Latest / Content, Briefly / Slite: Melanie Broder’s Focus on Thought Leadership and Great Writing Is Paying Off

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Slite: Melanie Broder’s Focus on Thought Leadership and Great Writing Is Paying Off · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  I mean, thought leadership is for leaders. You know, you're trying to sell to CEOs, uh, to product leaders, to engineers. These are smart people.
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• 1:44
  Really excited for, um, an Animalz reunion today with my, my former coworker, Melanie Broder, currently the Head of Content at Slite. Melanie, could you give us just, uh, intro of yourself?
• 1:56
  Could you talk a little bit about your background and what you do at Slite? Sure.
• 2:00
  So my background in content marketing is probably familiar to a lot of content marketers in that I started out as a literature major and, uh, creative writing specifically. And, uh, I've always loved writing.
• 2:12
  I eventually found out about content marketing pretty early on in its existence, I wanna say around 2013, 2014, and I got a job at a small startup called Padlet out in San Francisco, and I was their single head of content, basically just sort of an in-house writer, a content marketer, product marketer, email marketer, you know, whatever.
• 2:35
  Like, anything that needed either a human touch or like UX writer, like it was basically anything that could be copy or marketing I touched.
• 2:46
  After that, I found Animalz, um, and I really liked the energy of that and, like, the, the purpose behind it. Like, it really taught me a lot about strategy.
• 2:55
  And then I kinda took a break and went back to the literature thing and got an MFA in creative writing and wrote a novel that I'm now trying to sell. [chuckles] Oh, cool. Um, and then, uh- We're gonna link to it.
• 3:05
  [laughs] Yeah. If-- I mean, it's not, it's not self-published. I'm hoping to get a deal, but yeah, if you know any book agents out there.
• 3:12
  But yeah, and now, um, sort of when I was wrapping that up, I found Slite, and so I've been working there for two years. That's awesome. W-what is Slite? Or, I mean, I know what Slite is 'cause we're a customer.
• 3:23
  Um, I will also just say as a disclaimer- Yeah... we're not being paid. You know, like, we don't have a free account. Like, we pay like everybody else. It's a really good product.
• 3:30
  But could you kinda give us an overview of, of the company, the product itself, and then, like, kinda the next step after that is marketing? Uh, like, where does marketing fit into all that?
• 3:40
  But maybe first, like, just kinda company overview would be helpful. So Slite has been around since 2016. Um, it started out as, like, the note-taking app for teams.
• 3:48
  Um, a lot of companies started out as that, [chuckles] I would say. Um- [laughs] And it was started in Paris actually, so it's a, it's a mostly European team.
• 3:57
  And, um, it's evolved over the years to, to be more of a knowledge management tool system, um, that also focuses on async-first written communication within teams.
• 4:10
  So it's really meant to be your, your central workspace for remote teams. Got it. I mean, maybe this is an obvious question. I'm assuming it changed in 2020, in 2021. Like- Yeah...
• 4:21
  the things accelerated or maybe the product vision became more clear when the world changed and then, like, the way we worked kinda changed along with it.
• 4:28
  It did s- it did change in 2020, but I-- and I wasn't there in 2020, full disclosure.
• 4:33
  But, um, it changed more in, um, like, 2017-ish when, uh, the first person at Slite, um, decided to move away from Paris, and- Ah, interesting... that's when they went remote.
• 4:44
  So this focus on remote work, which you'd think w- came out of 2020, actually started for us, like, a while before that. So written first, yeah, async, which I'm probably gonna say a million times today- [laughs]...
• 4:57
  uh, is, uh, is definitely, like, in the DNA from, from earlier on, and so we're trying to help teams catch up to that. Yeah. Really cool. Really cool.
• 5:05
  We're actually-- You'll see, like, real live use cases of Slite in some of the stuff that we're putting out recently. Like, we made a wiki for the community. All that was made in Slite. Yeah.
• 5:14
  Like, just today, or as we're recording just today, we released a blog post, and there was a content upgrade. That's in Slite.
• 5:21
  And then we're using it for all of our internal documentation stuff people don't see, but there's a lot of it.
• 5:25
  And then once we had a tool that, like, made it easy to do this kinda thing, we found that there was quite a bit to document. Um- Yes... and it really genuinely has helped us with operational stuff.
• 5:33
  Like, it just moves more quickly when everyone has a place to go.
• 5:36
  One of the reasons I'm kind of, like, flagging that and highlighting it is because, in my experience, most content teams don't do a very good job documenting.
• 5:42
  We haven't done a very good job documenting, and even the small amount we've done has just been so helpful.Yeah.
• 5:47
  Well, honestly, at like Animals was really great about documentation, and I would say that like- Yeah, that's true... that's where I learned about documentation.
• 5:53
  I mean, I honestly was-- one of my other clients was a documentation tool.
• 5:57
  So I, I feel like I go back with documentation, and it's also something that I believe in a lot, not only as someone who works remotely, but like as a writer.
• 6:05
  Like, I think that it's, it's really important to have really clear guidelines.
• 6:11
  Like, if you're gonna collaborate, if you're gonna like make the commitment to the freedom of lifestyle that remote affords you, you better be able to like express yourself clearly in writing, otherwise you're gonna get in, in trouble.
• 6:23
  Yeah, totally. Totally. How about marketing at Slight? What does the marketing team look like, and where does content fit into marketing?
