Latest / Content, Briefly / SparkToro: Amanda Natividad on doing things your own way

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SparkToro: Amanda Natividad on doing things your own way · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  I've lived a life of having a lot of different kinds of experiences. I've tested a bunch of different things. I've d- I've made some really stupid mistakes. I've also had a couple of great ideas.
• 0:12
  Here's, here are all the examples of them. And I think it's important to, to, to write from this kind of experience because that's what makes you defensible. It makes what you say defensible.
• 0:22
  [instrumental music] Hey folks, and thanks for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly. Got a good one for you today. We're chatting with Amanda Natividad.
• 0:31
  She's the VP of marketing at SparkToro, and I would say the theme of today's episode is doing things your own way.
• 0:37
  You know, one thing you will not find on the SparkToro website is a fancy schmancy content strategy with tons of volume pumped through it. It's something totally different.
• 0:45
  You'll find original research, which we talk about. That's kinda the most traditional content marketing thing you'll find.
• 0:52
  I guess in addition to some, like, product marketing type stuff, but you also find food and dining guides. You will find some deeply personal posts from the founders.
• 1:00
  You'll find basically things that they wanna write about that they think other people will like to read. And there's a lot to learn here.
• 1:06
  Even if you can't take this exact playbook and run it at your own company, I think there's lots of little things that a lot of B2B SaaS teams could borrow from Amanda's approach to content marketing and implement in your own.
• 1:19
  So lots of great stuff here. As always, I really enjoyed this conversation, and I think you will too. And one last thing before we get into it, the paid Slack group. Would really encourage folks to check it out.
• 1:29
  There's 10 locked channels. Folks are talking about all kinds of B2B marketing things, SEO, what tools they use. Basically a bunch of stuff that you can't Google.
• 1:38
  So of the 450 or so people that are in the paid Slack community, many of them are very high level senior content marketers talking about problems they're experiencing in their jobs that they're really not posting about on LinkedIn or Twitter or anywhere else.
• 1:52
  There's a certain vulnerability to it and certainly a lot of empathy too. So it's a cool group. It's very supportive. Lots of interesting conversations happening there.
• 2:00
  Would encourage folks to check it out, superpath.co/community. It's 20 bucks a month, or you can get a discount for an annual plan. If you do join, shoot me a DM. Would love to say hi. Okay, I'll get out of the way now.
• 2:11
  Thanks so much and enjoy this episode. [instrumental music] This episode is brought to you by our friends at Teal.
• 2:16
  We talk a lot on this show about marketing, and when it comes to your career, the product you're marketing is you.
• 2:21
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• 3:00
  So if you're thinking of making a change in the new year, leverage Teal and grow your career on your own terms. Get started for free at tealhq.com. [instrumental music] Hey, everybody.
• 3:11
  Jimmy from Superpath here today with another episode of Content Briefly. Very excited to have Amanda Natividad. Second-time guest, actually, on a Superpath podcast, although not this one.
• 3:21
  So we'll link to the last one we did, which was career-focused. We'll keep that one so folks can catch up on your very interesting and successful career. Amanda, thank you so much for being here.
• 3:30
  Would you mind introducing yourself for folks who may not already know you or maybe, like, are, kind of need an update? Yeah. I am a longtime B2B marketer.
• 3:39
  I currently work at SparkToro, which is Rand Fishkin's and Casey Henry's audience research startup.
• 3:45
  So we sell software that helps marketers find where their audience already is, what they're talking about online, their influential social accounts, and so on.
• 3:54
  Before this, though, I had a hand in a lot of very different kinds of marketing. I used to head up marketing for an agency called GrowthMachine. I did B2C marketing for a company called Liftopia.
• 4:07
  They've since been bought, and, you know, they do other things now. But they actually power a lot of the e-commerce or ticketing for ski resorts.
• 4:16
  So, like, if you were to go to, like, buy a lift ticket for Big Bear on their website, 9 times out of 10, it's Liftopia that powered that. Oh, that's very cool. So I worked there for a bit.
• 4:26
  I also worked at this snack company called NatureBox. That was kinda how I got my start in marketing.
• 4:31
  But I spent most of my career in B2B, like, healthcare-ish, employer-focused marketing at Fitbit, where I headed up their content marketing efforts on the B2B side. Oh, very cool. Okay, very cool.
• 4:44
  Yeah, I feel like we might have... I'm sure we talked about that.
• 4:46
  You- people should go listen to the other episode 'cause there's a lot, like, we could easily do an hour-long podcast on just kind of, like, expanding what you just described.
• 4:55
  So like I said, we'll make sure we send that to folks. Can you tell us about SparkToro? Like, give us the kind of who, what, why of SparkToro. Yeah. So SparkToro is... Let's see. It's only three of us at the company.
• 5:09
  Okay, I was gonna ask you if it was still three. Yeah. It's still just the three of us. So we sell software that helps people find their audience's sources of influence.
• 5:19
  So by that, I mean you really can just type in, like, a keyword or analyze a website or a social account, and people can search for their audience in that way.
• 5:30
  So maybe you'll wanna search for how your audience might self-describe. Maybe you market to product managers, so you wanna search for product managers in our tool.
• 5:39
  And from there, our tool will show you, well, in V2 of SparkToro, which is about to launch, and I think when this show comes out, it'll probably be V2 of SparkToro. Oh, cool. So I'll talk about that.
• 5:51
  So anyway, when you look at this audience, you'll see literally what other keywords this audience is searching for. You'll see the websites they also visit.
• 6:00
  You'll also see the social accounts they follow, YouTube channels they subscribe to, podcasts they listen to, and relevant press or media websites, all kinds of things like that so that you know, as a marketer, so that you know where your audience already is.And what influences them, and ideally, so you can market where they already are Okay, very cool.
