Hosted By
Convince & Convert
About The Content Experience Show:
Welcome to The Content Experience Show where content experience is the new content marketing. It’s not only about reaching our audiences where they are, but engaging them with a personalized experience of meaningful, useful content that they’ll take with them over time. The guests on the Content Experience Show share strategies, tips, and real-world examples of how they’re taking their content marketing to the next level and providing their current and prospective customers with a true content experience. This isn’t just a trend. It’s a movement.
Apple Podcast Reviews:
It doesn't get any better for content marketers. They present a balanced, insightful discussion of current trends and ask all the right questions. Their guest list is a "Who's Who" of content professionals. Outstanding.
Jared Johnson PianoI love listening to marketing podcasts and this one is on my must-listen to list. Very knowledgable hosts and topical discussions.
The Marketing Book Podcast
Fatima Zaidi, VP of Business Development at Eighty-Eight Agency, joins the Content Pros Podcast to discuss how successful PR in the modern content marketing world keeps your content alive and pushes it viral.
Bring Your Content Back To Life
Bring Your Content Back To LifeContrary to popular belief, traditional PR is not dead. Fatima has used PR at her agency to get her content for clients to go viral on several occasions. Her secret lies in creating a combination of value, education, relationships, and content life-support.
All too often content marketers think their job is done after the content has been created when in reality, that’s only half the battle. It’s called content marketing for a reason… part of it is content, and the other part is marketing.
By creating content that is of value and educational for both the audience and the client, it has a built in second-life to keep it going beyond the first reveal. Employing the relationships you have built across the field pushes that content in front of people quickly and efficiently.
All of this can make even the most seemingly mundane of marketing tasks (press release, anyone?) a vital tool in content proliferation.
In This Episode
- Why creating content is only a small part of content marketing
- How a focus on creating value with new concepts leads to online virality
- Why the right amount of content means calculating how much you can take and adding one
- How supplementing your existing workforce with an agency leads to new opportunities and resources
Quotes From This Episode
“Anyone can be a content creator and I think that more than PR, it’s important for people to be creating content and sharing content on a regular basis.” —@zaidiafatima
Don't forget about the 'marketing' in 'content marketing'. Click To Tweet
“We’re happy to put down paid media and put money towards SEO to share our content if we think it’s going to be providing value for other companies and other agencies.” —@zaidiafatima
“Give more than you can take and always give as much value as possible without expecting anything in return.” —@zaidiafatima
There's only so many capabilities you can have in-house. Click To Tweet
“Traditional PR and media relations will never really be dead but it’s always going to be supplemented with other initiatives and strategies.” —@zaidiafatima
“People really need to be putting in that effort to create stuff that is newsworthy rather than having something and then trying to make it newsworthy.” —@zaidiafatima
Resources
- Fatima Zaidi on Twitter: @zaidiafatima
- Eighty-Eight Agency on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and the blog
- Foodora Campaign: One Wheel for a Better Planet
- What’s Now, What’s NEXT
- Foodora and Durex and Partnering Up This Valentine’s Day
- Agency or Porn
Content Pros Lightning Round
There’s a company that you were involved with at the early stages called Rent Frock Repeat, and it was all about value, but a whole other type of value. Tell us more about that. We are a dress rental company and we rent out designer clothing for a fraction of the retail cost. So we save our customers time, money, and closet space. I went in there to scale the company and I went in there to handle all outbound business, and content creation was a big part of that. I started realizing that to make yourself relevant, to make yourself current, you really need to build a very strong personal brand for the company.
You were one of the top 30 Under 30 women in our region. Who was the coolest person you met through that experience who was also in the 30 Under 30? Sarah Bugeja. She’s a conversion expert at the end of the day, and I just love the work that she is doing.