• 6:30
  I guess another way to think about that question is like, are there other channels that Slight is prioritizing in addition to content? Yeah.
• 6:37
  So marketing's kind of evolved in a few different directions, but right now we have a really solid team.
• 6:42
  What's, what's really interesting about content was I joined in 2021, and there was already like a ton of SEO content, and it was doing quite well.
• 6:51
  Like it was-- We were getting traffic from this SEO content, and my original role was just to be an SEO writer because they were seeing this growth with, with SEO.
• 7:01
  They had been working with an agency and freelancers before that, and they were like, "Oh, this channel really works for us," but it wasn't delivering leads. Like, it was just delivering traffic.
• 7:11
  And so the first problem I was working on was like how to increase the quality of this content that we had. So that's been an ongoing pro- project. We also have templates that are also SEO optimized. Mm-hmm.
• 7:23
  And so that's been an ongoing project, but it quickly sort of shifted to the growth team.
• 7:28
  Um, so we actually have a growth team, or we have a head of growth now, um, who works with one other person, and then we also have a growth product manager who's been very involved in optimizing those pages and stuff.
• 7:41
  So it's been a very sort of like engineering focus for those resources.
• 7:47
  And like, I've come in and, you know, added a coat of paint to them really, and like when I see a need from, from customers and stuff that we need a new template, then I'll create the template for that.
• 7:58
  But it's honestly been out of my hands a little bit, and it's been really nice that we have that in the background so that we have been able to try out this stuff with the thought leadership. Mm-hmm.
• 8:09
  Yes, and I, I have a lot of questions about the thought leadership stuff.
• 8:13
  Um, I guess before we, before we get into that, 'cause I think people are gonna be very interested in that, but I wanna make sure we like, um, set the table, you know, with all the other things happening as well.
• 8:22
  So you're the only person working on content full-time, correct? Yes, I am. Um, and I actually work with a freelancer, um, another former Animals person right now. But yeah, I'm the only-- I'm the content lead.
• 8:32
  The overall structure of our marketing team is that I work under the head of brand marketing. So we have a head of growth and a head of brand marketing.
• 8:40
  We also have a product marketer, two marketing designers, and, um, a head of partnerships. I feel that's very interesting that content falls under brand and not growth.
• 8:51
  I, I feel like it could go either way kind of depending on the direction that you're-- you wanna go with content, right? Like- Yeah...
• 8:58
  I feel like maybe that explains a little bit of the, the story behind some of the thought leadership stuff, which I promise I'll stop teasing in a second and just get to so we can talk about it.
• 9:06
  How, how do you all communicate about content? Like what do you-- Do you have like a sort of a set meeting cadence? I'm assuming quite a bit of it is async, and there's probably some like product dogfooding- [laughs]...
• 9:16
  kinda thing baked into that. But I'm curious, like as the only content person, there's things you need, right?
• 9:21
  There's like, you need the ability to like, well I'm sure like update other folks on what you're doing, but also like probably some space to brainstorm and, you know, kinda like do the things that a larger content team would do but by yourself.
• 9:32
  Like, do you lean on other people on the team for that kinda stuff, and does that stuff fall into any kinda like formal communication style? Yeah.
• 9:38
  So I mean, it's funny because this process, we've been experimenting with it since the beginning, I think.
• 9:45
  So I mean, at first, when I first started On Your Own Time, which is the name of our blog, thought leadership blog, it's still under the Slight domain, but it's a little bit separate from the, the templates and SEO content that I mentioned before.
• 9:57
  So when I first started that, it was just like a lot of ideas that had been sitting around for a while, and I was able to just sort of write a post a week and like get that stuff out there.
• 10:08
  And then, of course, um, as many content marketers know, like the ideas dry up, right? And you have to figure out how to source ideas. So a lot of it at first then was like working with our CEO, Chris, Christoph.
• 10:20
  He would, you know, talk about the ideas behind what we were building or the new roadmap, or we were shifting to this like different strategy at, at one point and like how are we going to promote that or a new product that we were launching.
• 10:33
  Um, so a lot of it was just like one-to-ones with him, like getting his ideas out of his head and like onto this blog.
• 10:40
  But now that we have a team, we do brainstorming live as a team, and then we also have docs that you could add to the backlog.
• 10:48
  We, uh, we have this thing in, in Slight where it's like it used to be you organized your docs in channels and databases, but now we have this thing called collections.
• 10:56
  When you create a doc in Slight, you have the option to c- create a collection of docs instead of just one doc. So in content, we have a content backlog, which is a collection where anybody can add ideas to that.
• 11:09
  The problem is that people forget that it exists, so I kind of every so often have to put a meeting on someone's calendar and say, "Hey, like you've got ideas. You're on the engineering team.
• 11:18
  Like, I need to hear how you built this. Like, let's talk about it." But last month, I thought that it would be great to involve the whole team in kind of like an open town hall format.
• 11:30
  So I recently recategorized our blog, um, and sorted it into different verticals, and I invited everybody on the team who wanted to participate in ideation to come, and it was a live meeting, so it wasn't async.We played this game that we've played in off-sites and retreats, uh, called Crazy Eights, but we did Crazy Threes.
• 11:52
  I don't know. Are, are you familiar with Crazy Eights, Jim? No, no. [chuckles] But I'm intrigued.
• 11:56
  Um, so Crazy Eights is when you're ideating on a topic, and you take eight minutes to write as many ideas down as possible, and then you move on to the next topic, and you write down... It's pretty simple.