• 6:22
  You know, I remember when SparkToro launched four or five years ago, something like that, I remember thinking, "Huh, you know, there's so many good keyword tools out there. Like, I'm not... Do we need this?"
• 6:34
  And I feel like the world has changed in a way in that time that kinda like perfectly aligns with what SparkToro does.
• 6:41
  You know, like, I'm not declaring SEO dead, like, not that kinda thing exactly, but I feel like marketers now think much more holistically about the people that they market to, as opposed to, I think there was...
• 6:51
  And not to generalize too much, but I think that in the B2B SaaS world, there was a lot of, like, narrow thinking about like, well, there's all these keywords.
• 6:59
  We're one post per keyword, longer than everybody else's post, so just do that, you know?
• 7:03
  And I feel like now we have a much better understanding, and thanks partially to tools like SparkToro, like, well, how do these people consume information? Like, how are they influenced?
• 7:11
  Like, influenced is a word that we probably didn't use so much four or five years ago. Now that is like, everybody talks about influence in one way or another. Yeah.
• 7:20
  You know, I really feel like the, the conversation around influence has moved forward in the past couple years because I feel like, you know, like four or five years ago, people were talking about influence with respect to your, like, lifestyle influencers, right?
• 7:37
  Yeah. But I think now more people know that influence doesn't have to just be related to these kinds of, like, big one million following influencers, right? Yeah.
• 7:50
  The other thing I wanted to say was, I think this story will be a little bit more helpful in helping people understand truly what SparkToro offers, how you can benefit from it, how it can make you a better marketer.
• 8:01
  So, like, most of my experience is in content marketing. However, I don't have a traditional content marketing background. I started out in journalism, so was very much focused on writing and editing like a reporter.
• 8:15
  I didn't really understand blogs the way a traditional content marketer would know a blog because even back then, early, very early b- in my marketing career, even then I kind of thought, "Do people really make buying decisions like this?
• 8:30
  Do people really search for what is a wellness supplement, and then they buy it in that blog post?" Like, I, I... Like, just for me personally, I didn't get it.
• 8:41
  Like, I just didn't understand it because it wasn't how I made buying decisions. Right. And so it's definitely not to say, like, I don't fall for marketing. No, it's not that.
• 8:52
  It's that I was always influenced by other things, like maybe, you know, a niche celebrity, like something that they like to do or something they did, then I would be into that, right?
• 9:03
  Or, or I would just think about, like, I would read magazines or s- other publications and be influenced more by that, which is not to say that I'm not influenced by marketing.
• 9:12
  It's just, I just had never made a buying decision through a blog post that I found through SEO. [laughs] Yeah, yeah. Right? Like, I might read it or I might be like, "Cool, I get it now."
• 9:22
  But, like, I just didn't purchase things in that way.
• 9:24
  So I already kind of went into content marketing kinda skeptical about that, where I was like, "I don't really know, but I guess some people make buying decisions this way. I don't get it, but okay."
• 9:35
  And then by the time I joined Fitbit to build up their content marketing program, which in hindsight is kind of funny that I got hired and that if I didn't get blogs, why was I hired by them?
• 9:46
  But I'll say where that made... Okay, where this all makes sense is when I joined Fitbit B2B,
• 9:54
  Fitbit B2B was selling devices in bulk and custom software to other companies who were running employer-sponsored benefits programs.
• 10:05
  So it'd be like if Superpath decided to buy a bunch of Fitbits and do step challenges among the Superpath employees. That was who we sold to.
• 10:13
  And this program within Fitbit, or this division within Fitbit, it grew, or it was created completely organically. It grew because employers were reaching out to Fitbit saying, "Hey, we have 300 employees.
• 10:26
  We wanna buy 300 Fitbits. Can you help us?" Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Right? And so obviously for Fitbit, that's like, hey, an awesome deal, right? Like, an awesome deal to close at scale. Like, let's do this.
• 10:37
  Which means that these employers or our customers, they weren't finding us through SEO-driven blog posts. They were finding us because Fitbit was a beloved consumer brand, and they thought, "Oh, this is a cool brand.
• 10:52
  Maybe we'll actually get our employees to join our employee wellness program because this is a cool brand." Right? So the buying cycle was very different, right?
• 11:02
  It wasn't, it wasn't a, an HR manager googling a pain point and then buying. It was, "I already know this product. Maybe they have this thing that I know a lot about," right? Yeah. So when I joined,
• 11:16
  it was to create content, but it wasn't, "Hey, let's create a blog post that ranks for corporate wellness." No, it was, "We need content that's actually really meaningful to our audience.
• 11:27
  So we need content like we need case studies. We need playbooks that explain to people how to run a step challenge. We need a lot of content," or like, "We need talking points, essentially, on privacy.
• 11:41
  Like, how do we as a company handle privacy among employers or handle employee privacy for employers who are purchasing this software?" Right?
• 11:50
  Like, how do we communicate that, "Hey, we're not tracking your employees' sleep and then showing to you when they went to bed last night. That's not what we do," right?
• 11:58
  [laughs] So a lot of it was addressing a lot of these types of concerns, a lot of these kinds of problems that people weren't googling.
• 12:06
  So I might pause there just to kind of call out, like, there are ways of creating content that... I mean, it's, it could be SE- uh, it's not SEO.
• 12:17
  It's ways of creating content that addresses people's pain points in a way that they're probably not searching Google for.Right. And I would say what you just described is reflected all over the SparkToro site.
• 12:30
  Like, when I go and look at-- when I go click to the blog on SparkToro, I see obviously content about, like, kind of directly related to the product. One of them is, um, original research, which I wanna ask you about.
