Latest / Content, Briefly / Sumo Logic: Zoe Hawkins on creating space for curiosity

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Sumo Logic: Zoe Hawkins on creating space for curiosity · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  I always think that content has to be the glue between everybody because we're the ones who make the thing that gets used by everybody. [on-hold music] Hey, and thanks for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly.
• 0:15
  Today we're talking to Zoe Hawkins. She's a content principal at a company called Sumo Logic, fairly technical product that she'll do a much better job explaining than I will.
• 0:23
  We covered a bunch of really interesting things.
• 0:25
  A couple themes that came up in this episode were curiosity and how Zoe creates space for herself and her team to be curious and go down rabbit holes, which so often leads to better writing and better content.
• 0:37
  We talked also about editorial debt, essentially all the stuff on the site that needs to be updated, refreshed, fixed, uh, improved, like visually. Uh, she has a really interesting process for that.
• 0:49
  A lot of teams have this problem. I've never actually heard it called editorial debt, but I really like that, and I really liked her perspective on it.
• 0:55
  And she also tipped me off to a few tools that I had never heard of, and she described exactly how she uses them. So lots to like in this episode. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I think you will too.
• 1:06
  This episode is brought to you by our friends at Teal. We talk a lot on it about marketing, and when it comes to your career, the product you're marketing is you.
• 1:14
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• 2:05
  Jimmy from Superpath here with another episode of Content Briefly. This is the first one we're recording in 2024, but it'll be February by the time people hear it.
• 2:14
  Anyways, today we're talking with Zoe Hawkins, content principal at Sumo Logic. I'm curious to learn more about the title, the company, but maybe first, Zoe, could you introduce yourself?
• 2:23
  Tell us a little bit about who you are and some of the work you've been up to for the past few years. Cool. Um, yeah. I'm Zoe.
• 2:29
  I have worked in content for I guess over a decade now, which makes me feel very old, but, you know, whatever. We'll, we'll just keep it at over- I feel you... over a decade. Yeah.
• 2:38
  [laughs] I originally was a video game and tech reporter, so I, I worked in journalism for a bunch of years. Loved it. It was like the dream job, fly all over the world, play video games, write about it.
• 2:49
  But then when I spawned a person, I got a desk job. [chuckles] Um, and I've been working in content strategy ever since, predominantly in the tech industry.
• 2:58
  So I was at a series of startups and then have since landed at Sumo Logic, where I'm responsible for pretty much all things content.
• 3:05
  I mean, it's everything from blogs to case studies, white papers, infographics, you know, you name it, I probably have touched it at some point in this role of, of content principal.
• 3:16
  So yeah, it's, you know, it's been a journey, and I think I see more and more journalists kind of getting sucked into content marketing, and it's really cool to see and, and follow along. Absolutely.
• 3:27
  I think the journalism background is just such a perfect foundation for content marketing for many reasons, and maybe the most relevant today, like as we're recording this in early 2024, is this shift that I'm sure many others are observing towards
• 3:44
  more, you know, kind of human content, like, you know, more subject matter expertise, more stories, more narrative-driven stuff.
• 3:52
  Probably a little bit less, at least for some companies, a little bit less focus on kind of the, the algorithm-driven stuff.
• 4:00
  Do you find that in your own career, and is that affecting the way that you think about Sumo Logic's content this year? Oh, yeah, definitely.
• 4:06
  I think a big part of what I always think of as the one of the most intriguing parts of being a journalist that has translated well into being a content marketer is curiosity.
• 4:18
  I always joke when I'm in a briefing, you know, learning about a new product or a new launch that we're doing, you know, people will be like, "Does anyone have any questions?"
• 4:26
  And I'm like, "I will always have a question and a follow-up question." Like, that is the journalist in me. I will always [chuckles] have the next question ready to roll.
• 4:34
  And so I think that's so helpful in crafting a narrative or in crafting, you know, really authentic content. Isn't just like, "Okay, here's what it is.
• 4:44
  Just take it, that this is it," and, you know, this is the information we have to work with. But really having that curiosity to be like, "Could we say this? Could we talk about this?"
• 4:52
  Like, what is the next step, or how would the person interact with this? And, you know, being really curious and then open to telling a range of different stories to different people.
• 5:04
  Yeah, I think that's really where the journalism background just marries so well into content marketing. I am so glad you brought that up, and I'm so glad specifically you brought up the word curiosity. Mm-hmm.
• 5:15
  I feel that one of the problems that has evolved over the last few years in content marketing is that many companies run kind of more or less the same playbook.
