Latest / Content, Briefly / Shopify: Kam Jenkins on Taming Complexity and Winning With Great Process

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Shopify: Kam Jenkins on Taming Complexity and Winning With Great Process · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
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  You can learn more and book a discovery call at campfirelabs.co and find out how Campfire Labs can help you take your content to the next level. Hey, everybody. Jimmy here from Superpath.
• 1:20
  Got another episode of Content Briefly for you. Very excited about this one. We have Cam Jenkins, content lead at Shopify, here to talk with us. So much to dive into. So many questions for you, Cam.
• 1:30
  But maybe first could you just give an intro of yourself? Tell us a little about, about yourself, your background, and what you do at Shopify. Yeah. Sounds good. So I am at Shopify right now.
• 1:39
  Like you said, I'm the content marketing lead for Shopify Point of Sale. And so Shopify, for those of you who aren't familiar, uh, maybe you just know Shopify as like an e-commerce platform.
• 1:49
  Shopify does quite a few other things.
• 1:52
  And so, um, Shopify Point of Sale is its offering for in-person sellers, and I kinda head up the, the content marketing efforts and the content strategy for that line of business at Shopify.
• 2:02
  And I've been there since, uh, September twenty-twenty. Before that, I was in-house at a couple places, um, some B2B SaaS SEO tools.
• 2:10
  So I was at Botify, and I was at Moz before that, and then professionally cut my teeth in, like, the digital marketing agency world. I did content and SEO for, like, six to seven year...
• 2:21
  I think six and a half years at, at, uh, an agency. And so that's been my career trajectory so far. Cool. Okay, awesome. That's great. Could you talk about marketing specifically for Point of Sale?
• 2:31
  Like, what does the team look like? If you're able to share how many people are on it. Just kinda give us some of like, like, the layout of this part of the company. Totally.
• 2:38
  When I joined, they were kinda just starting to resource Shopify Point of Sale with its own marketing team. So you had your basic...
• 2:45
  And I think this is ba- like, uh, in my experience, this is kinda like the trifecta, right?
• 2:48
  You have your marketing director or VP or whatever, and then you have your content head, your product marketing head, and then your demand gen or revenue type head there. And that was our trifecta.
• 2:59
  We also worked closely with our design and UX counterparts as well, which kinda sat adjacent to us. But that's kinda how the team looked, and each of the leads had their own team.
• 3:09
  And so that's kinda how everything was broken up for Shopify Point of Sale. Like, like you said, it's all integrated, right? Like, the benefit of, of Shopify and its products is that, you know, you get the point of sale.
• 3:19
  You can also sell online. Like, those two things are connected. There's one back office. And so if you make a sale in store or online, like, it's all integrated.
• 3:28
  It's all pulling from your same inventory, so you don't have to, like, keep track of everything separately in spreadsheets and all of that.
• 3:34
  So definitely there's, like, a symbiotic nature to, like, the e-commerce side of the business, so we work really closely with people who are doing the marketing for, uh, the e-commerce side of the business.
• 3:44
  And it's also interesting because a brick-and-mortar retailer or an in-person seller, maybe they just sell at a craft fair, who- whatever type of in-person seller you are, you're probably also interested in things like how to market your business on Instagram, which is generally more of, like, an e-commercey type of, like, digital topic.
• 4:00
  And so, uh, we work really closely with them to make sure that we're addressing all of our audiences, even if the topic leans more into, like, the e-com digital side of the business, whereas, you know, my team might be talking more about how to merchandise your store, and that's, like, specifically an in-person seller-focused topic if that makes sense.
• 4:18
  Yeah, no, that's really helpful.
• 4:20
  I mean, I guess it makes sense that the point of sale, your target customer is a little bit different than, you know, someone who's, you know, direct to consumer, online only, or drop shipping or kinda whatever other flavor of commerce you're talking about.
• 4:33
  So there's, like, a whole world of content specific to them too. Does that content live in its own place? Like, is there a point of sale blog or resource center? Is it all in one place? Like, how does that work? Yeah.
• 4:44
  That's interesting, too. Um, we do have our own blog. It's shopify.com/retail. That is the retail and person seller-focused content hub.
• 4:53
  You know, it's one of those things where there's lots of conversations I feel like in every company about, like, you know, where does this live, and it...
• 4:59
  Like, does it live on the main property, or does it live in the help center? Where, where should it live?
• 5:03
  A lot of our content is being, or traffic to our content, eyeballs on our content are, is being driven by search and other channels and platforms, whereas, you know, you're not always coming to shopify.com and navigating, like, "Oh, where do I wanna go?"
• 5:17
  So in our mind, and what we've decided is it matters less, like, where it lives in the navigation or where, where it lives, like, visibly from the homepage or something like that.