• 12:42
  But for example, you wrote a food guide. Rand has written some deeply personal articles about kind of the final chapters of his experience with Moz.
• 12:52
  Like, you see things that are, like, no team is ever gonna sit down in a conference room and come up with those ideas. Like, it's clearly...
• 13:01
  In some cases, maybe you're, you are just, like, building stuff for, to kind of educate existing demand. In other cases, you're probably just writing stuff because it's
• 13:10
  stuff you wanna say or opinions you have or stories you wanna tell. Yeah, absolutely, right?
• 13:16
  Like, it's, yeah, I mean, like a lot of-- I feel like a lot of Rand's best blog posts, the ones that happen to not be research-driven, right, that, that are just kind of coming from his heart, like, "Here's how I feel about something," and, "Here's what happened to me," like, those aren't things that people are googling, right?
• 13:33
  Yeah. Those are things that because you know Rand or you... I, I might say know Rand, right? You-- b- because you know of his work or you know him personally, that's what makes you care, right?
• 13:43
  And so now people, I think there are a lot of people who follow Rand's work because they want honest, transparent takes on entrepreneurship or on leadership, right, or what it is to be a marketer.
• 13:55
  Like, I think a lot of what Rand writes is reflective of these things people think about, the way they feel, the questions that they have in their minds, the things that they probably aren't searching for. Yeah, totally.
• 14:09
  That's very interesting because I, again, like I followed Moz for years. I read Lost and Founder, and then when SparkToro launched, I instantly wanted to see what was on the blog.
• 14:18
  Like, I just was curious what was gonna be there. But sort of related to that, you know, you're hired to run marketing. How do you pair those things together? You know what I mean?
• 14:28
  Like, is there or does there need to be any separation between kind of Rand's personal brand and his kind of existing group of followers and then what you all wanna say about the product and then, like, your kind of unique point of view and kinda the flavor that you bring to it?
• 14:44
  You know what I mean? Like, did this all come together just sort of serendipitously, and it's perfect, and it works well?
• 14:50
  Or, like, how, how deliberate, I guess, is it that you sort of have to balance these things out to accommodate Rand's existing brands, SparkToro's, and then your brand too?
• 15:00
  I mean, this is not a helpful answer, but yes, it was serendipitous. [laughs] It happened to work really well. I will say, um, maybe I will kind of try to wrap this up or, like, kind of make this come full circle.
• 15:17
  Back at Fitbit, right, I, I was doing content,
• 15:21
  content that wasn't originally SEO-driven but was largely just focused on what our customers were thinking about, questions they asked, pain points they had that they might not communicate with us, or reservations they had- See...
• 15:34
  that they might not communicate with us. And around this time, early on, I, I had hired Fitbit B2B's first PR agency, and I ran the RFP process for that, or the request for a proposal process.
• 15:48
  And in their final pitch to us, the PR agency, it was Burson-Marsteller, they had done a presentation showing more about our audience, and they were saying, part of the pitch was like, "We understand your audience.
• 16:04
  Like, your audience of HR and wellness managers, we get them. This is what they read. They read Psychology Today, Entrepreneur Magazine. They're interested in, like, all these other things."
• 16:15
  And those data points, those, those two small things, right? Psychology Today and Entrepreneur Magazine, those are read by HR and wellness managers, benefits managers, you know, VPs of HR.
• 16:29
  That was a huge unlock for me because once I heard that, I was like, "That is fascinating." Because, like, I'm not an HR person, right? So like I don't know what they, what they're influenced by.
• 16:43
  But hearing that made me... It just made me think so many things. Like, oh, they're really interested in social psychology. They're interested in motivation, behavior change.
• 16:53
  They see themselves as kind of CEOs of people. They see themselves as being in the business of people. This is probably a really, like, highly empathetic type of person.
• 17:06
  Like, this taught me so much about them, and it, it informed the way that I wrote for them. It informed the kinds of messaging that I used. It informed the topics that I covered. Because from this,
• 17:19
  I started doing things like... Oh, one piece of messaging that I, like, created or something I did that was received really well in this audience was playfully calling them overachievers, right?
• 17:33
  So sometimes in our email marketing, I'd be like, "Hey there, overachiever," da, da, da, da, da. And people actually wrote back to us and said, "I love that you said this about me." Oh, that's so funny.
• 17:44
  Like, "I know this is just..." Yeah. "I know this is just a marketing email, but I really like this," or, "This was really cute."
• 17:49
  Because I saw it as like, these are people who, like, they run HR, but they're really interested in psychology, behavior change, right, and, like, being entrepreneurs. So I'm like, that sounds like an overachiever to me.
• 18:01
  Yeah, yeah. So like, right, so that kind of informed that.
• 18:04
  And then also when we started hosting conferences, conferences that would compete with a lot of the, like, nonprofit kind of thought leadership organization conferences, I designed the agenda or the content around behavior change and social psychology.
• 18:20
  And so I would bring in, like, top professors from across the country to talk about, like, intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, and some of these were, like, the most well-received sessions.Because it was specifically what this audience was into it might not have aligned with their keyword research, right?
• 18:40
  I, I don't know. I never... I don't know but it was what they wanted to hear, and it was who they wanted to hear it from. That's fantastic. That-- Okay, then that makes a ton of sense. Kudos to that PR agency too.
• 18:51
  Sounds like- Yeah... they were also a little bit ahead of the curve there. When you look at SparkToro's marketing, it's not implicit, it's explicit.
• 18:59
  Like, you go on the website and it's like case studies here, office hours here, product videos here. Like, it's just y- I feel like you're kinda saying like, "Here it is if you want it. It's here." You know what I mean?