• 12:07
  So I took three minutes for each vertical for everybody to come up with as many ideas as possible. Cool. And it-- we ended up with, like, 30, 40 ideas. That's so interesting. Are you gonna do that more?
• 12:19
  Like, did it-- I'm assuming it was a, a success. Like, is that gonna- Yeah... are you gonna make that a regular thing? I want to make it a regular thing.
• 12:25
  Um, I think it was because it was novel, we had a really good turnout this time. But maybe I'm underestimating [chuckles] um, how much people show up to this kind of meeting.
• 12:34
  We also now have so much in the backlog that I'm like, I don't know if I need to hold it until, you know, three months from now. [chuckles] That's such a great problem. That's awesome.
• 12:42
  I'm curious, like, I don't know that I've ever been in a content brainstorming people with people who aren't content marketers. Yeah. Like, you know what I mean?
• 12:49
  Like, if you bring engineers, were you surprised by the stuff they brought? Did they bring stuff?
• 12:53
  You know, I'm just imagining that the engineering team doesn't say, like, "We should do the ultimate guide to insert keyword here." [chuckles] Like, they probably bring some, like, fresh stuff to it. Yeah, no, the...
• 13:01
  I mean, the, the engineers were great. I mean, like, the CTO showed up, which I was just like, I, I loved that. And, and they were-- the engineering column had the most ideas in it by far. That's awesome.
• 13:13
  And I think they, they have been really eager to have their own blog, but it just falls down their priority list.
• 13:19
  So I'm working with an engineer on a piece right now, and it's just sort of like, if you put it in linear, if you put it on my calendar, like, I will have it done by then.
• 13:26
  So that's what I'm doing [chuckles] and I'm just sort of like, "Okay. Well, like, I'll break it down as if you were a freelance writer.
• 13:32
  So give me your bullet points, uh, get me some screenshots, and then we'll work together on the angle. And then we can..."
• 13:39
  And also now, like, what's great about working with engineers now is that you really can use ChatGPT to fill in some stuff.
• 13:46
  If they're not gonna string sentences together, but they have all these ideas, honestly, it's not, it's not hurting you to use that. Yeah. That's, that's really cool.
• 13:54
  Just so I make sure I got this right, you have basically three places where content lives on the Slite website right now. Yeah. On your own time, the S-SEO, which is, is that under, like, /blog or /resources? /learn.
• 14:06
  /learn, and then there's templates, and it sounds like maybe there will be a fourth at some point, which would be an engineering blog. Well, ideally, they would all come together under [chuckles]
• 14:17
  um, a sort of general resources tab. We'd have to rethink the architecture of that and how that would affect, you know, people coming to the site, but- Yeah...
• 14:25
  um, I, yeah, I'd like it to be sort of like a center where people who wanna learn can, can go and jump around, you know, from some of the more top of the funnel stuff to thought leadership to really sort of engineering focused pieces if that's what interests them.
• 14:40
  'Cause it all sort of fits our- Really cool.
• 14:43
  I wanna ask you more about, like, reporting and stuff like that, but maybe we should talk about the content strategy itself because that, that informs a lot of the other stuff that I wanna ask you about.
• 14:51
  Slite content looks different.
• 14:54
  Like, when you go to slite.com/blog, which I would encourage people to do, and you just read off a few of the headlines, it's pretty clear immediately that this is different than the average SaaS blog.
• 15:05
  So I'm just gonna read a couple titles on here. Uh, the SaaS promise of productivity is broken. Here's why. Uh, asyncify your life. Uh, how to build a company wiki that doesn't suck.
• 15:16
  Um, people first only go so far for parents. Like, there's just, like, a lot going on here that doesn't feel like, like I said earlier, like, ultimate guide to X or 10 ways to do Y, things like that.
• 15:27
  Can you talk a little bit about that? Like, I would broadly categorize it as thought leadership, but that's also oversimplifying it.
• 15:33
  Like, it, it seems like you're trying to differentiate the brand and the product by having opinions and not being afraid to kind of state them boldly. Yeah, absolutely.
• 15:42
  I mean, I think we're big believers, the founders, um, CEO, Chris, who I mentioned earlier, like, they're big believers in opinionated software, right? And that's, I mean, that's something that we hear about a lot.
• 15:53
  Um, but I think you really do see it in the Slite product, that it's, it's very clear that we're not building everything for everyone.
• 16:00
  Um, it's very clear that it's a product for remote teams that share a certain philosophy of how to work best. Um, and that's why we're able to keep the interface itself very clean.
• 16:11
  And I think that we wanted to translate that to the blog and, you know, show why we're different, you know, express why we're different in our words too, because it's not necessarily that easy to pick up on all those things unless you're deep in the product.
• 16:25
  Um, so sort of building brand awareness was, was really key for us. I mean, it's hon-honestly, like, you know, knowledge management, documentation is a crowded space.
• 16:33
  So when I was coming off of, you know, years of working on SEO based blog posts and seeing how that plays out, and I think that, like, there is a certain plateau that you reach, and you have to be thinking about what's next, right?
• 16:48
  So, like, SEO content was, was the next big thing, and now I think the content landscape is shifting. Like, even podcasts, I mean, LinkedIn is exploding now.
• 16:59
  I think that we all need to sort of keep our eyes out on what is the thing that can buil-build that awareness and, like, take a chance on those things.