• 5:26
  And, you know, there is a specific place for it, and there are pros and cons to it having its own specific property versus it being blended with other properties.
• 5:34
  But right now, yeah, it lives in its own kind of, um, subfolder on /retail. Okay, cool. That gives me, like, some kind of, like, psychological piece to think about.
• 5:43
  Because I'm just imagining, like, you have, like, you know, kind of like a h- probably a handful of different target personas, probably different teams creating content for each of those different cohorts.
• 5:52
  You know, just very random side note, uh, Superpath is a Shopify customer. We were trying to figure out an easy way to drop ship swag to customers, so, like, we send our podcast guests hoodies.
• 6:03
  I actually did that with Shopify.
• 6:04
  We're a buy button customer, so I think we pay nine, maybe, like, nine bucks a month, and then use a drop shipperTo set-- It's really easy 'cause then we can just, like, embed it in our site.
• 6:11
  Anyways, kinda neither here nor there. But another question about the, about the /retail blog. Are there... Do you have other channels or properties dedicated to retail?
• 6:21
  Like, for example, does it have its own newsletter? Does it have its own social handles? Yes.
• 6:26
  In addition to the retail blog, there's also, um, brochure pages or, or more sales-focused landing pages for the point-of-sale.
• 6:34
  So they're specific, um, like /pointofsale, uh, /pos rather, is where, like, you can go to learn about... Or there are more conversion-focused pages.
• 6:42
  It's like you, you buy the point of sale, here are the features of it, those types of pages. Whereas, like, the blog is very, you know, informational. There's case studies.
• 6:50
  It's just the, not the same type of content living there. We also do have a newsletter.
• 6:56
  We have, like, specific lists and email drips that are associated, uh, with retail that are different from, you know, the e-commerce list.
• 7:04
  A-and the reason I ask that question is I'm just sorta curious what your team's relationship is with sales. Like, is that something that... Like, is there an open line of communication to some sales folks?
• 7:14
  Were you sort of collecting feedback, um, kinda hearing what people are saying on calls that you can then kind of fall back into content you create for those people?
• 7:21
  When it comes to our sales team, we absolutely, uh, have a sales team.
• 7:25
  People are selling the point of sale, um, that being because we have a very wide range of people using the point of sale and, uh, our, our target customer for the point of sale.
• 7:34
  And so you think of one end of the spectrum being like, "Hey, I sell some like maybe once a month at a craft fair." You're still an in-person seller, and you can benefit from Shopify point of sale. It's an app.
• 7:44
  You can do that on your phone. But we also have, you know, multi-location brick and mo- established brick-and-mortar businesses using the point of sale as well.
• 7:52
  And so for people like that, they are the ones that are most likely going to be going through a sales cycle, talking to sales, talking to people can-- who are, are more holding their hand through the process, making sure it's right for their business.
• 8:05
  Whereas a casual in-person seller might just convert on the free trial, install it, install the app themselves, and just kinda play around with it that way, and they don't need, they don't need to go through sales.
• 8:15
  So yes, we have two kind of options depending on the, the type of person and, and what their specific needs are.
• 8:22
  Regardless, my team is very synced up with sales because whether we are talking to a smaller retailer or a larger retailer, the, a lot of the needs are the same, and a lot of the pain points are the same.
• 8:34
  And so we really like listening to sales calls and prospect calls on Gong, so we'll listen in to those recordings.
• 8:41
  We actually had a really cool meeting, um, like a monthly meeting where each of us would listen to a different retail-focused sales call, and we would kinda, like, take notes on what we learned and share it back.
• 8:52
  We had, like, a little share back session, uh, for the team.
• 8:55
  And we also, like, brought in people from retail sales to kinda give us trainings every once in a while as well just to make sure that we knew, like, common DQ reasons.
• 9:03
  Like, "Hey, we wanna make sure that we're not, you know, talking about topics that you know, you know are, like, a, a DQ reason for, for people that are coming in through your pipeline."
• 9:13
  So it's just really good in general, whe-whether you are doing free trial-focused marketing activities or sales assistant-focused marketing activities. It's still all relevant information that helps inform our strategy.
• 9:26
  For sure. Yeah, that's great. I mean, my personal experience is probably not true across the board, but the larger the company is, the harder it is to have a direct line of communication to your target customer.
• 9:36
  Like, if you're a three-person startup, you might talk to customers every single day, right? I don't-- Shopify, I assume, has thousands of employees.
• 9:43
  Probably just, like, a little more difficult, so then sales becomes, like, the, the key to unlocking all that knowledge. A hundred percent.