• 19:08
  [chuckles] Not like, "Please, please will you look at this." And I do wonder because of the product, which is an audience research tool, I am curious how much of that influences the way that you market it. Meaning, like,
• 19:22
  if you were marketing a keyword research tool, would you kind of eat your own dog food or whatever the phrase is? You know what I mean? Like would you- Yeah...
• 19:30
  do a lot of SEO versus like because you're trying to like understand the whole person and what influences them, you kinda see that. Like,
• 19:38
  I was actually very interested in the food guide even though I was sort of expecting to learn kind of like best practices for audience research. Like, so is there like a continuum there?
• 19:48
  You know, the product does this, therefore we market it this way. I feel like there is, but it's not something we've explicitly stated amongst ourselves. It's just sort of how we are.
• 20:00
  It's just sort of how we do things, and a lot of it is really because we're very philosophically aligned, and it's just that the way that I inherently believe marketing should be done is reflective of the product that we create.
• 20:16
  So like I've said, like I didn't really understand the whole SEO-driven blog thing. Doesn't mean that I don't think it works. It does work. It just, it just isn't a way that I do marketing. That's all. And- Yeah...
• 20:32
  the way that I've done it has been through an audience's sources of influence, by speaking their language, by going to the conferences they're already going to, right?
• 20:44
  By doing some advertising in the magazines they're already reading, by listening to or consuming the content that they're consuming, learning what's top of mind for them, and then figuring out kind of the next step content that advances that conversation in a way that they might not have been thinking about.
• 21:00
  Yeah.
• 21:00
  Like, that has always been so much more interesting to me, and that's kind of what lights my fire in that sense because I just think it's so much more interesting to kind of like go down this path of like go down these rabbit holes of like, oh, what do I think they want?
• 21:16
  Oh, here's what they find interesting.
• 21:17
  Like, that's always-- Like, treating marketing as a sort of treasure hunt has always just been more fun for me, and as a result, like, a lot of the content we, we create, a lot of things we do are just sort of in service to what are the things that marketers are thinking about that they might not be searching for?
• 21:36
  Like, what's already kind of in their heads, and how can we, like, get in their heads a little and, like, kind of join the conversation they're already having with themselves? Yeah, yeah. That makes a ton of sense.
• 21:46
  You know, before we talked, I was just, like, on the website, you know, kind of like exploring all the marketing, and one of the questions I had written down was if not SEO, how do you reach people?
• 21:56
  But I discovered the answer [chuckles] while I was on the website, and it's probably the 50,000-person strong email list. Can you talk a little bit about that, kind of the how and why and what of it?
• 22:08
  50,000 people is a massive list, I think, for a business as small, kind of based on employees, like three people.
• 22:16
  I would imagine there's lots of much larger SaaS companies that would kill to have a 50,000-person email list.
• 22:21
  Anyways, I'm sort of curious about that 'cause I feel like that also fits into this kinda framework of understanding the, the reader, giving them what they want or things they u- they may want that they don't even know they want yet, as opposed to just kinda putting hooks in the water and waiting for them to come to you.
• 22:36
  Well, one, I should say it is actually over 60,000 people now. Nice. But we do clean the list pretty regularly, so it's a good list. Like, high open rate, good engagement, good replies, right?
• 22:50
  So I'll say when I joined SparkToro, I think four year-- no, three years ago, [chuckles] a couple years ago, I came into this like, all right, like, what, what do we have?
• 23:01
  Like, what, like, what are, what are the things that we have, and what are, what's our competitive edge?
• 23:05
  And so, like, when I saw, like, ooh, we have a list of over 50,000 pe- like, that's our email list, I was like, are you, are you kidding me? [chuckles] Like- Yeah, that's incredible...
• 23:14
  like, I was-- like, my mind was blown, right? I was like, we-- this is a, this is just here in our ESP. Cool. Okay.
• 23:21
  And so when I was figuring out-- And I, I, you know, very lucky, I kind of had free reign to do what I wanted to do when I joined. And so it was like, all right, well, how do we do more with what we have?
• 23:34
  And I thought no marketer goes into a role with a list that big, right? Un-unless you're, you know, you're some kind of massive CPG brand, right? But that's different.
• 23:46
  So I thought, like, all right, we have a great audience. We have a great email list. Let's use it. So it was kind of a no-brainer for me to start a newsletter, and it's kind of-- Like, I think it's our, it's our main...
• 24:01
  I, I might even call it our main marketing channel only because, like, it is a thing that regularly gets done. It's sent two times a month without fail,
• 24:12
  and it encapsulates kind of everything we're doing or thinking about or writing about. Even if we haven't published on the blog in several weeks, the newsletter still gets sent.
• 24:24
  I'll find a way to kind of recycle an old blog post and make it-- and, like, refresh the content of it and make it more current or, like, reframe it in a way that is maybe relevant to some recent news, things like thatAnd the reason for this is that
• 24:39
  I was like, "Well, it's only three of us," and I, as, like, the head of marketing, like, yeah, I'm doing marketing, but I'm also doing a little bit of customer support. We all are. All three of us are.
• 24:50
  I'm doing some product work, right? I thought, if like each...
• 24:53
  It's not like I'm only doing marketing, so I'm doing a lot of different things, and I felt like I need to make the most impact with the few things that I get to focus on each day.
• 25:02
  And so I thought it was most impactful to focus on our list. And, like I said, we clean it regularly. At this point, we have over 60,000 people in, in the list, and our open rate is, like, around 40 to 44%.
• 25:18
  That's amazing. And so by cleaning it, you mean, like, if someone hasn't opened a newsletter in six months or something, that they're scrubbed from the list? Yeah. What do we do?