• 17:06
  Because if we keep doing the same stuff, like, we're gonna all plateau. And then for me, it was just what I was interested in, in writing. I think, like, the Slite team had...
• 17:17
  Slite is the first company where I felt like I, you know, can really be my full self, and I felt, like, really understood by my colleagues, and I thought that this was, like, a culture that was really special, and I thought that maybe that was a sales point, is sort of turning the- Mm...
• 17:34
  Slite culture inside out and sharing that with the world. I love that. I love it. I mean, it does seem like a really good match of product where, I mean, it seems like Slite has embraced product-led growth.
• 17:45
  Like, I don't know that every company just, like, embodies it 100%, but, like, obviously, there's some elements of that here. And then, like, you're able to bring in, like, you're an M- you have an MFA.
• 17:53
  Like, you bring in, like, a level of craftsmanship to the writing that, I mean, frankly, is just, like, differentThen the skills that some other content people do, or maybe they're coming at it from like an more of an SEO perspective, or they're kind of like marketers trying to figure out how to, you know, turn the written word into a channel.
• 18:10
  Whereas like someone with a str- really strong background in writing brings something totally different and fresh to it. Well, thank you.
• 18:17
  Um, I mean, we're, we're still, you know, we're still figuring it out, but [laughs] So you mentioned that like when you came on board, you know, the folks before you had been doing SEO content, and it actually was, was performing pretty well.
• 18:28
  Mm-hmm. So now you've added this layer of thought leadership. In your-- Well, I guess two questions for you.
• 18:33
  In your brain, do you like bucket these out into lanes or, you know, like do you have some other kind of like framework in your brain for like how you separate this stuff?
• 18:40
  And then as a follow-up to that, I wanna ask you about reporting. Like, how do you keep track of this stuff? What do you care about? What metrics are you measuring?
• 18:47
  Um, or are there other ways that you're keeping track of like whether, I mean, whether it's like sentiment or reader feedback or whatever else, uh, that kind of inform whether or not this is, quote-unquote, working?
• 18:57
  Yeah. I mean, it's a really good question, and the, the most honest answer is that some months are better than others. Um, but we have seen like a steady growth over the last two years.
• 19:06
  To differentiate the performance of the thought leadership content is easy because it lives on slash blog, whereas the other content is on slash learn, slash, um, templates.
• 19:14
  So it's, it's pretty easy to see where the traffic is coming from.
• 19:18
  We're trying to sort of switch up the kind of content that we host on the blog and seeing if maybe, uh, that's gonna change, uh, the people that come into the blog.
• 19:30
  Uh, like we're doing, start-- We just published our first case study in a couple years on the [laughs] blog. Cool.
• 19:35
  But we mainly measure it through our newsletter, which is our main distribution source, which you have the option to sign up for when you sign up for Slight.
• 19:43
  And we initially grew it, like, just completely word of mouth the first year, and then we sort of added this button in the product, which feels like a cheat, but I, I don't think it's a cheat because it's, uh, I mean, it's, you know, something that y-you don't have to do.
• 19:57
  Um... Yeah. Boy, that's interesting. So we did see some, a boost from that. So newsletter subscribers, traffic to the blog, and then also qualitative feedback.
• 20:08
  We really, you know, because it's still sort of in this experimental phase, like it's, you know, if people write in and say, "Wow, this is so true," or, "This really is so insightful," or, "This hit home," or, "I wanna use this for my team," then that is considered a success.
• 20:24
  [laughs] Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. I mean, do you do, like, do you have a spreadsheet? You know what I mean? Like, do you sit down each month and kinda like update- Yeah...
• 20:31
  the numbers, make a chart to see how it's doing? And then, like, do you sit down with anyone, like your manager or whatever, to talk through it?
• 20:37
  Yeah, I mean, I sit down, I sit down with the head of brand marketing, Veda, and we have a brand marketing metrics spreadsheet, so it's, it's included in that.
• 20:46
  Like, as much as I am the one-man island of content, like, it's really not. It's really part of this team that, that all sort of has the same goals, so it's, it's a part of it. It's part of the brand marketing.
• 20:58
  Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, it sounds like you have a ton of buy-in on content. Like, the fact that the CTO showed up to the content brainstorming meeting is so awesome.
• 21:06
  I'm just, like, wonder-- I'm, like, trying to, like, put myself in the minds of people listening who might be like, "I would love to do some, like, bold thought leadership content, but I've got all this red tape to deal with."
• 21:15
  Mm-hmm. I'm assuming that's not a problem. Like, do you ever run into the gatekeepers, you know, who say like, "Hold on, that's too much," like, "You've gone, you've gone too far this time, Melody"?
• 21:23
  [laughs] I mean, I think, and this is a, this is something that's interesting b- that we've struggled to document in the past, is sort of like, I feel like the brand voice lives in my head.
• 21:32
  And I recently wrote a style guide. Mm-hmm. But it's like, it's something like I, I would never have to worry about going too far because, like, I know in my head, okay, the Slight voice is positive.
• 21:41
  We don't go to-- We're opinionated, but we, like, are very, like, human and, like, don't go too far, and, like, we don't antagonize anybody.
• 21:49
  So it's not like, I'm not worried about that necessarily, but the buy-in thing, I mean, it is kind of extraordinary. I think it goes, yeah, up to the highest levels of leadership.