• 9:49
  Yeah, and it's really nice when you're in an org that uses something like Gong because then you don't even have to like, "Hey, sales, can I, like, piggyback on this call, or can I-- can you introduce, introduce me to this person you're talking to or whatever?"
• 10:00
  Like, you can just listen to their call recordings, and they're all tagged by like, oh, this one mentions point of sale. Like, let's listen to this call. It's really easy to kinda self-serve learn that information.
• 10:10
  When the org is so big, like you said, sometimes it is harder to kind of get access directly to the customer or even access directly to sale-- your sales team or customer success team.
• 10:20
  Um, so Gong has been really helpful for that. That's awesome.
• 10:22
  I, I feel like every now and then, a category of tooling comes along like Gong and Chorus, and there's a few others who just, it just, like, unlocks this thing that previously was not impossible but extremely difficult.
• 10:33
  There's another tool I just came across recently called Dovetail that, um, kinda does the same thing for a different problem.
• 10:39
  It's like a place where you can dump text, podcasts, YouTube videos, but just, like, where you can collect a bunch of content, uh, even, like, style guidelines and whatever, and it creates a searchable database for your writer.
• 10:50
  So they, if they need a quote, they need a data point, they can go in, in there and get, like, pre-approved stuff that they can then kind of repurpose and remix for other content. So I love that. There's, um... Let's...
• 11:00
  Can we talk about your team specifically? Like, what does the content team look like? How many people are there? Sort of curious to understand, like, also what their roles are like, you know.
• 11:10
  For example, do you have writers, you know, on the team who create content? Uh, do you work with freelancers or other vendors to get that type of stuff done? Yeah.
• 11:19
  So the team, the way I kinda structured the team was around, like, crafts within content.
• 11:24
  And so, uh, for example, we had an SEO-focused content marketer, a product-focused content marketer, someone who did campaigns so that this person was kinda their bread and butter was, like, gated content and doing that, like, really well and the drip campaigns that followed that.
• 11:39
  For a while, we had a partnerships-focused content marketer when partnerships, like, Shopify has, like, a large partnerships ecosystem, and that's, like, a pretty, like, interesting area to, like, either do co-marketing or talk with our partners about, like, how do we get more people using our partners, and how do we educate our partners about Shopify point of sale.
• 11:56
  Like, there was just a lot of cool opportunity there. So kind of as goals came up, we decided, like, hey, we need a person. Like, we need a person who we can put as a resource on this.
• 12:08
  So the first goal when I joined Shopify, um, was like, hey, we need to build awareness, and we're also, like, losing a lot of visibility.
• 12:17
  There was-Legacy content that we were dealing with, and so they wanted someone to come on and kind of like help bolster the steady stream of traffic.
• 12:24
  And so coming on and starting with like the SEO-focused content just to get that like engine running, to patch the leaky bucket, you know, with all the decay we were seeing on the site.
• 12:33
  And so that's kinda where we started, and then the next kind of hill to climb was like, okay, we have... We're like starting to grow in our traffic, but where are we funneling this stuff?
• 12:41
  Like, we need someone who like deeply knows the product and can kinda take on case studies 'cause those are so different than the SEO-led content. We need someone who can kinda, you know, do feature explainers.
• 12:51
  And even like this person that we ended up hiring, um, also created like a CTA library for us.
• 12:57
  So we were able to really easily, no matter who you are on the team, like maybe you're the SEO-focused content marketer and you don't have as much product knowledge, you can pull from this library and say like, "Oh, this Shopify feature plugs perfectly into this topic that, that I'm creating content against."
• 13:14
  So you don't even have to be an expert. You can just pull from this library, like plug and play type of thing.
• 13:19
  So yes, and like I said, campaigns person, and we were also, one of the last components was as Shopify point of sale was being released into new markets, uh, internationally, we were working with someone in EMEA who could kind of take our North America strategies that were working and like adapt them, apply them toward, um, some key markets in EMEA.
• 13:39
  So, um, we were building the craft-specific playbook for content and then kind of hiring people to go and take that to new markets as we expanded to new markets.
• 13:50
  So that's kinda how the team was structured, and I think it worked really well for, for a lot of reasons.
• 13:55
  But yeah, each person was kinda like the CEO of their own stream, and so I set like the vision and strategy, the overarching goal.
• 14:02
  But in terms of like the actually like what's published and how it gets published, uh, like each person who was a stream owner was responsible for deciding how that looked.
• 14:12
  And so what ended up happening was the more top-of-funnel, SEO-led stuff, they tended to rely a little bit more on freelancers because that's easier to outsource, and we also needed a higher volume there than our product focus.
• 14:24
  Like, things that are toward the bottom of the funnel um, and required more, you know, product Shopify knowledge or a strong POV that tended to sit more within our team.