• 5:22
  And, like, that's fine because there's a couple things that are, like, evergreen, tried and true, like, they work kind of across the board.
• 5:28
  But in doing that, I think many companies have also over-optimized the process, and they kind of remove the creativity and the curiosity from it.
• 5:35
  So, like, just as an example, like, I every now and then will get a look at a content brief that's 1,500 words long. It basically is like, you know, just fill in the blanks.
• 5:46
  You know, you only have to write a couple words to, like, turn this brief into an article. And, um, there's so much of that.
• 5:53
  I have a lot of problems with content briefs, but I feel like they're just particularly representative of the absent nature of the curiosity in content marketing.
• 6:00
  So I-This is kind of like leading into a question for you, which is like how do you create space for it? In most tech companies, like, there is a lot of emphasis on efficiency, process, SOPs, things like that.
• 6:13
  Like, do you have to kind of deliberately build in that space to allow people to be curious? I think so. I think so.
• 6:19
  And, you know, what you said about the boilerplate or the specificity of briefs and things like that, I think wouldn't be twenty twenty-four if I didn't talk about AI.
• 6:29
  And I think that's, that's where so many people think that AI can do the work of content marketers, 'cause yeah, if you had a brief where you were like, "Here's all the points I want you to cover, here's how I want you to do it, here's the layout of the piece," then yeah, an AI can play the Mad Libs game and fill it in with some words and call it an article.
• 6:47
  But I think the way that creativity functions, to your point, like you have to build in space and room for things, and it's often you don't have much time.
• 6:58
  Like, I often talk about, like, you know, it's one fire drill to the next, you know, where it's like, "We're launching this. We need this.
• 7:05
  This was due yesterday, this and this," you know, and you have a lot of you're on the hamster wheel or, or in the grind. And even just recognizing, like, hey, this is something I wanna think about.
• 7:15
  I'm gonna take twenty minutes and go for a walk around the block and, like, chew on this, like, while I walk, and leaving that space for creativity, leaving that space for the curiosity, like, I'm gonna go think about this, and I'm gonna have some questions for you when I get back, and we'll work through this.
• 7:28
  Or having, whether it's a meeting structure or an asynchronous thing where you're able to deliver content and say, "I don't need an answer on this right now. Like, I want you to think about this. Ask me any questions.
• 7:44
  Let's go back and forth, and let's aim to have an answer by three o'clock, five o'clock." You know, to set a- Yeah...
• 7:50
  a deadline still so you still know you're gonna deliver the outcomes you need, but really building in that space to say, like, "Go take this for a walk. Go think about this during lunch."
• 7:59
  Like, not that you want people thinking about things in their downtime, but, like, let this kind of marinate a little bit and see what comes out, I think is, is really, really key to that creative process and also that curiosity.
• 8:14
  'Cause it's only when you start playing with it a little bit and, like, other connections come in that you're like, "Oh, actually, does this link back to that? Could we bring this around?"
• 8:24
  And, like, is this the story we're trying to tell? And, like, bring those questions out that, that I think is really meaningful. Absolutely.
• 8:31
  I feel that podcasting is, like, really nice medium for exactly this type of thing.
• 8:36
  Like, I didn't know you were gonna say the word curiosity, and then it would spark a discussion on it that we otherwise wouldn't have had, you know. Yeah.
• 8:44
  There was-- On the very first episode of this podcast, we talked to Sean Blanda, who runs content at a company called Crossbeam, and we were talking about how he fills up his editorial calendar.
• 8:54
  And what he basically said was, "I just hire former journalists, and I-- They interview lots of people, and they report back and tell me all the interesting things they found, and that's what we write about."
• 9:04
  I was like, "Oh, that's so- Love it. [laughs]... that's so simple." Yeah. Who knew it was so simple?
• 9:09
  I wanna talk way more about content strategy and operations and all that stuff at Sumo Logic, but maybe first could you just tell us the who and the what of Sumo Logic? Like, a little bit about the company.
• 9:18
  What is the product? Who are the customers, things like that. Yeah. So Sumo Logic, founded in twenty ten, tech company primarily around log analytics.
• 9:27
  So over about ten years grew through the typical startup journey, went IPO in twenty twenty, which, you know, [chuckles] was a journey.
• 9:37
  And then last year actually was bought by Francisco Partners, so now we are private equity owned. It's been like this journey in terms of ownership.
• 9:46
  As far as the product goes, the, the logs are key to who we are and what we do, so primarily working with developers and security teams, so like dev, sec, ops, everything from, like, security logs, but also, like, application logs, troubleshooting and monitoring, as well as, like, handling security incidents.