• 21:59
  And I think it also came from the early success with SEO, really. I mean, it was like, oh, content works. We've never doubted that content works even when it takes a long time.
• 22:10
  I mean, there are still moments when I have to justify what I'm doing, you know?
• 22:15
  Like, I think that, like, there's a, there are times when the traffic's down, and honestly, you know, it's, it sucks, like, because they're like, "Yeah, you know, have free reign," but we expect, uh, you know, to hit certain thresholds, and I have to do that too.
• 22:31
  [laughs] Yeah. No, that makes sense. That makes a ton of sense. If I could, two, two, like, highlights I would take away from what you just said.
• 22:37
  Like, back in the day, we wrote a blog post for Animals about this idea of content culture, and mostly what it was about was, was getting buy-in.
• 22:44
  The more buy-in you have, especially from leadership, the easier life is gonna be, the more creativity you're gonna be able to express at work, and just kinda the, the better everything's gonna go.
• 22:53
  There are some workarounds for that, and I, I actually do wanna ask you about that too. And then the second thing would be that SEO pays the bills. Mm-hmm.
• 23:00
  [laughs] Like, for most organizations, right, like, give them traffic, and you will buy yourself space to try other things, you know?
• 23:07
  Some of which may end up being more successful down the road, but, like, you've gotta, you've gotta, like, keep that baseline traffic number growing.
• 23:15
  Otherwise, like, somebody, your manager, the CMO, somebody's gonna be saying like, "Hey, hold on, hold on. You can't be going off in this other direction if our traffic is tanking," right? Yeah.
• 23:24
  So SEO, it, it buys you time, it buys you space, it buys you resources. So- I think you really need both.
• 23:30
  Like, you need the thing that's gonna, that's gonna make the graphs go up, and you also need the thing that sets you apart. I don't think it's really either are optional. Yeah.
• 23:38
  That's actually, what you just said is, like, kind of a cool way to summarize a content strategy, right? Like, a thing you know will work, and then a, a way for you to experiment on new stuff.
• 23:47
  I mean, I feel like a lot of people probably have this, this itch to do more of the type of content that you see on the Slight blog.How, do you have any recommendations on how folks might get started with that if it's, if they're not getting that, like, top-down buy-in on this?
• 24:02
  Like, one way, for example, I could imagine is, like, start with the executive team. Start with the founder, right? Like- Yeah... they probably have a vision. Maybe they've never documented that. Yeah.
• 24:10
  I think maybe that's, like, ghost writing some stuff for a CEO or a founder, like, could be a very good way to kickstart it because, you know, if you do it well, they get a dopamine hit out of it.
• 24:19
  Like, it could- Right... lead to the next thing, and maybe that's the snowball that gets it all rolling. I mean, that's actually...
• 24:25
  Yeah, I think that's a great way to do it, and I think that's sort of where the origin of thought leadership, unless we wanna credit the VCs, but let's not credit them, um, was like CEO blogs, you know?
• 24:34
  Like, uh, that's, that's where this whole idea came from. It's like you have deep expertise in this, and you've backed it up by putting, you know, your money on the line.
• 24:43
  I mean, I guess the VCs have put their money on the line, too. I don't know why I'm dissing VCs, like, [laughs]... investing's great.
• 24:49
  But, um, you know, I mean, it's these people with original ideas who needed a way to share them, and so they had medium blogs, or before that they had Blogspot blogs and, you know, they were, like, low design lift, um, but they were very effective, and they were widely shared and visited.
• 25:07
  So, um, I mean, I think definitely CEOs, a lot of them, like, secretly want that sort of platform to speak their mind or openly want that platform to speak their mind.
• 25:17
  I think they're even more these days are CEOs who are content savvy, so.
• 25:22
  But for those who are struggling to get by, and I mean, I think, I think one way to do it, and I'm not saying it's the easiest thing, is to have an early win.
• 25:29
  One channel that's been really good for us in terms of, like, getting traffic is Hacker News.
• 25:35
  So getting someone like the CEO or the CTO to share their thoughts, and then you kind of fashion a post out of it, and then share it there and bring in, bring in the hackers, you know, the people from that site.
• 25:48
  And, um, and then you can show, like, listen, this commun- this really resonates with this community. Of course, that's sort of partial to products and companies that are tech forward, but yeah. [chuckles] Yeah, yeah.
• 25:59
  Totally, though, but yeah, if you, if you write a post and it gets 30,000 views in 24 hours, everyone is gonna be addicted to it. Yeah. And then you'll almost be forced to do it again.
• 26:09
  Yeah, but then you're a little bit screwed over 'cause you're like, "Oh yeah, 30,000." [laughs] Yeah. So you gotta do it again and again. [laughs] So there's definitely, like, some trickle down benefits from that, too.
• 26:19
  Like, if you get a post to go viral on Hacker News or Reddit or wherever else, like, it just gets so much visibility, and it sometimes will get picked up by a media outlet, right?
• 26:29
  Or other bloggers will link back to it, or it makes the rounds on social. Like, it gives you a ton of awareness. It can also get you back links, which then helps you- Right... build domain authority.
• 26:38
  So you get this, like, indirect benefit of, like, maybe it actually helps you rank for, like, more product-focused content down the road even though, like, that wasn't, like, necessarily the original intention of trying to get a piece to go viral on a site like Hacker News.