• 14:33
  But yes, we did use freelancers, but to like a varying degree depending on what type of content we were, we were doing. Got it. Okay, got it. That makes sense.
• 14:41
  This sort of reminded me a little bit of, uh, I spent a year working at QuickBooks, and we ran into what sounds like kinda similar problems where like QuickBooks, very, you know, very large company inside of Intuit, then they have a, a number of products.
• 14:54
  Like, there's the accounting software everybody knows, but there's also payroll and invoices and a few other things which then like they have their own marketing teams.
• 15:01
  Like there-- at least in our case, we had a central content team that kind of served all those. But then the global expansion was really...
• 15:07
  Wow, there was so much there because like in some cases you, you really had to have like dedicated people on the ground because some of the products are kinda completely different based on like local regulations or whatever.
• 15:18
  So then there's like some amount of stuff that could be translated from the flagship blog, but then some stuff really can't, and then it's just like sort of like constant back and forth about like how do we keep all this working.
• 15:29
  So I sort of lay it out there for you as like a question of like how much... I'm just sort of curious, like if you're able to share, like how much of your time do you spend thinking about that kind of stuff?
• 15:38
  Like, that's like fairly high level strategy work that is not like how many organic visitors did we get this month and how do we get more next month kind of thing. Totally. Yeah.
• 15:47
  It's actually a pretty big component of my job because, I mean, there...
• 15:52
  You have people at like the top of the business, like I'm sure it was at QuickBook, who, well, who are deciding like, "Hey, we need to g- be visible in these markets."
• 15:59
  But then it's up to you as like the content lead to translate that into like, well, how do we support that, and how can what we're doing ladder up to that?
• 16:06
  So I kinda have to be the connector of like, okay, content and these goals, and like how... Like, what's the delta there? How do we, how do we get there and support that? And so yeah, I spend quite a bit of time on that.
• 16:17
  But yeah, it was a similar thing with, you know, expansion into EMEA. There are...
• 16:21
  The reason that it wasn't just instant, that, oh, Shopify point of sale is available everywhere that Shopify is, well, it can't exactly be that way because there are like payments regulations and things like that in different, in different markets.
• 16:32
  But yeah, it's really, really interesting having to pay attention to that stuff in, in specific markets. Yeah. Really cool.
• 16:38
  I, you know, I'll just sort of highlight like this sort of portion of the conversation is something that as businesses grow and become large, like Shopify has, it's just absolutely necessary for the company to figure it out, right?
• 16:50
  And a lot of people end up getting involved in it. And like, just in case anyone out there is thinking like, "Well, that's not content marketing," it actually is, just at a different scale, right? And so I think it's...
• 17:01
  I actually think it's kinda cool because these are like core business problems that have trickled down to content, which you then get to participate in helping solve for the company.
• 17:09
  So throwing that out there just as like a... It's a potential... It's something to think about as, as content folks think about their career paths, I think.
• 17:16
  It doesn't have to just be like page views and newsletter subscribers forever and ever. Like, there's, there's other stuff out there. A hundred percent.
• 17:23
  I think that's a really great point, and it, it's so important to be keyed into that stuff. Like, it... You can't create content without knowing those things.
• 17:31
  I mean, I remember, you know, when I've, I've joined various companies, and I start poking around.
• 17:35
  I'm like, "Okay," like, "well, I can't make a strategy until I know like our ideal customer profile, and I need to know like what our goals are. Like, what's the total addressable market? What markets are we in?
• 17:45
  What are we not in? Why?" All of those questions that I need answers to before I can make a content strategy, and I've gotten the response sometimes like, "Why do you need to know this?"
• 17:54
  And I'm like, "Well, how else can we create content if we don't know what we can and can't say and to, to which people? Who are we talking to, and how does our product serve them?"
• 18:04
  Like, if you're expecting content to market a product and to make the business money, you need to know those things, or else it's just a media site. And it... Like, we're, we're not selling ad space on our site.
• 18:14
  We're not an affiliate site. Like, we are here to sell a product, so I need to know-How to sell that product and to who. So those, like, key business questions, like, are so integrated into, into content strategy.
• 18:25
  Really cool. I just have so many things I wanna ask you about. There's-- I do wanna ask you about metrics and reporting. Are there...
• 18:32
  Are you mandated, uh, to grow a certain set of metrics, or are there, you know, a handful of them that you really care about? How do-- I'm so curious how that works.
• 18:40
  And then in terms of reporting, same, same goes for your team. Like, are the individuals responsible for specific numbers?
• 18:46
  And how do they kinda communicate that to you, and how do you communicate that up to, you know, whoever you report to? Yes.