• 10:04
  So it's kind of the whole range of what you do with that data as it comes in, and then you're analyzing it. So yeah, that's kind of the, the core of what Sumo Logic does. And who do you sell to?
• 10:14
  Like, are you selling to, like, CIOs and CTOs? CTOs, CIOs, also, like, CISOs, like security side of things. But, I mean, it's also practitioners who really buy into our product, like, they find it really easy to use.
• 10:28
  They love our language and search and all of that.
• 10:31
  And so, you know, often we'll end up having, like, a champion who is a SOC analyst or who is a SRE, you know, site reliability engineer, who then needs this tool to do their job and, you know, runs it up the chain to the VP of product or tech or whatever that, you know, kind of oversees it.
• 10:51
  It sounds technical. Yeah. [laughs] How technical is it? I mean, from a content perspective, like, how nitty-gritty is the content? How much does it rely on subject matter expertise?
• 10:59
  Versus there's, like, a different version of content marketing for technical businesses where it's more about, like, making a, a business case for it as opposed to, like, appealing directly to a subject matter expert in, in words that they will, you know, understand and feel comfortable with.
• 11:15
  Yeah. It's pretty technical. I'll put it that way.
• 11:18
  Like, I've kind of run the gamut in my career of, like, you know, more accessible technology versus, like, super technical, like, graph database stuff where I was just like, "I'm gonna take your word that this is correct, 'cause I don't understand half the words in this."
• 11:31
  You know, [chuckles] like, I kind of had that range. I would say that Sumo Logic is accessible to a wide range, like, you can wrap your head around what we do if you're not technical, but the use...
• 11:43
  And, like, we have plenty of users who aren't super technical, but we definitely appeal primarily to a technical audience, because someone who wants to go, like, find out why the app is broken and read the log data, you know, the-- find the right log for why something broke is gonna be technical.
• 11:59
  But in terms of, like, one of the stories I often tell that, like, just stuck in my head when it's like what is Sumo Logic and what do we do.
• 12:05
  One of our customers is Ulta Beauty, and they found-- Using Sumo Logic, they found a bug that someone had released in their software that was giving away product for free. And they found it because- Oh, wow...
• 12:15
  they got, they got an alert saying, like, "Your average cart size has gone down."You might wanna go investigate.
• 12:21
  And they looked, and they were like, "Our average cart size went down to, like, shipping fees, [laughs] nothing else." [laughs] Like, we're giving away free product.
• 12:27
  And then they were able to find the log of when this happened. They were able to see, oh, it's connected to this latest release, roll it back, and stop giving away free product.
• 12:38
  And avert, you know, millions of dollars in losses. So, like- Yeah. Wow... that's not a super technical story, but the actual person who was hands on keyboard going, "Holy, what do we do now?
• 12:50
  We're giving away free product" Yeah, yeah. [laughs] They were the technical one who had to go figure it out. You know, they're the one who got the slack, like, "Hey, can you find out what's happening?" [laughs] Yeah.
• 12:59
  That's so, that's so interesting. Do you have the problem that many content folks at technical companies do where it's hard to find writers to, to write for your audience? Yeah.
• 13:13
  I mean, I feel like I'm pretty lucky in that, like, we have a, a pretty robust team of product marketers, so they own their product areas and work closely with the product managers and the engineers to really understand, like, the different functionalities and ways things will be used.
• 13:29
  So they're really helpful in writing, like, a lot of the launch blogs or, like, explanations of things or, like, product feature, product focused content.
• 13:38
  But yeah, like finding someone who can really give like a detailed walkthrough can be super tricky.
• 13:43
  So I have like one of my star writers is actually, you know, from our security side, and he's able to write like, "This is how you do threat hunting."
• 13:50
  Like, "This is how you find out if someone's trying to hack your Microsoft Office instance or whatever." And I was like, "What?" You know? [laughs] So- Yeah. That-...
• 13:59
  you know, that's pretty cool when I read it, and, like, I get exposed to some of this content.
• 14:04
  But yeah, I'm always having to, like, reach out to our product managers, our engineers, like, "Don't you wanna write about this?" Like, "Don't you wanna, don't you wanna share your wisdom with the world?"
• 14:14
  [laughs] Yeah, yeah. That's so cool.
• 14:16
  Could you, uh, even if, even if it's in broad strokes, just kind of paint a picture of Sumo Logic's content strategy today, kind of knowing that, like, these things t- do tend to change and, like, lately.