• 25:26
  We do it within 90 days, so to people who haven't opened an email within 90 days, we say, like, "Hey," like, "you know, our records show that you haven't opened our emails in a while.
• 25:37
  We assume you don't wanna hear from us. If so, we're gonna take you off our list. However, if you wanna stay on the list, click on this link and you'll stay." That's pretty crazy, actually. So that's six...
• 25:47
  That's a really good 60,000-person email list given that 90 days is a relatively short amount of time. And it sounds like you opt them out. You don't say, "Hey, do you want this?
• 25:56
  We'll keep you in unless you opt out," type of thing. That's really cool. Mm-hmm.
• 26:02
  I might be getting ahead of myself a little bit, but is the way that SparkToro does marketing scalable or is that the wrong question to ask? Like, does it matter? You know, I'm just, like, imagining people listening
• 26:15
  whose companies have various cultures, you know, various sizes.
• 26:20
  I certainly hear from people sometimes that content marketing ends up being done sort of by committee because it's a large company and there's lots of stakeholders and you spend all this time, like, agreeing on what we're gonna do, and then you have this framework and you, like, pump volume through it and things like that.
• 26:33
  And it's like it just seems like the way that you go about it is it's simple in a beautiful way, and I would imagine very effective, although I wanna ask you about that, too.
• 26:43
  And so to sort of get back to the original question, it's like can you scale this? Or by not scaling it, is that how you keep it effective? I mean, I think the real answer is I don't know.
• 26:55
  What I want to say is I wanna believe it's scalable, but I really don't know that it is. Like, can I imagine us potentially having, like, a five-person marketing team? Maybe.
• 27:13
  Maybe. But could I imagine us, like, truly scaling it, right, like 20-person marketing team? I don't know. Like, I don't really think so because I'm not sure there would ever be that much work to go around. Hmm. Right.
• 27:27
  And I'm saying that because... Maybe I'll say, like, what works about our marketing, like, like what works, why it works, how I can see it grow but maybe not scale.
• 27:39
  Again, we're talking about scale as, like, you know, huge. Yeah. Like, I don't think so. So what works, I say at the end of the day what works is the fact that we're all doers, right?
• 27:51
  Like Rand, Casey, and I, we each will roll up our sleeves and get the work done. If they asked me to shovel [beep] all day, I would shovel [beep] for them. [laughs] Yeah. It's not my job, but I'd do it.
• 28:07
  And I think that's a really important way about the way we work together is none of us is above anything. If something needs to get done, it'll get done.
• 28:17
  Like, if I need to, like, go through a list and, like, manually, like, pick out things and format things in Excel or whatever and spend, like, six hours doing this, I'll do it. It'll get done, right?
• 28:30
  And I really think maybe, I don't know if this is, if anyone will agree, I honestly think most people don't do it. Like I, I don't wanna s- sound like people are lazy. It isn't even that.
• 28:44
  I really just think most people in general aren't willing to do the work, the unglamorous, boring, like sh- this shit just needs to get done. Too bad it's not fun, but you gotta do it.
• 28:59
  Like, a lot of people don't wanna do it. That's what I think. [laughs] That's very interesting. I'm trying to relate that to my own personal experience.
• 29:07
  Like I, I can think of times when I've worked at very small companies, and it was the same mentality. It's like, "Well, we're all in this together," you know? Like, "Let's, let's roll up our sleeves and get it done."
• 29:16
  And then I can think of myself at a much, like I worked for Intuit for a while, and there's 7,000 employees. Like, I was not, I was not doing that. I really wasn't.
• 29:24
  And if there was some big project that I was like, "Eh, is this important or not?" I'd probably be like, "No, I'm not, [laughs] I'm not gonna do it," or, "I'll see if somebody else can do it," or something like that.
• 29:31
  So I wonder, yeah, I don't know. I'm just thinking, like, is it partially related to the stage of the company, or is it, like, the culture of the business sort of attracts a certain type of person maybe? Or I don't know.
• 29:43
  I don't know. Yeah. But I think that's very interesting. Yeah, I, so I think it's a big part of it. And so with that, that's why, like, we're able to have the blog posts that we have.
• 29:53
  Like, there aren't a lot of CEOs who are willing to just sit down and spend four hours writing a- Yeah... 1,000-word blog post.
• 30:03
  Rand Fishkin will do it, but I can't think of a lot of other, like, C-level executives who are willing to just do that, right?
• 30:11
  Or even just people who are willing, maybe even, like, director-level and VP-level marketers like myself. How many of them are willing...
• 30:22
  Well, I mean, I take a long time to write my posts, but how many of them are willing to sit down for eight hours and write extensively everything they know about email marketing in one sitting?
• 30:33
  I don't know that a lot of people are willing to do it. Yeah. So I'm just saying that, like, a lot of our work really comes from us being willing to just-Focus on something and stick with it Yeah. No, that's interesting.
• 30:46
  You know, Rand wrote a blog post many years ago with a title something along the lines of If Management Is the Only Way Up, We're All F'd, something like that, and it hit me at like the perfect time, where I was like I think I am...
• 31:00
  The next thing I'm supposed to do is try to become a manager, but I really don't want to.
• 31:06
  But I wasn't really aware of another way to do it, and I hadn't, don't think I'd ever come across the term high level individual contributor before reading that blog post, and I have like shaped my entire career after it since- Yeah...
• 31:18
  reading that.
• 31:18
  But I wonder, kind of getting back to what you were saying, it's like it sounds like Rand and Casey have sort of set the business up for the high level individual contributors to thrive, rather than like creating a hierarchy where certain people make decisions and certain people do work.