• 18:52
  So our main metrics at, like, a high level probably look pretty similar to, to other content marketing teams' metrics.
• 18:59
  I mean, we look a lot at sessions, and we try to, you know, split that out by channel, um, just to see, you know, what's coming from where and judge each channel, you know, by the metrics that make the most sense for that channel.
• 19:13
  So we look at traffic, and we look at conversions as well.
• 19:17
  So for the point of sale, it's, you know, we are mostly trying, with a blog at least, driving free trials, and so we wanna look at free trial conversions from the blog, um, both first touch and last touch. We...
• 19:29
  Yes, I think it's very important to judge each kind of channel and content format by what it's trying to do and what it has the most control over.
• 19:37
  Like, if you are only reporting on rankings and organic traffic, then you're gonna kinda disappoint and take the wind out of the sails of your, like, product-focused content marketer if you have someone like that, someone who's doing case studies, for example.
• 19:51
  Case studies aren't trying to rank for a specific keyword, and so it's not what they're there to do.
• 19:56
  So I think it's really important to just pick the metrics that closest match the type of content that, that you're producing.
• 20:04
  And so for case studies, one of the things we look at is, like, free trials generated from those case study pages because those are, like, heavy hitters for conversions.
• 20:12
  And so that's one example of how we would look at that differently from, like, SEO-led content, where we're looking more at, like, the rank position and organic traffic.
• 20:21
  Can you pull all those metrics yourself, or do you have a data person, or is there a data team that you could go to if you needed someone else to come in and help with that? Yes.
• 20:31
  So we at Shopify do have a data analytics team and who is responsible for kind of like their... They have governance over our Go-Google Analytics instance.
• 20:40
  We also have our own data warehouse where we can pull things and look at things. It's more of a proprietary source of data. Got it. Okay, cool. That's interesting.
• 20:47
  I remember when I got to QuickBooks, they didn't have Google Analytics because they had a data team, and they had much more sophisticated tools to do this type of stuff with, but I was frustrated because I didn't know how to use them.
• 20:57
  And I wanted Google Analytics because I wanted to at least be able to, like, on a daily basis, check in what's going on.
• 21:04
  And like, yeah, we still use, like, the data warehouse for like this-- for, like, the, the real stuff, but, uh, it took me, like, three months to advocate for that even though it didn't cost anything.
• 21:14
  You know, it's just like, it just took a while for, for me to, like, kinda whine about it long enough that, that people listen to me. [chuckles] Super interesting, though. Yeah.
• 21:23
  The, the data stuff is interesting 'cause I think, like, companies of all different types of sizes, I feel like y-- a lot of times will have a data team, but the data team is more kind of resourced toward, like, product-focused data, at least in my experience.
• 21:36
  Like, they're looking...
• 21:38
  You know, they might be able to give you some time, but most of their time is gonna be dedicated toward, like, the produs-product focus metrics, like the in-product metrics, and they're great at that.
• 21:47
  But then, yeah, a lot of times, like, they, by nature of their jobs, aren't-- they aren't thinking from, like, a marketer's brain and standpoint.
• 21:54
  And so you'll ask them a question like, "Hey, can you build me a report like this?" And it's just not clicking with them 'cause they're used to, like, reporting on a whole different set of problems and, and questions.
• 22:02
  And so I think having someone who's specifically, like, a marketing analyst is, is really helpful.
• 22:08
  But yeah, f- at the very least, having access to the data yourself so you can kinda self-serve is really nice because I don't know. I s- I know some content marketers who are...
• 22:17
  They're just interested as, like, like, their hobby. They like SQL, and they like doing that sort of thing. But I don't think it's fair to put that on, like, a content marketer's jobs to be done.
• 22:26
  Like, you, you shouldn't have to learn how to be a data scientist to do content marketing. You should know how to partner with data and know the right questions to ask and, and that kind of thing.
• 22:35
  Like, helps you pull the right reports and stuff, but I don't think it's really fair to have them have to have that skill. Yeah, that makes sense. That does make sense.
• 22:45
  I'm curious to talk a little bit more about your team and how you run it. You mentioned a monthly sync with sales. What other standing meetings are on the calendar? Do you do one-on-ones with each person on the team?
• 22:56
  Do you have, like, a weekly meeting where you all get together? We're kind of asking everybody this just to get a sense of, like, how do marketing teams... Like, how do you-- how does it run, you know?
• 23:04
  Like, what's the cadence of communication?
• 23:06
  Are there different types of meetings on the calendar, like structured updates versus, like, creative brainstorming or, you know, kinda like whatever other things you all need to get together and talk about? Yeah.
• 23:16
  I think it's really important to have those regular check-ins and meetings, um, personally. And so it's really important, I think, for team culture and not just in a, like, "Hey, do we all feel good with each other?"
