you know, vetting everything and making sure it matches to this ideal of like, hey, is this what our audience is looking for?
• 28:27
  Are these the themes that we really believe that we need to land in the market right now?
• 28:31
  That should be coming from, that should be coming from the content team, and of course, it should be tied to measurable objectives that you all have and being able to say like, "Hey," I think that's based of what you were saying a second ago about the some of the changes in the industry.
• 28:45
  That's how you just kinda lay off proof yourself, and your job is making sure you know the metrics that people care about in your business. It may not be content metrics.
• 28:56
  They may not care about page views or time on site or bounce rate.
• 29:01
  So you may need to figure out how do I connect what I'm doing to the metrics that people actually care about in the monthly business reviews, in the quarterly business reviews or whatever.
• 29:11
  That is what is gonna help you get from if you want to, right, like where you are in the content team to more of a leadership role. Again, you know, kind of if that's your goal. Yeah.
• 29:22
  This is why people should watch your LinkedIn videos. Like that's-- Like the vibes from what you just said are like exactly what I've seen in your videos, and it's awesome. It's very like empowering. I love it.
• 29:31
  What are you really excited about in B2B content right now? Ah.
• 29:35
  I sigh because I am excited, [laughs] but I'm also, as you all know if you've been following me on LinkedIn, I'm also saddened by some of the B2B content that's out there and not because any of my fellow content creators are doing anything wrong.
• 29:50
  It's really some mistaken, uh, guidance from leadership at times on the voice that we need to use or the content formats that are recommended to us as content creators.
• 30:00
  And so my sigh is coming from a place of I'm right there in the trenches with you. I'm facing some of the same challenges and struggles.
• 30:08
  And when I think about B2B content, I think absolutely we have a super bright future ahead of us.We just need to focus on the right things and kinda guide our leaders toward a place where our content is moving at the pace of the culture.
• 30:21
  And that's something that I'm really excited about- I like that...
• 30:23
  and something that I'm very passionate about, is just, like, content where I can see that you've watched Hot Ones before or that you have a TikTok account or...
• 30:33
  I actually think LinkedIn has been really good for B2B content because people have started to allow more and more of their real selves to show in this professional network, and I think that really bleeds over into the content that we're seeing.
• 30:45
  And so, yeah, like, I love it when I see brands embrace a funny or goofy side, or they choose to use a hip hop beat in their video instead of a business jingle that came for free with their- [laughs] Right...
• 30:59
  video editing account or whatever.
• 31:01
  Like, anything that shows a little bit more about you and the type of point of view that you have, um, that, like, that personality-led type of content that I see more folks talking about, I think that's what I'm really jazzed about to see in the future for B2B.
• 31:17
  Cool. All right. I love that. I love that. I would really strongly encourage people to go check out the stuff you've been posting. We'll obviously link to it. Aw, thank you so much. It'll, it'll be in the show notes.
• 31:25
  'Cause you've been talking a lot about sort of the changing nature of B2B, some of the kind of problems you see with it, and it's great. It really is. So we'll make sure it's easy for people to go find that.
• 31:34
  This is usually the part where- Aw, thank you. [laughs] Yeah, yeah.
• 31:37
  This is usually the part where I say, like, "Okay, now go to the company's website and check out the content for yourself," but I feel silly being like, "Go to microsoft.com. Check it out."
• 31:46
  But if there's specific stuff you wanna share that we can link to, we'll be happy to do that. And- No.
• 31:51
  You know, I really appreciate it, and yeah, like I said at the top of the call, just, like, the content marketing community, I mean, just being part of it and I think what I'm about and the kind of content that I'm trying to create is also, like, similar to you and some of your goals.
• 32:04
  And I think it's just helping folks who have entered this career path, like, find the path forward that's right for them in their careers.
• 32:13
  It could be freelancing, or it could be a leadership role, or it could be whatever it is.
• 32:17
  Like, I know so many friends across content marketing with different objectives, and for me, I feel so lucky that I can be in a place where I can have a leadership role in tech, but I can also create my silly videos on LinkedIn, and like, that's...
• 32:29
  I don't know. Like, that's exactly what brings me joy and what I wanna create right now, and yeah, just excited for you giving me the forum to talk a little bit more about it. Awesome.
• 32:36
  Well, it comes through in the videos for sure. Oh, thank you. Like, it's so good to meet you. I'm glad that- You too, yeah... we got to connect, and thank you for making time, and, um, let's please stay in touch.
• 32:46
  Absolutely. Thank you so much, Jimmy. Take care. See ya. Thanks. Take care. [upbeat music]