• 14:29
  Lately meaning the last, like year- Lately. All the time... there's been lots of, yeah, lots of change. Yeah. So we have a consistent editorial calendar, which is not a strategy, but just putting it out there.
• 14:38
  You know, we have blogs that publish typically once or twice a week, so that's a consistent thing.
• 14:43
  And then we generally have these, like, product specific campaigns that run for, you know, over the course of the year where it would be like anything about, I don't know, Cloud SIM, for example, is one of our security products.
• 14:56
  And so we would then map out, like, the full funnel and what we would wanna create for like, hey, we think a video would be really useful here, and we think, like, a clickable walkthrough would be really useful here.
• 15:08
  We kind of map out the different stages and then build that out so that it can be used by our demand gen team and our social team and all of that.
• 15:17
  We sometimes have to work it backwards from events as well, so you know, it's nothing exists in a vacuum.
• 15:23
  So often, like for example, we'll know there's a big, like, Amazon has their big, like, conference at the, uh, right after Thanksgiving every year, re:Invent.
• 15:33
  We'll wanna make sure we have some cool news to share then, so we all work backwards from that to make sure we have, whether it's a blog, a solution brief, case studies, fresh video, whatever that is, that would support that process.
• 15:46
  So yeah, there's a certain amount of, like, product focus led content strategy than like some evergreen stuff that we're always pushing out. And then I also try and devote a certain amount of time to, like,
• 15:58
  auditing and going back on, on a consistent basis 'cause I feel like otherwise you end up... I always call it like, you know, editorial debt is real.
• 16:07
  Built into our content strategy is this idea of addressing our editorial debt, so going back, thinking through like, okay, this was a piece from two years ago, five years ago, eight years ago.
• 16:20
  Like, what is this still doing on our website? Is it still relevant? Is it still useful? Is it still interesting to a reader? How can we update or optimize it to make it more compelling, more useful?
• 16:31
  Or even just, like, more attractive looking. Like, sometimes [laughs] I look at stuff on the website, I'm like- Yeah, yeah...
• 16:35
  this clearly has been through a few migrations, like this is not looking fresh, and it just needs a little bit of optimization.
• 16:42
  So I try and build that into our consistent content strategy as well, that we're not just launching and launching and releasing the latest and greatest news, but also going back and, like, keeping the older stuff up to date.
• 16:56
  Yeah.
• 16:56
  You know, there's a blog I used to work on that has since migrated at a site redesign, and every now and then I'll see a post that I wrote like many years ago and just notice that, like, maybe I created like a visual for it, which now, like, doesn't fit in the body column or, like, the colors don't work anymore, and it's like so painful.
• 17:13
  But it actually is really hard to make, kind of going back to what we were talking about earlier, to make space to do that kind of stuff.
• 17:20
  But at a certain size, meaning, like, you know, total pieces of content on the site,
• 17:25
  it eventually you hit a tipping point where actually it, it makes more sense to address editorial debt than it does to create net new, because potentially there's more gains, more value to be unlocked from updating or fixing old things than there is to, you know, continually pumping new, new, new into it.
• 17:42
  Oh, yeah. I mean, I consider myself like the queen of content optimization.
• 17:46
  Like, I love it because I'll find pieces that I'm like, okay, this is however old, like it doesn't even matter how outdated it is, but it's like, you know, give it a modern touch.
• 17:58
  Like, you know, maybe this was the result of like the hamster wheel, like the industrial fallout of the content machine, [laughs]
• 18:06
  uh, you know, just something that looks a little bit, you know, junky over time or was like originally written to be way too, like, search term optimized and doesn't read like a person wrote it.
• 18:17
  You know, there could be a wide range of reasons why it doesn't really work anymore.But when I go back and I add links, and I, you know, bring it back into our modern kind of structures or, you know, architecture of the website, or just make it sound like a person wrote it again, I'll often see, like, four X or even ten X jumps in that piece of content.
• 18:38
  Wow. And so, you know, it gets me excited 'cause I'm like, "We have a thousand blogs on our page. If we had the capacity to go back and update every single blog, you know, imagine the gains we could have."
• 18:48
  But of course, you know, trying to resource that and figure [laughs] that out is a nightmare. Yeah.
• 18:53
  [laughs] But, you know, it's kinda like, "Okay, we'll do, like, chunks of eight or ten or twenty at a time," and then, you know, let those results kind of speak for themselves and, and keep going. Yeah.
• 19:03
  You know, there's, there's like two types of content teams.
• 19:05
  There's the team that kinda like keeps a little bit of room on a consistent basis to refresh and update stuff, and then there's the team who, like, every six to twelve months is like, "Ugh," like there's just...