• 23:26
  sense, but it also just, like, creates a, a good, like, efficient working relationship.
• 23:30
  So it does help on the personal level to have those types of meetings, which is great, but it also helps us just, like, work better and smarter when we're, when we're talking to each other. So that's my view personally.
• 23:41
  How that translated into our team is that on Mondays, for example, there's, like, a little Slack automation that's like, "Hey, everyone.
• 23:47
  Quick bullet list of, like, what you're working on this week," just to give everyone, like, a bird's-eye view of what everyone's working on.
• 23:53
  Sometimes the team would also do, like, an in-person standup if there was more to talk about, but I think a slam- Slack standup is totally fine for that kinda thing 'cause it's just like, "Here's what I'm doing," like FYI to everyone.
• 24:05
  I do one-on-ones weekly with each of my direct reports, and we kinda just... Like, it's their time. They can surface things to me.
• 24:11
  Like, if I have stuff to tell them, like, of course, but I really view that as their time to kinda bring things to me to, like, troubleshoot or kinda, like, brainstorm on or get my advice or opinion on or whatever.
• 24:21
  And so that's kinda-How I view those, I do those weekly. Like, unless something big comes up, then I try to always keep those on the calendar.
• 24:29
  Yeah, usually removing them only if, like, my direct reports are just swamped, 'cause then that's not fair for them. You know, it's only if they need it.
• 24:36
  We also do s- a rotating, like, weekly meeting, so we meeting each week but about something different. So I think I mentioned, like, the gong call type of meeting that we had.
• 24:45
  That's like one week, and then the next week might be, like, our peer-led. We do something like a peer-led content training. So maybe someone'll sign up and say like, "Hey, I wanna lead this week's meeting.
• 24:54
  I have a cool, like, thing that I do in Ahrefs, and I wanna teach everyone how to, how to do that." And so we, we do that. Yeah. Yeah. That, that's really cool.
• 25:02
  And then we have, like, a more of a content brainstorm planning meeting where we're like, "Hey, like, I'm thinking about doing X, Y, and Z next month. Like, does that line up with what you wanna do?
• 25:11
  Like, how can we work together on this content?" So it's half, like, calendar-building and half just, like, tossing ideas around and getting people's feedback type of meeting.
• 25:20
  So we kinda do that on a ra-rotating basis, so we're always meeting, but the shape of the meeting is a little bit different each week. I love that idea. That's great.
• 25:29
  Are there any tools that you all use to communicate as a team that you find to be particularly helpful?
• 25:32
  I mean, Slack, I'm sure, but then, like, you know, I don't know, content calendar or, you know, a, a project management tool to keep track of campaigns or...
• 25:41
  You know, just sort of curious to get a sense of, like, what is, like... You know, Shopify is, like, the real deal. Like, what do you all use? Is it the same stuff that the rest of us use? [chuckles] Yeah, I think so.
• 25:51
  Honestly, like, um, and we've gone through a few different, you know, tooling thing when it comes to project management and, um, any, any type of tooling really.
• 25:59
  Like, sometimes we'll just be like, "Hey, as a company, we've decided to sunset these things, and we're gonna move on to these tools."
• 26:05
  And so I think it's important, like, for anyone really, but especially I think the bigger the company gets, not to get too precious about, like, the actual tool you use, and just more willing to be like, "Okay, here's, like, the systems and the framework that I use, and I can apply those to whatever tool is, is the preference."
• 26:20
  So, you know, we've used everything from, like, Airtable, which is a, like, a personal favorite of mine for project management, to Asana, which we u- have used, I think, most of the time I've been at Shopify, to G Tables, to all types of different things.
• 26:34
  But yes, like, no matter what type of project management software we use, like, we make sure we're using one, that everyone has the, the same view of what everyone else is doing.
• 26:43
  We are g- really good about using, like, comments and tagging so that everyone kind of, like, is seeing each other's work. We also have always used, like, one shared calendar.
• 26:52
  You know, even though each person is kind of, like, the, the CEO of their own stream, right? They have their own kinda calendar that they're working on.
• 26:59
  It's one calendar, and everyone has, like, a subsection of that, so everyone has visibility into what the other person is doing.
• 27:06
  Because it's one, one surface that we're publishing on and one, you know, marketing effort that we're driving toward, but each person kinda owns their piece of it. So that's kinda how, how that works.
• 27:16
  And yes, we use Slack, absolutely, um, for, for chatting and things like that.
• 27:20
  And then yeah, like, we like, "Hey, let's hop on a quick call," or, you know, we'll do voice recordings or video recordings too and post those in Slack sometimes too just to keep things, you know, as async as possible when that's, like, the best course of action.