• 26:50
  Yeah, definitely, like, going viral isn't a strategy, but it doesn't hurt. And there are- It doesn't hurt. Yeah... and there are ways that you can, you can make it more likely, right?
• 26:59
  Like, you know, posting at the right time, time of day does matter. Posting with the right headline does matter. Um, knowing your audience does matter.
• 27:07
  So it's, yeah, there's no hack to it, so to speak, but there is, there are things you can do to help yourself with that. Yeah. Is any of that baked into your workflow?
• 27:15
  Like, do you, you know, is there like a checklist you run through- Great question... depending on the type of content it is of, like, what you'll do next, like how you'll get eyeballs on it? Yeah.
• 27:22
  So honestly, in, like, d- distribution, full disclosure, was my weak point. Um, still is in a way. Like, it's, it's not something that comes naturally.
• 27:30
  I like to think, you know, as a creative writer that the work speaks for itself, and, um, and, you know, like, that if it's a good idea, it will resonate, but that's just not true, and it's especially not true in content marketing that's, you know, linked to a product, that's linked to a specific function.
• 27:44
  So that's something that our head of brand marketing, Veda, has been really helpful with me, as well as our, um, head of growth, Roman Wazo. He's, like, been really great.
• 27:54
  I mean, he manages all the SEO content now, and he's like, like he's a bigger Ahrefs stork than anybody I've known.
• 28:00
  So, like, it is a team effort, um, but I just recently put together a distribution playbook, and it's very specific to Slite, but maybe it's something I could turn public in the end. That'd be awesome.
• 28:11
  Um- [chuckles] That would be awesome. We would love to see that. [laughs] Um, but it's, you know, I mean, it's pretty simple because we, we, we are, at the end of the day, a small team.
• 28:18
  You know, we share stuff from the Slite LinkedIn. We share stuff on Twitter. I share stuff on my personal social. We put it in the newsletter, which goes out every two weeks.
• 28:28
  Um, our product newsletter is a separate newsletter that sometimes will shout us out. Yeah, and then, like, if a piece is heavily tech focused, then we'll go for the Hacker News venue.
• 28:38
  Um, if it's more marketing, then, like, our marketing team has really strong personal networks, so, like, you know, I'll- Mm-hmm... shout on Superpath. Yeah, it depends on the piece, but yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 28:47
  It sounds like an if this, then that kinda thing. [chuckles] Like the... Yeah, there's, like, different goals, maybe even different per- reader personas and a different process. Yeah.
• 28:54
  Do you run all of your content workflow inside of Slite? Like, is that where your content calendar lives or- Yeah...
• 29:00
  and then I guess related to that, are there any other tools that are part of your content stack that you find to be particularly helpful? Yes. Let me try and think. I mean, mostly Slite, yes.
• 29:07
  I mean, we use ActiveCampaign to run our newsletters, um, so I'm in there often. Slite has got... Like, Slite now has Kanbans, so if I wanna do to-do, doing, done. Like, I was trying to put it into...
• 29:19
  Because of Animals had gotten me so hooked on Airtable, like, I was- Yeah...
• 29:22
  trying to create this, like, Airtable workflow for content, but nobody else on the team was using Airtable, and it was just, like, possible to do what I needed to do in Slite.
• 29:31
  I just stopped using Airtable for the content calendar. [laughs] Um, but we, yeah, we use Linear for task management, so that's just sort of keeping everybody accountable and visible.
• 29:44
  It sounds like you're keeping it pretty lean, which I think, I, I feel like that's a good thing because it really keeps most of the focus on the work itself, right?
• 29:50
  Like, some teams I think over- probably overdo it a little bit on the tech stack because it's like a, you know, sometimes, like, kind of a distraction from, like-Worrying about if the stuff is actually good that they're publishing.
• 29:59
  Well, can we like zoom in on the workflow stuff a little bit? So like you have this nice backlog, and it sounds like you also have a mechanism to generate more ideas as needed. Like what happens next?
• 30:08
  Like, how are you prioritizing what goes out the door, and then who's writing it? So are, are you writing a lot of the stuff yourself? Yes. I am writing a lot of the stuff myself, or rewriting, um, or heavily editing.
• 30:21
  I-- Like I said, I work with one freelancer, Lauren. So we were publishing four posts a month, or the, the goal was that.
• 30:27
  I mean, it's a pretty low number, and we're cutting back even further now to like whenever the newsletter goes out, so two thought leadership posts a month. And so that we can focus on other types of content.
• 30:38
  We launched this new product in, in January, um, and it's really sort of a new direction for Slate. Um, it's our AI, um, knowledge base assistant called Ask, so you can ask your knowledge base anything.
• 30:50
  So we're sort of shifting strategy around that, and I think content will go along with that. Oh, interesting. I wanna ask you more about the AI thing, but I guess one last q-question on workflow stuff. Who edits?
• 31:02
  'Cause I feel like the type of content you're doing requires a, a different type of editing than maybe SEO content would. I edit the pieces written by other people, and that's easier than editing my own work.
• 31:14
  Since there isn't really anybody who in the team like has time to do that function, like I generally just will have several pieces in the pipeline and like return to my pieces every few days so that like it has some time to breathe- Mm-hmm.
• 31:28
  Yeah... and then I'm able to sort of self-edit. Is editing a muscle that you got to flex as you were working on your MFA? I'm curious- Yeah...