• 31:33
  Yeah, absolutely. And I think what has just
• 31:37
  really worked for us serendipitously is the fact that like, you know, like at starting around Fitbit, I had started to go down that traditional path of like people management, hoping to get promoted to director and like all these things, but somewhere along that way I realized I just didn't like doing it.
• 31:55
  Like, I just, I just don't like the paper pushing of being a people manager at a bigger company. I like mentoring people, but I don't like having to be responsible like for their path. Sure.
• 32:10
  I don't like having to sit in a bunch of meetings and like try to align politically with people across departments. Can I do it? Yes. Am I good at it? I really think I am. But do I like it? I absolutely hate it.
• 32:24
  I hate it so much. So once my... A manager I had at the time, like she knew it. Like she saw it in me. She knew I didn't like it.
• 32:33
  I think she knew before I did, 'cause one day she was like, "Do you even like being a people manager?" And I was like, "No, I don't."
• 32:41
  [laughs] She was like, "Have you ever thought about being a high level individual contributor?" And that was the first time I had heard it, and I was like, "Say more." Yeah, what's that? Yeah. And she was like, "Well..."
• 32:51
  Yeah. She was like, "Well, it would be like..." She... 'Cause she was like, she's like, "I think you really like doing the work." And I was like, "I do."
• 32:57
  Like sometimes I just wanna write all day and have nobody talk to me. Like that's what I like. Or I wanna like do the boring stuff in the spreadsheets and have nobody talk to me all day.
• 33:08
  Like [laughs] that's what I like sometimes.
• 33:11
  And so she was like, "I think you really like doing the work, and I think you might be really happy if you found a way to like create a role for yourself where you're the one doing the work, and that maybe one day you become like a VP of content."
• 33:24
  And I was like, "Huh." And at the time, I, I was like, I didn't know how to do it, right? This was so many years ago. But
• 33:31
  in general, like most of these big companies, they don't reward stuff like that, not unless you're an engineer. It's kinda like only engineers- Mm. Yeah, yeah... can be the high level ICs. Yeah.
• 33:41
  But like in other roles, not really. Like, you don't know... Like I, I know, I don't know a lot of VP level or, you know, executive level marketers who
• 33:51
  have a team of like one or it's just themselves and they're the ones doing the work. It's not very common, right? Yeah. Because it's you become CMO, you lead a team who all have their own discrete things that they own.
• 34:03
  They do the work, and you do the strategy, right? Like that just... I used to think that was something I wanted, but it just isn't. It's just, it's not for me. Um, yeah. Yeah.
• 34:15
  I love that, and what a great thing to recognize about yourself and then be able to kind of orient your work around it.
• 34:21
  SparkToro embraces this idea of, quote-unquote, "chill work," and I'm wondering like looking through that lens, do you ever find yourself...
• 34:29
  'Cause I do this to myself, I'm like, "Okay, if I'm gonna write a case study, I know that's really high value work. It's important. It's gonna help us grow the business.
• 34:36
  Also, I have 1,000 rows in a spreadsheet that need to be reformatted [laughs] and it's very low value work, but still kinda has to get done," and I sort of torture myself about it sometimes.
• 34:47
  Like, ah, they both have to get done.
• 34:48
  I actually don't really hate the idea of like throwing on some music and just like diving into that spreadsheet, but it's like it's not really gonna progress the business, and I feel torn because there's only so much time and da, da, da.
• 34:58
  Do you find yourself coming across scenarios like that where you feel sort of pulled in different directions?
• 35:03
  Or does this like kinda like chill work idea, and maybe you could describe it also for us, does it kind of alleviate that type of thing?
• 35:10
  Uh, sometimes, yeah, 'cause like there, th- there, there actually is a project like that that I have on my plate where like it, it involves... I've kind of pushed it out of my head 'cause I don't wanna do it.
• 35:23
  [laughs] But I think it involves, um, oh, it's organizing our testimonials. So previously we just... I don't know. I've been screenshotting it and like just dropping it into a folder and like not looking at it.
• 35:36
  [laughs] Yeah, yeah. And the other day Rand and Casey were like, "Oh, where are the testimonials?" And I was like, "Um- [laughs]... they're in this folder. They're a bunch of PNG files that are not organized.
• 35:48
  Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm, I'll fix that." [laughs] So the, the job that I need to do is like finishing the spreadsheet I have that organize the testimonials by like by name or by type, right? Like that's a thing that is,
• 36:04
  sounds so boring, right? But at the same time you could say it's high impact in that when you need a certain testimonial, there it is. Yeah. You can find it.
• 36:14
  I think where I hesitate to do it or what I'm, what I'm procrastinating on is the fact that it, it kind of only affects me. I'm the one who's maintaining it and like referencing it and finding the testimonial.
• 36:26
  So it makes it easier for future me. Arguably makes it easier for Rand and Casey. I can send them the link to the spreadsheet and they can just do whatever they want with it. Right.
• 36:34
  Um, but with the answer about chill work, I mean, chill work is really just, it's working smart, not hard, right? It, it's choosing the things that have the highest impact and doing them.
• 36:47
  I think this testimonial example is something that is like-Could be outsourced, right? Probably should be.
• 36:54
  But at the same time, if it's organized in the way that's optimal for me, then it's kind of something only I can do, and it's gonna make things a lot easier for me in the future.
• 37:06
  So maybe one way I think about chill work is what's gonna make something easier for Amanda three months from today? [chuckles] Yeah, that makes sense. I'm glad you said it that way too.
• 37:18
  I've actually been thinking a lot l- recently about leaving everything better than I found it.
• 37:22
  It's like I try to-- anything I do during the day, I'm like, "Okay, this will come up again, this situation, this email, this whatever.
• 37:28
  How can I leave it just a little bit better than I found it to make my future life a lit- just a little bit easier?" And it, it works. It does work. Oh, I like that. That resonates with me. Yeah.
