Latest / The Promotion Memo with Fexingo: Getting Visibility, Sponsors, and Executive Presence / How One Employee Got Promoted by Building a Career Blog
Transcript
- Lucas: So we talk a lot on this show about getting visibility inside your company. But there's another route that fewer people try, and it's one of the most effective I've seen in the last couple of years. Luna: Let me guess—you're talking about someone who started writing publicly. Lucas: Exactly. This is the story of Sarah Chen. At the time, she was a senior marketing manager at a mid-size consumer goods company. She had been in that role for about three years, and she was seeing peers get promoted to director while she kept getting passed over. The feedback was always the same: 'You do great work, but we need to see more strategic thinking.' Luna: Which is code for 'we don't see what you're thinking unless you show it in a visible way.' Lucas: Right. So Sarah decided to start a blog. Not a personal brand blog about lifestyle or productivity. A career blog focused entirely on her area of expertise: cross-functional team alignment in consumer goods marketing. She published one post per week for 14 months. That's 24 posts, because she skipped some weeks during product launches. Luna: Twenty-four posts in 14 months sounds manageable. What was her readership like? Lucas: After a slow start, her blog reached about 6,000 monthly readers by month nine. That's not huge by internet standards. But here's the key—her readers were mostly other marketing managers, consultants, and some people inside her own industry. One of those readers was her VP's boss, the head of marketing for the entire North America division. Luna: Oh, that's the dream scenario. The VP of your VP finds your blog. Lucas: Exactly. The head of marketing emailed Sarah after reading her post on 'The Five Alignment Frictions in CPG Marketing.' He said he'd been dealing with exactly that issue in a cross-functional initiative and asked if she'd be willing to present her framework at the next quarterly leadership offsite. Luna: So she went from being invisible at the VP level to being the person invited to present at offsites. That's a huge leap. Lucas: Sarah got the director promotion four months later. But the blog wasn't the only reason. What mattered was that her blog created a narrative. Her VP started seeing her as a strategic thinker because the blog made her thinking public and testable. It wasn't just her saying 'I'm strategic.' She had 24 posts showing how she actually thought through problems. Luna: There's something else here too. A blog gives you a chance to build executive presence without having to be in the room with executives. Lucas: That's a great point. Executive presence is often about demonstrating that you can see the bigger picture and communicate it clearly. A blog lets you do that asynchronously. You don't need to be in the meeting. You don't need to be the one who speaks up in the all-hands. Your writing speaks for you. Luna: And it's permanent. A good meeting presentation might get remembered for a week. A blog post can be forwarded months later. Lucas: Exactly. Sarah told me that one of her posts from month two was still getting shares eight months after she published it. The compounding effect of a blog is real. But it's not for everyone. Let's talk about the risks, because there are some. Luna: The biggest one I see is time. Writing a thoughtful post every week is a serious commitment. Sarah probably spent four to six hours per post, right? Lucas: She said the first few took about eight hours. By month six, she had a process and could do it in three. But that's still three hours per week of uncompensated work. If you're already stretched thin, that's a real cost. Luna: There's also the content risk. You're putting your ideas out there, and not everyone will agree. Some people might read your blog and think you're showing off. Lucas: Sarah was careful about that. She never named her company or specific brands. She wrote about frameworks and general patterns. She wasn't airing internal laundry. She was sharing her strategic thinking in a way that was useful to anyone in her field. That's an important boundary. Luna: So the blog wasn't about her—it was about the work. That's a smart way to do it. Lucas: Exactly. It made the conversation about the ideas, not about her. And that's what got her noticed. There's another angle here too. Sarah's blog also helped her get sponsors inside the company. After that offsite presentation, a different VP—the head of product development—asked her to join his innovation task force. That gave her exposure to a completely different part of the business. Luna: So the blog didn't just get her promoted. It broadened her network inside the company. Lucas: Exactly. She went from being known in her own department to being known across multiple functions. That's the kind of visibility that leads to bigger opportunities down the line. Luna: I want to push back a little though. Not everyone works in a company where public blogging is encouraged. Some companies have strict social media policies. If you're in a regulated industry like finance or pharma, you might not be able to do this at all. Lucas: That's a fair point. Sarah's company didn't have a policy against it, but she still checked with legal before she started. If your company has restrictions, you have to respect that. But there are internal alternatives. You could start an internal blog on your company's intranet. Or you could write a monthly newsletter for your team that gets shared upward. The principle is the same: make your thinking visible and testable. Luna: So the medium can adapt. The key is the behaviour: writing down your strategic thinking and putting it where people can see it. Lucas: Right. Whether it's a public blog, an internal wiki page, or a quarterly memo you circulate to your skip-level manager, the mechanism is the same. It's about creating a body of work that demonstrates your value in a way that's easy for others to access and share. Luna: One thing I noticed in Sarah's story: she didn't start the blog to get promoted. She started it because she wanted to clarify her own thinking. Lucas: That's a crucial distinction. She told me that the act of writing forced her to be more rigorous. She couldn't just say 'we need better alignment.' She had to define what alignment meant, how to measure it, and what steps actually improved it. That clarity made her better at her day job too. Luna: So the blog was both a visibility tool and a thinking tool. That's a powerful combination. Lucas: Absolutely. And I think that's why it worked. If she had started a blog just to get noticed, people would have seen through it. But because she was genuinely trying to work through hard problems, her writing had depth. Luna: Okay, so for someone listening who's thinking about trying this, what's the first step? Do they need to pick a platform, a theme, a posting schedule? Lucas: Sarah's advice is simple: start with one post. Don't commit to a weekly schedule upfront. Write one piece that captures a framework or insight you've been sitting on. See how it feels. See if anyone responds. Then write another one if you want to. The goal isn't to build a media empire. It's to create one piece of work that could change how people see you. Luna: That's actually a low bar. One good post could be enough to get a conversation started. Lucas: And that conversation is the whole point. Sarah's first post didn't go viral. It got maybe 200 reads. But it was good enough that someone in her network shared it internally. That led to the second post, and then the third. The compound effect started small. Luna: So episode 125 is basically 'write one really good post and see what happens.' Lucas: That's the episode. But I want to add one more layer. Sarah also told me that the blog changed how she thought about her own career. Before, she was waiting for someone to recognize her. After, she was actively demonstrating her value on her own terms. That shift in mindset—from passive to active—might be the biggest takeaway. Luna: That's a good place to land. Before we wrap, I want to mention something that's been on my mind. We do this show every week, and we put a lot of work into making it useful. A handful of listeners chip in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, and that literally helps us keep making this many episodes without ads. If the show has helped you think through a career move, that's the best way to keep it going. Lucas: Yeah, I'm grateful for that. It's a small group, but it makes a big difference. And it keeps us independent, which means we can cover exactly the stories we think matter. Like Sarah's. Not every podcast would spend an episode on one person's blog strategy. Luna: Exactly. So, back to Sarah. If someone writes that first post, what's the most important thing to avoid? Lucas: The biggest mistake is making it about yourself instead of the work. Don't write 'Here's why I'm great at cross-functional alignment.' Write 'Here's a framework for cross-functional alignment that I've seen work.' The first is self-promotion. The second is thought leadership. One gets ignored. The other gets shared. Luna: That's a perfect distinction. I think we've got a concrete next step for listeners. Thanks, Lucas. Lucas: Thanks, Luna. If you write that post, let us know. We might even feature it on a future episode.