• 19:15
  "We gotta, like, take a break and go fix up this stuff." And you know, one, one term that we really don't hear very often in content marketing is inventory management.
• 19:24
  I kinda wonder if that will become a thing at some point because at a certain size, like say if you have 500 blog posts or 1,000 blog posts, like, you need a way to keep track of that stuff.
• 19:32
  Like, do you have a process of your own? I don't know if there's any good tools out there for this, but, like, how do you, how do you keep track of the stuff that is in need of updating? It is wild. It's the Wild West.
• 19:42
  I mean, like, we have different tools that we do use that I love, so I am gonna give a shout-out to MarketMuse. They're basically the only inventory management tool that I've found that works for what I need it to do.
• 19:54
  So they are able to crawl the whole website and pull out, like, these are orphan pages. These are pages that, you know, are ranking between three and 20 on Google for a topic or something like that.
• 20:08
  You know, I'm able to pull out certain kinds of data to prioritize what to update, which is game changer for me. But to your point, like, even just staying on top of what we have, I often, like I call them gremlins.
• 20:22
  Like, they just appear, and someone's like, "Hey, this is a blog that references a product we don't sell anymore."
• 20:28
  And I'm like, "I have no idea who you are and what you're talking about, but okay, we'll deprecate the blogs." [laughs] Like- Yeah. [laughs]...
• 20:34
  you know, I'm not gonna, not gonna hold on to this if it- we don't do this anymore. But yeah, it's, it's like I keep finding blogs that I didn't even know existed.
• 20:42
  Because I can't go back to 2010 and find every single piece of content ever.
• 20:47
  So things just appear, and I'm like, "I don't know who this is or who wrote this or what era this is from, but, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna do something with it." Yeah. That's funny.
• 20:56
  You know, many sites, because you might go through a couple different redesigns or, like, different teams in charge of content, and then you come in and you start going through all of it, and it's like an archaeological dig.
• 21:06
  Like, you discover like the different layers, [laughs] you know? The different like eras, and you can then start to kinda like make sense of what's going on. But that's a good tip on MarketMuse.
• 21:14
  That's a tool that actually hasn't come up as much as I thought it would on this podcast. But my brief experience with it was that it was very good. Yeah. Yeah.
• 21:21
  Any other tools in your toolkit that you find to be exceptionally helpful, either for this type of thing or other content-related projects? I use obviously MarketMuse a- for a range of things.
• 21:31
  So the inventory management is great. I also love them for research, and I really enjoy their optimization tool. Like, it gives you like colors, and they light up, and it just...
• 21:44
  Every writer I've ever been like, "Can you go optimize this in MarketMuse?" They're like, "That was a delightful experience." I'm like- [laughs]... I'm gonna, I'm gonna go let them have that as a testimonial. Yeah.
• 21:52
  I've also started using DemandJump, so they're more of like a pillar-based approach, a newer company, and just doing some interesting stuff, like it's not a cluster, it's a pillar or something like that.
• 22:04
  It's pretty cool. They do...
• 22:07
  They just have a really great view also of your competitors, which I really like, so you could see your keyword rankings and your competitor keyword rankings and just kind of get a feel for how you're competing in your space and in your, like, target area.
• 22:20
  So I like that. And then what I'm starting to dig into now, I'm not an expert, so don't, [laughs] don't...
• 22:27
  No one message me and ask for help in this, 'cause I'm still trying to learn, is I'm trying to use something like Sixth Sense.
• 22:33
  So our DemandJump team uses Sixth Sense, but I'm trying to build views in there where then I can see how many deals that make it, like, to this stage or that stage or whatever touch various pieces of content.
• 22:46
  So I can make a segment for, like, anyone who reads the blog, anyone who checks out our glossary, people who read specific blogs. Like, you know, if it's something from, like, the security
• 22:58
  team that writes, like, really technical how to do threat hunting kind of blogs, like, are those blogs showing up in deals? Are they leading to better deal sizes and things like that?
• 23:09
  Like, that's what I'm trying to start teasing out, 'cause I think, you know, the question I always get asked is, like, you know, "What's the ROI on this piece of content?" And I'm like, "I don't know.
• 23:18
  People read it, and then they convert." Like, [laughs] you know? Like they don't read. Yeah, yeah. It's like an almost impossible question to answer on like a per, on a per piece basis. It's so, so difficult to- It's-...
• 23:27
  to drill down that far... hard, yeah.