• 37:37
  Can I ask you a few, like, really nitty-gritty content marketing questions? Yeah. Do you have a content strategy? Is it documented somewhere? Like, is it something that the three of you have discussed?
• 37:46
  And then related to that, is there a content calendar?
• 37:48
  Like, you had kind of mentioned that content is not published on, like, a super strict cadence, but I imagine there's, like, probably somewhere where you keep the ideas and think about when they'll be published. Yeah.
• 37:57
  Like, could you just kind of talk us through, like, content at SparkToro? Like- Yeah... what's going on? Yeah. So there is a content strategy. There is. Um,
• 38:09
  there is not, like, a document that says, like, content strategy 2024, no. But when I say there is a content strategy, what I mean is we know what product launches we have coming up in the next four to six months.
• 38:22
  We know what's going to get released. We know, you know, we know what conferences we're going to be speaking at for the next four to six months.
• 38:31
  And so we know in general what's gonna guide that strategy, or we know what content is going to help those programs. And so while there isn't a formal strategy document, we are thinking about things like,
• 38:48
  like for instance, for the launch of SparkToro V2, I know there are going to be a series of blog posts about how to use the product in the best way. That needs to get done. So, like, those are already in our heads. Yeah.
• 39:03
  Like, we know, like, I, I know we need a blog post that is how agencies and consultants can get the most out of SparkToro. So, like, that's going to get done. I didn't do it yet. It's kinda there.
• 39:15
  It's-- there are gears turning in my head. What else is there? Like, I know that I'm going to be speaking at SaaStock in Austin in a couple months, and I'm gonna be presenting on zero-click content.
• 39:26
  So sort of in my head, I'm thinking about, like, all right, what's the state of zero-click content today? What are some trends I've been seeing?
• 39:34
  Rand actually just came out with some new research on who is sending the most traffic and least traffic to the open web. So I'm thinking about, like, how can I use that in my presentation in May?
• 39:45
  So I'll say that while not all of these things are completely explicit and written out and super clear, we're aligned in the sense that, like, Rand and Casey, they know that I'm gonna be speaking at SaaStock.
• 40:00
  They know that I'm gonna be presenting on zero-click content. I know that Rand was working on that research, right?
• 40:05
  So it's like we kind of know what each other is doing, and we kind of know the ways in which we can support each other.
• 40:12
  But I think a lot of that is informed by us just kind of doing the work and knowing what each other needs, right? So, like, it's not like Rand did that research so that he could help me, right?
• 40:25
  Like, 'cause no, it's not it. It's that he did the research because he had this big question that he's been thinking about for a long time.
• 40:33
  He's seen that nobody has answered that question about, you know, who's sending the most traffic to the open web. So as he's building out that research and running through the data,
• 40:42
  he also knows, well, I'm gonna be speaking at a bunch of conferences this year. Amanda's gonna be speaking at conferences. We're gonna need the, just, like, more resources to back up what we're gonna be saying.
• 40:53
  It's not a direct line to future presentations. However, as, you know, a frequent keynote speaker, presenter, Rand knows, like, oh, I need research to back up what I'm gonna be saying, right? So, like- Yeah...
• 41:07
  a lot of these things really just come from having a lot of experience as marketers, as executives who are also on the front lines. Yeah. That makes a ton of sense.
• 41:17
  Well, you're doing another thing too, which I think more companies could do, which is kind of unlocking internal expertise.
• 41:25
  Y-you know, it's like if Rand has a thought that he knows he wants to go in a keynote one day and there'll be some original research, like, of course there should be a blog post about like that.
• 41:34
  That'd be a perfect thing to write a blog post about.
• 41:36
  And I feel like there's other, not-- I hate to generalize too much, but we just see so much of this where, like, a content strategy often is just formed around keywords, and then you execute on the keywords, and there's not, like, a lot of alignment between what a content team is doing and what other folks are doing, meaning there's all these missed opportunities to kind of, like, take a, something really cool that's happening somewhere else in the business and use that for content.
• 42:00
  But I'm glad you mentioned original research 'cause I definitely wanted to ask you about that.
• 42:03
  There's quite a few examples of this on the SparkToro site, including the one you just mentioned, which I think came out today or maybe yesterday as we- Yesterday, yeah... record this on March 12th.
• 42:13
  Can you talk just a little bit about that, the original research component? I mean, it makes for really interesting content, although it sounds like that is not necessarily the end goal either. Yeah.
• 42:24
  It's not really the end goal, but I mean, I guess I would say that a lot of this original research, I mean-- so one, it's Rand who's doing this research, right? So I, I won't, I, I won't and I can't take credit for it.
• 42:37
  [chuckles] And I, I say this because the research that Rand does, they're all in service to these big questions that he thinks about, like these philosophical questions about marketing or, like, inklings that he has, that he's like, "I think this is gonna happen," or, "I think this is a problem."And instead of just looking for, like, what the answer is, Rand is willing and able to take it to the next level and be like, "Well, nobody has answered this, so I'm going to."
• 43:06
  Yeah, yeah. "I'm gonna do the research. I'm gonna run the numbers. I will live in Excel for the next three months so I can answer this question." So... And I think what helps...
• 43:18
  I mean, look, I mean, it's, at the end of the day, Rand is really good at original research. That's really what it is.
• 43:24
  I haven't seen anyone else really do this at this level, but I think a lot of the reason it works is because he does a lot of it himself, right? Like, he's not...