• 31:37
  if that or other-- so like are there other things you learned as part of that process that you find to be particularly helpful in your work now? Yeah. Um, oh, fun question. [laughs] I mean, they're all fun questions.
• 31:49
  Um, but I mean, what-- Something that was interesting was when I first joined Slate, I actually found out like two weeks in that I had gotten a teaching fellowship at Columbia, so I was teaching a writing workshop to undergrads.
• 32:02
  And teaching was something I'd been doing voluntarily before that. So I would say the editing skills came mostly from that.
• 32:10
  You know, coaxing out like the, the true sort of heart of the story and, um, what's the most interesting angle.
• 32:17
  I mean, what, what term we always use in workshop, which is gonna sound very like touchy feely, is like what are the hotspots in this piece?
• 32:23
  I think there's like an Elmore Leonard thing that's like, "Cut out all the parts people don't read."
• 32:27
  I think that that's one of my mantras when I go through it, and I think that it's like there's so much stuff that people won't read, especially with content pieces. Give them more credit than you usually do.
• 32:38
  Like, people's bullshit meters are strong, so I think that like... [laughs] Yeah. That's cool. I feel like we need more literature folks in the content marketing world, right?
• 32:48
  Like, content marketers come from a few places. They come from, like, SEO or, like, other parts of marketing.
• 32:54
  Uh, there's quite a big cohort of people who have come from journalism, which is really cool because they bring this really kind of amazing muscle of, like, being able to run an interview, ask great questions, like extract information and package it up, right?
• 33:06
  But, like, you bring this other thing in, which is the craft of writing, right?
• 33:10
  Like really understanding, like what goes into making a piece read well, basically trying to make the reader's life as easy and enjoyable as possible.
• 33:18
  Like, that doesn't happen all that much in the content marketing world.
• 33:21
  So I feel like there's probably, like especially for teams who are thinking about thought leadership, the workmanship of it is super important, right?
• 33:27
  Like, if you're gonna bother doing thought leadership, like, yes, you do need a very catchy headline.
• 33:31
  But you also have to, like, really think about how to present the ideas in a way that's gonna be super enjoyable to the reader, not just, like, hoping you'll get enough clicks based on a juicy headline- Yeah...
• 33:41
  that it will kinda pay off. If you're, you're marketing it to-- I mean, thought leadership is for leaders. I mean, [laughs] like it's- Yeah.
• 33:48
  Um, you know, it's, you know, you're trying to sell to CEOs, uh, to product leaders, to engineers. These are smart people. Entrepreneurs are really smart, and they don't have a lot of time.
• 33:59
  So you need to be really smart and really succinct, [laughs] I would say. Yeah.
• 34:04
  When you all published the piece about, like, the broken promise of B2B productivity or SaaS productivity, I saw that headline, and I was like, "Yes. Yes!
• 34:13
  Finally, someone has like a good, like, kind of lightly cynical take on all this, like, technology, which is, like, supposed to make it easier to work but actually just bogs us down." You know what I mean?
• 34:23
  When I read it, it, it wasn't cynical actually. It was actually, like, quite hopeful. But it did stand out.
• 34:28
  And one of the things I really appreciated about it was, one, the headline did absolutely grab my attention because it just, like, said something that, like, I sort of had this, like, vague feeling about but had never put into words and, like, didn't know how to put it into words.
• 34:40
  But then when I clicked it and read it, it totally delivered. A-and that's where, like, the workmanship part comes from, I think.
• 34:45
  It's not like how many of us have, like, seen a headline that resonates for whatever reason, you click and you're like, "Gosh, this sucks.
• 34:52
  It's just, like, another slideshow that I have to, like, click through so this site can, like, aggregate page views or something." It's like the total opposite of that.
• 34:58
  So I feel like the more that you can, like, either meet or exceed an expectation by delivering great writing behind a good headline, like, the more trust you earn with the reader, and the more you, you keep them coming back.
• 35:08
  Thank you, and I hope so. But I think-- I mean, one thing that we made-- A point we made in a more recent blog post when we, when we launched this AI product, and, and not to plug.
• 35:17
  The more these AI tools become commonplace, like, the more junk you're gonna have to sift through online. Like, we already- Yeah... live in an age of information overload.
• 35:28
  I personally think what's the point of adding more noise?
• 35:31
  And I think that's why Slate also has been backing this project for so long, is that they, they also don't believe in, like, putting more, you know, crap out there and, and, you know, putting out good quality stuff that, that couldn't be made anywhere else, and, you know, what if it's assisted by AI?
• 35:48
  That's fine, but it, it, it should still be original, um, and useful. Yeah.
• 35:54
  There's so much noise, and I think, you know-SaaS tools do wanna help you cut through it and, you know, find your focus and your flow, but oftentimes they are adding to it, and content marketing's adding to it.
• 36:07
  We [chuckles] need to find a way to, like, sell our stuff, uh, but also be honest and, and do right by the people we're selling to. Yeah.
• 36:16
  I love that because especially, like, at this-- at the current moment, there's a lot of companies saying, like, "Oh, AI, now we can, like, you know, five X the number of blog posts we put out."
• 36:25
  But what you're saying is, hold on, let's, like, let's actually slow down a little bit and maybe even publish less frequently so we have more time to craft really good stuff that's gonna deliver for the people that we wanna reach.
• 36:36
  Like, that's, like, a very refreshing take, especially, like, just given how much kind of, like, chaos and movement is going on with all this AI stuff. Oh, God, yes. [chuckles] What's next for, like...