• 23:29
  And so it's just really helpful now, like, trying in Sixth Sense to be able to at least tease out, like, okay, in general, people who, you know, like, in my head, I think people who are reading the blog are still at the awareness stage, but it might turn out that actually they're further along in the funnel, and they're closer to consideration or decision.
• 23:49
  And that's really helpful for me to know and then to write more pieces that are helpful to that kind of audience. Okay, so DemandJump and Sixth Sense. Those are two tools I've never heard of before, which is great.
• 23:58
  I love finding new stuff. So since we were talking about content attribution, I would love to ask you about data. Mm-hmm. Are there a handful of metrics that you really care about?
• 24:08
  Yes, and it's gotten harder and harder to track things 'cause my GA4 is not as solid as my- [laughs]... Universal Analytics was.
• 24:17
  Like, I felt like in Universal Analytics, I was a whiz, and now GA4, I am once more a novice.But we really look at things like return visitors. I think that's a great indication.
• 24:29
  I obviously track organic traffic and click-through rates, but yeah, it's the return traffic, it's multiple pages or engagement rate or whatever you wanna call it per session. I look at those kinds of things.
• 24:41
  And then I also try and really get like a, a qualitative approach as well.
• 24:48
  Like, it's-- I know we're all about data and metrics, but it's also kind of like when I interact with our sales team, you know, if there's certain assets that they're like, "Oh, I always use blah, blah case study," or, "Oh, this one-pager always gets me a call back," or whatever it is.
• 25:05
  Like, those kinds of conversations are super helpful as well.
• 25:08
  You know, I was just, I was just on the site, and your primary calls to action really stand out to me, and I'm curious how this affects content, like k- going backwards from that and the way you measure stuff.
• 25:18
  So you can start a trial or you can request a demo, but nested under the demo button, there's an interactive demo or you can book a demo.
• 25:25
  So there's really three options there, which is like kind of like a hybrid product-led growth thing where, you know, like, that has been so hot for the past couple years, you know, balanced along with this kind of, I, I don't wanna call it old school, but, like, more traditional, like, get a demo, talk to a salesperson.
• 25:43
  Can you talk about having both up there? Like, how does that affect the way that you think about content and the stuff that you might measure? Yeah.
• 25:48
  It's, um, it's super interesting because what I've seen in terms of the people who go through our interactive demos versus sign up free trial versus get a demo, like, in the end, that person really just wants to be like, "So what does this product do?"
• 26:03
  Like, "Let me get in and see what you're actually talking about."
• 26:06
  'Cause you can say things like, you know, spot this and this, or like, get visibility into that, accelerate your insights into action, you know, all of these kinds of great messages, but in the end, someone wants to see, like, if I click the button, what does it do?
• 26:20
  And so I think the free trial is always gonna be great with that and, like, is a big conversion point for us. But at the same time, like, it's a free trial.
• 26:31
  Maybe they're not using the full range of data that they would have permission to bring in if they signed up for a paid account. Maybe it's a security team, and they're not gonna connect any of their own data.
• 26:41
  And so they might not see the full breadth of it, which is then why they would wanna use an interactive demo and just kind of click around and see, like, oh, okay, so this and this and this would be the workflow for solving a security incident or doing a threat hunt or something like that.
• 26:56
  Versus like, okay, this sounds intriguing, now I'll talk to a salesperson and actually, like, let them do their pitch and, like, [chuckles] hear the whole thing.
• 27:05
  I mean, we all know, it's like, oh, I don't wanna talk to a salesperson, but I really wanna see the product, so let me in and, and let's take a look. I do find that, like, the--
• 27:14
  what we often do in the content is, where possible, I try and have, like, a certain amount of, like, recipe element of it.
• 27:22
  Like, if you wanna do this yourself, like, here's the free trial, do this, do this, do this, and you can have this outcome too, and, like, show, like, in three easy steps, this would be the dashboard you would be clicking through and seeing.
• 27:35
  Otherwise, like, really trying to make sure we use as many, like, visuals and interactive elements that really show, like, for the person who's signing up for the free trial, for the person who's signing up for, like, clicking into a demo, like, they really want to see the product in action.
• 27:52
  So the more that we can actually just deliver that in the content up front, usually the better the chances are that then they'll just sign up and, and talk to sales and, and, you know, get into the, the funnel there.
• 28:04
  I really love that.
• 28:05
  I think having a couple options is fantastic, 'cause whenever I come across a site and it's a demo only call to action, I'm just so hesitant to click because I know what's gonna happen next, and I don't like it.
• 28:17
  [laughs] Mm-hmm. And some- [laughs] I totally get, you know, like, when we get leads, for Super-- like, I wanna get on calls too. I wanna s- I wanna try to sell you in person 'cause I have a much- Yes...