• 43:35
  And by that I mean, like, look, we partnered with Datos, our click stream data provider, to do this research, so this research would not have been possible without them. So I, I have to say that. Like,
• 43:48
  like, yeah, Rand led this project. He did the research, but he did it with Datos. It would not have been possible without them. But I wanted to say that
• 43:58
  I think when a lot of, like, other companies or teams try to do original research, it's a team doing it, and people have their discrete roles, and it might make it take longer.
• 44:10
  Like, back when I was trying to do a lot of this original research at Fitbit, like, a lot of it was, it was mainly paper pushing. It was mainly project management.
• 44:19
  It was, like, going to legal and saying, "Hey, can we say this?" To going to compliance and saying, "Hey, can we get this?" Like, a lot of it was that, right?
• 44:28
  And a lot of it was because, like, I mean, I don't have the in my brain expertise how to do all these things, so it's like pulling in a bunch of stakeholders, which I suspect is largely how a lot of people in a lot of companies, a lot of marketers and companies that are doing research, right?
• 44:45
  So I think because Rand is able to do most of it himself, he's able to do it faster, right? So, like, in his head, he's already the, kind of the legal and compliance team working with a really awesome data partner. Yeah.
• 44:59
  That's really cool. That's really cool. One last thing I wanted to ask you about, Amanda, is your own personal brand, which is impressive is the word I'm gonna use.
• 45:07
  Like, you've really, like, at least from my perspective, like, put some real effort into getting your thoughts out there, into building email lists, you know, increasing social followers.
• 45:17
  I don't suspect that you do it for those reasons, to, like, get, like, add numbers to the list.
• 45:22
  But could you talk even just briefly about, like, kind of your journey of building up your personal brand, if that's what you call it? Yeah.
• 45:30
  I've been doing this for, like, maybe almost four years at this point, so maybe one, I'll say, like, I was a marketer for more than around 10 years before I ever even, like, started to kind of grow a personal brand or grow an audience.
• 45:46
  So I say that to indicate, like, this wasn't a thing that I just did at the beginning, right? I spent a lot of years
• 45:54
  doing work in the trenches, building up expertise, having a lot of different life experiences before ever being comfortable publishing online. So part of it was just having built up years of I have a lot to say.
• 46:08
  Yeah, yeah. And then finally saying it. I mean, I'll, I'll say, like, I did this basically because I had experienced a lot of career highs, but more so career lows.
• 46:20
  Like, I've been unhappy in jobs, tried to pivot at careers. I'd been laid off. I'd been furloughed. And I just got to this point that I was just sick of having to wait.
• 46:33
  Like, I was sick of just uploading my resume into a black hole and then waiting for somebody to get back to me or hoping that an introduction to somebody would go really well. I just felt powerless, and I was sick of it.
• 46:47
  And so what I wanted to do really was just create some leverage for myself and be able to more easily network, right? And I felt like it was extra important because there are a lot of marketers out there.
• 47:00
  It's not like I have this super rare skill set. It's not like I'm some really special engineer, right? [laughs] Like a technical person. It was, at the end of the day, I'm a writer.
• 47:12
  There are a lot of writers, and there are a lot of writers who are much better than I am.
• 47:16
  So I just felt like I need to just do something to create a competitive edge for myself 'cause I'm sick of waiting on the sidelines.
• 47:24
  So that was really it, and then kind of, like, because of that and the way that I am and the way I believe in marketing, I just wrote from personal experiences.
• 47:35
  And I think it's important to call out because I didn't come into this being like, "I'm a marketing expert. I'm the one who read all the landing pages. I did 45 hours of research on calls to action.
• 47:47
  Here's what they should be." It's I've lived a life of having a lot of different kinds of experiences. I've tested a bunch of different things. I've made some really stupid mistakes.
• 47:59
  I've also had a couple of great ideas. Here are all the examples of them. And I think it's important to write from this kind of experience because that's what makes you defensible.
• 48:08
  It makes what you say defensible, and it makes it such that in a weird way you can't really be wrong.
• 48:16
  'Cause if you're speaking from experience, "Hey, here's this weird thing I did that actually worked and here's why," nobody can tell you that it isn't true.
• 48:25
  And, like, as long as you're not saying, "Here's how everybody needs to do this," it's, "Here's what I did, and here's why it worked." That's okay, right? [laughs] Yeah. That's awesome.
• 48:34
  Well, I think I speak for a lot of marketers when I say thank you for doing it because I personally have drawn quite a bit of inspiration from the work you've put out there over the last couple of years, and I know a lot of other folks have, too.
• 48:45
  So... And thank you, too, for coming on and talking. It was so good to have you, and just so much good stuff here. I would really encourage people, go to SparkToro. Like, just see what's there. You know what I mean?
• 48:55
  See how the marketing feels to you. I think that's a great way for other people to kind of glean things for themselves and for their own work. And where can we send people to connect with you? What's the best place to...
• 49:03
  Personal websites or social handles or wherever else? Yeah. Uh, so I'm Amanda Nat on the main socials. Yeah, on LinkedIn, Twitter, Threads, Instagram. Check us out at sparktoro.com.
• 49:17
  And if you send us an email through customer support, it really goes to the three of us, and one of us replies within 24 to 36 hours. [laughs] Cool. Okay, cool. Awesome. Yeah. Amanda, you rock.
• 49:29
  Thank you so much for doing this. Links to your social stuff and to SparkToro will be in the show notes, and hopefully we can do this again sometime soon. Yeah, I'd love to. Thank you so much, Jimmy.
• 49:37
  This was, this was a lot of fun, and I want a transcript of this because I wanna, like, go through your questions again and, like, in my head and... I don't know.
• 49:45
  I feel like, I feel like we half wrote a bunch of blog posts- Yeah... together- Totally... in this episode. I'll send it to you. I'll send it to you. [laughs] Awesome. Thanks so much, Amanda. [outro music]