• 36:46
  Okay, six months down the road, how has this changed? How has this evolved? Like, the work you're doing right now at Slight and the On Your Own Time blog.
• 36:53
  I know Slight's gonna change a lot, um, because of, because of our AI tool, uh, which really is-- I mean, it's not a, a content creation tool. Um, it's a sort of helping you find your own already created content tool.
• 37:07
  Um, so it helps you ask questions like, you know, what's our, what's our time off policy, or who's in charge of X feature, or, um, when is the next offsite? Like, um, I mean, more complex questions than that as well.
• 37:20
  At this point, it's, it's enhanced search of your own internal workspace.
• 37:25
  Definitely a big shift in how we're thinking about documentation and knowledge management and how people will interact with the s- the product Slight, like, and how they'll interact with their documents.
• 37:35
  There will also be something about, like, you know, this was updated last week or today or five months ago. Maybe it's not very relevant.
• 37:43
  It's sort of like a documentation that talks back to you and is really alive and regenerating and, uh, wants to stay current.
• 37:52
  So I think thinking about, like, how documentation and knowledge management is changing in the AI era, um, will definitely be top of mind for us.
• 38:03
  As for On Your Own Time, I mean, I think it will definitely be there in the next six months. I don't know sort of if it's gonna get more niche or if it's going to expand more broadly.
• 38:15
  I think, like, we were really focused on, you know, talking to remote teams and async teams, but I think that everybody can benefit from this style of knowledge management and documentation.
• 38:28
  You don't have to be working remotely to do that. So I'd like to speak to more hybrid teams or teams that are just open to a new m- knowledge management system. Yeah, yeah. That's cool. That's really cool.
• 38:41
  All this is changing so much, like remote work, async work, AI stuff, like, all of it's happening so quickly.
• 38:46
  So I imagine that there's like-- you have to kinda, like, digest some of the stuff happening in real time, react to it, but then also, like, kind of gut check, okay- Yeah...
• 38:56
  do we have to be-- like, we're not, like, a news website. So, like, how do we- [chuckles]... you know, like, some of the stuff fits into our longer term vision. Some of it maybe we have to react to right now. Yeah.
• 39:04
  I mean, it's sort of like, okay, we built the thing. Now how does it fit into our overall philosophy?
• 39:08
  And I think that's something that's going to emerge in the next few months for us, and I think it'll be really exciting because it's...
• 39:15
  Documentation and knowledge management is this big need, but nobody knows how to do it, and it doesn't feel easy.
• 39:21
  Um, so maybe with this new addition of AI tools that, like, it, it can be easier and more accessible and something that doesn't feel like a niche. Yeah, no, that resonates.
• 39:31
  I'm definitely not one of the, like, second brain- [chuckles]... Rome research types, you know? Yeah.
• 39:36
  But, like, I kinda get, like, yeah, we should document stuff 'cause it makes everybody's life a little easier, and it actually, it really works. Yeah.
• 39:42
  Like, not to, like, make this a commercial, but, like, yeah, Slight actually really genuinely has made our internal team function a lot more smoothly. So glad to hear that. Yeah.
• 39:50
  I wanna be respectful of your time, Melanie. Really interesting to hear, like, how you're going about all this.
• 39:54
  Like, just I really appreciate your perspective on content and all the kind of, kinda differentiated things you're bringing to the B2B SaaS space, which I feel like is just, like I said, kind of sorely needed.
• 40:04
  We'll obviously link people to On Your Own Time specifically. We'll send people to Slight. Anywhere else can we send folks, you know, your personal Twitter, LinkedIn, or anywhere else? Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn.
• 40:14
  Uh, that's kind of where I'm focusing my own content efforts these days. It just seems like I, I never would have expected it, but LinkedIn is friendly, man. [laughs] Like, it's nice on there.
• 40:26
  Like, I never wanna leave LinkedIn. [chuckles] That's so-- Yeah, that's so interesting, actually. You're right.
• 40:31
  For-- I mean, LinkedIn's, like, sort of, like, sort of a wild place, but, like, yeah, people, like, people don't troll there. Like, they're, they are generally, like, pretty friendly. Yeah.
• 40:38
  I mean, I, I talk about this a lot, and, like, maybe, maybe this is completely irrelevant to this podcast, but now that I'm talking. LinkedIn has always, like, acknowledged the artifice of the social media that it is.
• 40:47
  And so I think that, like, when people just sort of understand at a baseline that people are either selling themselves or a product, like, it allows a lot more freedom, I think, for, you know, people to be goofy or experimental or, like, uh, or positive and, like, encouraging of other people.
• 41:02
  You know, Twitter's like, if you're sincere, then you're a loser. [chuckles] And- [chuckles] Yeah, yeah. You can't di- Yeah, it's like if you can't distill it into, like, a 10-step Twitter thread, then, like- 10 steps...
• 41:14
  no one's gonna even see it anyways. Yeah. Well, cool. Well, we will support you by sending people to your LinkedIn to be, to leave friendly comments and click on your stuff. [chuckles] Thanks, thanks, Melanie.
• 41:23
  Seriously, it's good to catch up anyways, but I appreciate you doing it in this format and kind of opening the door for people to see what's going on.
• 41:30
  So, um, looking forward to sharing this out there, and we should, we should catch up soon. Yeah, thanks for inviting me. Cool. Thanks.