• 28:27
  you know, I have a high degree of confidence that I can get it done, you know? But at the same time, like, for most SaaS products, give me a screenshot. Like, let me just see something before you- Yes...
• 28:37
  force me to talk to somebody. So that's really cool. Exactly. Yeah. You know, earlier you mentioned product marketing, demand gen, a social team. Like, it's... At tiny companies, that's just one person.
• 28:49
  Could, could you talk about- Mm-hmm... like the marketing org at Sumo Logic? Like, you know, just the different teams and then maybe specifically the content team.
• 28:56
  Like, who's on the content team, and what are their roles? Content, it's the funniest org structure I've ever been at at Sumo Logic. [laughs] So I'm, uh, just prefacing it that way.
• 29:05
  But content actually falls under product marketing- Okay... at Sumo Logic. So I report to the VP of product and content [laughs] essentially. Like, they, they shoved content onto him.
• 29:16
  So under product marketing, we obviously have the product marketers, but we also have competitive intelligence and content. And then there's also a brand team which owns design.
• 29:28
  We have events as well as, uh, you know, field marketing and events. We have demand gen, which I think field marketing and events actually, they're kind of melded a little bit.
• 29:39
  And then we have corporate comms and social as well as our, the-- just based on the personalities at play, the corporate comms and social also owns our customer advocacy and customer marketing.
• 29:52
  Okay, so that is very well-rounded. So my next question is, whenever a company has a really robust marketing org, there is a certain amount of collaboration that happens across teams.
• 30:04
  How much time do you spend doing that kind of thing, like working with product marketing, chatting with demand gen, like, you know, t-talking with social about- Mm-hmm...
• 30:10
  a campaign you're running versus, like, kind of working sort of within your own silo? I always think that content has to be the glue between everybody- Oh, yeah, I like that... because we're the ones that, likeYeah.
• 30:21
  Like, we're the ones who make the thing that gets used by everybody.
• 30:24
  So like, if I'm gonna make, you know, if we're gonna do a campaign around, you know, insights to action and what that means in terms of, like, logging and taking what you figured out in the platform and being able to really have, like, a business mindset to it, you know, that's something that's gonna need the product input to mean like, what do we mean by insight?
• 30:44
  Like, what is that? What does [chuckles] that actually look like in the product? But then we're also gonna need, okay, how are we gonna talk about this on social?
• 30:51
  How are we gonna spend money to drive this with demand gen? How does this affect, like, how we show up at events, and what our messaging looks like there?
• 30:58
  And so content kind of has to provide not just the assets, but also, you know, make sure that it fits into this broader strategy.
• 31:08
  So I feel like the bulk of my job is collaboration, and then, like, now and then I get to carve out an afternoon to go straight to blog. Yeah, yeah. [laughs] You know? Like do some editing and things.
• 31:19
  I, like, do my real job, but I feel like much of my real job is that, like, okay, what does this campaign look like? What is the message we're trying to give?
• 31:27
  Like, what is the story we're try-trying to tell with this latest launch or with this new initiative that we're pushing? Yeah. So yeah, definitely a lot of collaboration. Yeah, yeah, that's cool.
• 31:37
  I've likened, you know, running a content team at a larger company to being the captain of a cruise ship.
• 31:43
  It's like you do have to get from point A to point B, but along the way, you have to serve dinner, you gotta have water slides for the kids, like, you have a casino.
• 31:52
  Like, there's a lot of other things that have to happen along the way, and there's a lot of wrangling that needs to happen, too. But all that has to happen to create the right experience, you know? So- Yes...
• 32:01
  and so I think that content folks at smaller companies look at that and they're like, "I just, you know, I wanna just do content. I wanna get stuff out the door."
• 32:07
  And for a small company, that is probably what you should be doing. But at a- Mm-hmm...
• 32:11
  larger company, it is, it is the wrangling, it is the alignment which doesn't, it never happens by accident, that is so, so important. Well, and I mean, also I think at a smaller company, you are all of those things.
• 32:23
  Like, you don't have to align. It's within you. [laughs] True, yeah.
• 32:27
  Like, if I think about it, like, you know, when I've run campaigns when it was, like, a team of one essentially on, you know, very small marketing teams or a team of two or three, you know, I'd be the one writing the piece, getting the social prepped, getting the website ready to roll.
• 32:42
  You know, all, like, digital team and demand gen and social and content all was me.
• 32:48
  And so, you know, there was less need for alignment in terms of a conversation, but just internally making sure I was really solid on all of those different pieces. Yeah, yeah.