• 27:32
  Yeah, makes sense. I love that. Do you know how much content you produce? Like, I'm imagining it's probably quite a bit.
• 27:38
  Uh, you know, I, I think companies probably hit a point where, you know, they're like, "We're gonna write one article per week."
• 27:43
  You know, and then they're like, as they get bigger, they're gonna do two articles per week.
• 27:46
  But then you sort of get into a position, like, uh, the point-of-sale team is now where it's not just that everything's going into one place. Like, it's going to different places. It has different purposes.
• 27:56
  Maybe you don't really think about cadence in the way that an earlier stage content lead would think about it.
• 28:02
  Yeah, definitely cadence is honestly lower on my list of things that, that I personally care about, one, because there was already quite a bit of content, and two, because I kn- I knew, especially in the beginning, but, you know, like, this persisted throughout the whole time.
• 28:17
  Like, I know people aren't sitting there twiddling their thumbs waiting for Shopify to produce a new piece of content. Like, they're gonna discover it through their own channels on their own time.
• 28:25
  And so for me, cadence matters less, especially, like, the more content that we, that we developed and put out there.
• 28:31
  But in terms of how much we were publishing, I wanna say, like, each week was a little bit different and, and that's why I liked not being totally married to cadence.
• 28:40
  'Cause there were some weeks where it's like, "Hey, we ran into, like, a, a few bottlenecks and a few, like, r- red tapey things, and we just couldn't get this over the finish line."
• 28:48
  Well, I'm not gonna require someone to publish that just so w- we can hit our, like, cadence numbers or whatever. I wanna make sure that it's done right, and so I'd rather...
• 28:56
  Like, that takes precedence over everything else. But it usually netted out to where we were publishing, like, at least two, sometimes three posts per week. And yeah, that differed depending on the stream.
• 29:06
  So, like, the product-focused content tended to take a lot longer, especially case studies where you're getting, like, the merchant approval, 'cause, like, they are the one being interviewed, and they have quotes in there, and their...
• 29:15
  it's their business being represented, so there's a layer of, like, back and forth for that.
• 29:19
  Campaigns, again, another thing that ta- uh, takes a little bit longer to produce, and they're, uh, harder to hold to a specific cadence 'cause you have more stakeholders, like, more, more people involved, and they're higher, like, ti- just in terms of hours to produce.
• 29:35
  Like, they, they just take longer to produce that type of content. So cadence was something I never, like, held us to a specific number on, but that tended to be, like, where things fell.
• 29:43
  And a lotta times it was like the bread and butter was that SEO-focused content coming out most consistently, and then to varying degrees, the more product-focused or campaign type of stuff. Got it.
• 29:54
  How do you think about editing and quality control and brand guidelines? 'Cause I'm assuming some of that stuff is...
• 30:01
  maybe some of it is specific to your team, but, but some of it also is probably universal because it's not just your team that's publishing stuff. 100%.
• 30:09
  Yeah, Shopify has centralized, uh, voice and tone and brand guidelines that we- Oh, that's amazing...
• 30:13
  all use no matter, yeah, no matter what, uh, content team you're talking about or what, you know, line of business you're talking about at Shopify. So that was cool.
• 30:22
  We, um, on my team personally, we used a mix of two editors, and they were both actually freelance editors. The one editor we used is-More grammar, syntax, tone.
• 30:33
  He had edited Shopify content for quite a while, and not just like point-of-sale content, and so he was very familiar with things like our voice and tone and all of those types of guidelines.
• 30:43
  And you know, he just worked really well with us. And so that's who we used for that type of content.
• 30:48
  When the content was-- I, I would say like there's a certain type of content where my team just kinda got to a point where we knew like this, we are talking about more specific and in-depth topics that we really need to make sure that we aren't turning off like our expert-level audience.
• 31:03
  Like, we need to make sure we get this right, and we don't just sound like we read the top ten links on Google [chuckles] and spun this content up.
• 31:10
  Like, we want to sound like, you know, we're coming from a place of expertise because we really, we really care about that. So we also hired a freelance, uh, subject matter expert editor.
• 31:20
  So, um, we sourced-- Yeah, it was really cool. We sourced him from-- He was an editor and a writer at one point, I think, for some retail trade publications.
• 31:29
  And so he's coming from that space where he knows that audience deeply. That's like what he's used to. And so he was editing from the perspective of like, would this land with our target audience?
• 31:40
  And he also was good at editing, you know, just the basic stuff, like the grammar, the syntax. Like, does this make sense? Are there errors? Are there typos? Like that kinda stuff.
• 31:47
  But he was kind of our go-to for like, "W- this needs me review." [chuckles] So that was kinda how we were, yeah, reviewing that type of content. Love that idea. I've never, I've, I've never heard of that. I love that.
• 31:59
  Uh, I'm flagging that in the podcast.
• 32:01
  Like, that's just an amazing idea because, yeah, it's just, it's so e- I think it's just it's become so easy for content marketers to, uh, sort of become great practitioners of content marketing and sort of in, in doing that, kinda lose sight of like, who, who's this for?
• 32:17
  Which I real- do I really know who this is for? That's um, that's amazing. I wanna be respectful of your time. Just one, one more question for you. Are, are you thinking about AI?
• 32:25
  I mean, I, I, obviously, like, it's kind of on everybody's radar right now. Like, have you found practical use cases for it yet?
• 32:31
  Are you kinda still like thinking through like where does this fit in to our team's work, if at all? Yeah.
• 32:37
  So the way I've seen AI applied most directly, uh, I will caveat this with like I have not personally been using it in my work stream.
• 32:46
  That's not to say like it's not because I have any like strong opinions on like, "No, I'll never use it," or, "Yes, I absolutely wanna use it." I just haven't yet. I've been on mat leave for a long time.
• 32:54
  I missed the whole ChatGPT like explosion when it first came out, not that it's like gone or anything. But I know I'm like, pff, I just, you know what? I dodged a bullet, I feel like, on that one.
• 33:04
  No, but it's important for, I think, content marketers to like be aware of this stuff and like it's, it's in the market. It's a reality.
• 33:11
  Your execs are probably gonna start asking about it, uh, your POV on it, if they haven't already.
• 33:15
  And so, but yeah, one of the applications I've seen it being used for is FAQ schema, you know, ranking in the search with like the little, you know, FAQ expanded, uh, things.
• 33:25
  And that type of content tends to be like, "What is this? This is what it is," and just like short, like just definitional stuff. And so I've seen it used in that application, and I'm like fairly agnostic about that.
• 33:37
  I think generally, like, that's kinda what people were doing anyway, just without robots. Like, you know, you look at the top-ranking things. You're like, "How can I write a better version of this?"
• 33:47
  You're just kinda automating that process. So I don't know. There's that, but also I think my POV on AI content in general, it's like, use it, don't use it.
• 33:56
  Whatever you do, I think like it is gonna become more and more important.
• 34:00
  Like, I think we're at an inflection point here where it's gonna become like way more important really quickly to have unique proprietary information in your content, things like, you know, original, like, "Hey, this is my experience."
• 34:12
  Like, really, like no one, like AI can't go out and have their own lived experiences.
• 34:16
  [chuckles] Like, it's only stuff that you can write about or proprietary data, things like that I think are gonna become really important.
• 34:23
  I keep relating this back to, this was not that long ago, but the latest like sky's falling moment at like a couple months ago was how Google kinda came out and said like, "Hey, we're losing, search is losing market share to TikTok because people trust TikTok more, and it, there's like real people behind it," whereas people don't think Google search results are trustworthy.
• 34:41
  They're like, "Oh, all robot generated," blah, blah, blah. You know, with AI content, how much more so is that gonna become true?
• 34:47
  So if you are creating content, like long-form search content, I think it's very, very important to address that trustworthiness with unique POV, unique original research, like things like that.
• 35:00
  Whether you're using AI content or not, I think creating that either alongside or injecting that into your content is gonna be really important for that trustworthiness. Yeah. Love it.
• 35:10
  Kim, this has been extremely informative, really like just rich.
• 35:14
  There's like so much here, and I really appreciate you taking time to kinda unpack some of this stuff because, you know, I, I imagine that there's a lot of folks working at smaller startups who aspire to this one day.
• 35:26
  You know, like they aspire that the company will be as successful as Shopify, and that they will have some of the problems that you have today. You know? So really appreciate it.
• 35:33
  We'll obviously send people to the retail blog. Can we send them anywhere else? Is there any other Shopify properties we should send them to? And, and you too, Twitter, LinkedIn, personal site or anything else? Yeah.
• 35:43
  Um, Twitter, I'm on Twitter and LinkedIn, not as much as I used to be.
• 35:46
  [chuckles] But I'm on, I'm still on Twitter and LinkedIn, so if you, I don't know if you have like show notes or whatever, you can like definitely link my Twitter and LinkedIn for that kinda stuff.
• 35:54
  The retail blog is our main property, so I'd say yes, like if you wanna see my team's work and some examples of what I was talking about and how that kind of like look in real life, yeah, visit the retail blog.
• 36:05
  I think that's the best way to see my team's work. Okay, will do. Awesome. Kim Jenkins, everybody. Thanks so much. Thank you.