• 32:59
  Do you have, do you have any tips for staying aligned with your own team and other teams? Like, are, do you, is everything documented somewhere? Do you, you know, do you meet frequently? Like, is it a lot of async?
• 33:11
  All of the above. So we-- I think it really depends on the team and the project. We recently did a project, and I discovered that I love Miro. Oh, Miro's the best. Um, I was... Right?
• 33:23
  [laughs] I didn't use to love Miro 'cause I was just, like, confused by it or it wasn't laid out in a way that really worked for me.
• 33:29
  But we did this whole website launch, and you could see, like, version one, and then like, hey, what if we change this and this and this?
• 33:36
  And then design would swarm, and then I would swarm in and then bring like product managers or product marketers in and be like, "Does this, did I butcher the content? Like, does this still work?
• 33:46
  Does this still, like, fit what we're trying to do?" And then design would come back and be like, "That isn't gonna fit. Come back," you know? Yeah, yeah. But we could just put it all in Miro and so I love Miro for that.
• 33:56
  I am an Asana person, so, like, I do for project management, keep everything in Asana. Um, but at the end, I think it's also, like, it's probably undervalued how important soft skills are.
• 34:10
  Like, just communicating, [chuckles] um, you know, having relationships with the people on different teams so that's not, like, the only time you ever poke them is to be like, "Hey, where's this?"
• 34:20
  Or, "What's happening with that?"
• 34:21
  But to actually know them and be humans first just makes it so much easier to collaborate, where then you're constantly Slacking and messaging and, you know, saying like, "Oh, by the way, like, I met with so-and-so, and they said this and this about this com- project," putting it on your radar and, like, just having that rapport.
• 34:39
  You know, it- it's hard to be like... And then document it.
• 34:42
  Like, [chuckles] it's not a, uh, you know, it's not an obvious thing to, to talk about, but I think it's really, really vital for any content marketer or marketer or just human is to have those kinds of soft skills to connect with other people.
• 34:56
  Absolutely.
• 34:56
  I think that many careers start with hard skills, writing, designing, programming, or whatever it is, and then over time, the importance of the technical skill decreases, and the importance of the soft skills increase to the point where, like, later on at a certain point, like, you know, your job is just to just get it done.
• 35:17
  Figure how to get it done, you know what I mean? Like, build the relationships- Yeah... with people, keep the project on track, keep everyone on the same page.
• 35:22
  Like, even if you don't write a word of code or content or design anything at all, [chuckles] you know?
• 35:28
  But I hear you on carving out that afternoon for writing, 'cause, like, that's where, like, [chuckles] for me, that's where I find, like, the satisfaction of content, too. Yes. Yeah, for sure.
• 35:36
  I mean, it's, it's funny, like, recently I ghostwrote a blog for one of our executives, and I was like, "Oh yeah, I still remember how to do this." Yeah, yeah. Like, that's great. Like, I'm so glad. Okay, cool.
• 35:45
  [laughs] You know? [chuckles] Zoe, thanks so much for doing this. I feel like in each episode we uncover one or two things that are totally unique to that episode. In this one,
• 35:54
  our brief discussion about curiosity, like, really, really resonated with me. I think it will really resonate with, with other folks, too.
• 36:00
  And then also editorial debt, which comes up all the time in the Slack group in different forms.
• 36:05
  Like, not everyone uses that terminology, but it's just, like, so, so important, and a lot of teams struggle to deal with that.
• 36:10
  So you've provided us with lots of good stuff to think about, some very actionable tips also, so thank you very much for your time. We'll definitely send folks to the Sumo Logic website.
• 36:21
  Always recommend after listening to an episode, go to the company website and see, see it in person. Like, interact with it, you know what I mean?
• 36:29
  I feel like that really, that's when you can start to take, like, "Oh, Zoe said this, and here it is." And, like, that's when the inspiration occurs for a lot of folks. Love it.
• 36:36
  Where can we send folks to connect with you? Social profiles, personal website, or anywhere else? Yeah, LinkedIn is where it's at. I, I used to be a Twitter junkie, but now it's just LinkedIn, so Zoe Hawkins on LinkedIn.
• 36:48
  You'll know it's the right one 'cause I have sparkles on my name. [chuckles] Okay, perfect. So just... [laughs] We'll leave links to the Sumo Logic site and your LinkedIn in the show notes.
• 36:56
  And again, thank you so much for doing this. It's so great to meet you, and I hope we can chat again soon. Thank you so much for having me. This was a real blast. Absolutely. Take care. [outro music]