Transcript
| Randy: | Welcome to another episode of Content Pros! I’m Randy Frisch from Uberflip. As always, I’ve got Tyler Lessard with me from Vidyard and today on Content Pros, on this Podcast, we’ve got Fatima Zaidi, and she’s going to talk to us about PR in the modern content marketing world. That’s an area that I think a lot of us as marketers probably struggle with sometimes to figure out, you know, should we still do PR? Should we just do content marketing? And how do we balance that? Do we do that internally? Do we rely on someone externally? And Fatima’s got a lot of experience with this and going to help shed some light. You know, Tyler, she’s a local Canadian so both of us know her. You know her as well. Maybe you can give a little bit more context and welcome her in. |
| Tyler: | That’s right ladies and gentlemen. Get ready for a lot of aboots cause this is jam packed with Canadian content goodness here. But in all seriousness, it’s really exciting to have the team onboard with this Podcast. You’ve got a- I figure a very interesting and diverse background in the things you’ve done. You’ve been a blogger and a writer for Huffington Post and BetaKit and a number of other outlets, but of course, your day job today is business development at a terrific agency called Eighty-Eight so I’m going to hand it over to you maybe to just chat a little bit about your background, kind of where you’ve come from, and what you’re doing now at Eighty-Eight. |
| Fatima: | Thanks, Tyler, for that introduction. |
| So, yeah, I’m the Vice President of business development at Eighty-Eight. We’re a local marketing communications agency and we specialize in public relations, digital marketing, and graphic design. We mainly work with tech, consumer, and lifestyle brands and I would say we have anywhere from about 10-20 given clients at a point. Some of our clients include Foodora, the food delivery app, Sony, Yellow Pages, PayPal, and then on the tech and not for profit side companies like Next Canada, Collage, the National Ballet School, and, of course, my old company, Rent Frock Repeat. | |
| Tyler: | So I’m going to cut right to the chase and tap into something Randy mentioned which is this, you know, this challenge a lot of us businesses are facing of is it a content strategy to PR strategy? We’re all trying to build our brands in the market. We’re trying to get content placed in different places. We’re trying to get it amplified, and shared, and circulated and, you know, I face this challenge. I’m sure you do, Randy, as well, is how do we approach this new world that we’re in where a lot of the media that’s getting out there are things that are written in-house and shared out through different channels versus the old world of working with a PR agency to draft articles, to pitch articles, and to take that approach. How are these worlds colliding and what are you seeing from your perspective on the agency side? |
| Fatima: | Yeah, I mean I think it’s really interesting. One of the biggest challenges we have is that we are a story-telling agency and sometimes that is a very intangible scale. How do you really measure the value of brand awareness in PR? And I find that it’s very different from when you’re a conversion agency and you’re tracking the numbers and tracking the sales and tracking the number of sales and click-through rates that are coming in. So I think that now there’s this huge evolvement of content creation now. Anyone can be a content creator and I think that more than PR, I think it’s important for people to be creating content and sharing content on a regular basis. But I think that one of the quickest ways to kill your content marketing is to do nothing after you create it. Some people and some marketers think that content marketing is simply creating the content, but that’s only part of content marketing. I think the other half is promoting it and my advice is always don’t forget about the marketing in content marketing. So that’s where we come in. That’s where PR agencies come in, I think media relations is very, very important. How do you measure the value of content creation? From a consumer perspective there are a number of ways, but I think from a business perspective you really need to drive coverage and get it in front of multiple people. |
| Tyler: | So I think you raised this super important point there which is something we harp on a lot within our own team is when you take the time to build a great, either a piece of content or a content campaign, or sort of a core story, we often- We will put it out there, we’ll run a campaign, we’ll blast come people with it, and then it’s forgotten about. And too often we forget either there’s multiple ways to share that story, there’s different mediums you could expose it through, there are different channels you could engage to get that message out there and to amplify it, so- I’d love for you- I’m sure others are struggling with this of how do you kind of put that into practice? I’d love your perspective. Maybe peel that back a little bit from your perspective on how are people approaching this today? |
| Fatima: | Yeah, definitely. I think the first and most important thing is creating valuable content and making sure that content is relatable and can provide a lot of value. When you’re creating content that provides a lot of value and it’s a new concept, I think that it becoming viral is given in itself and then you don’t have to do too much marketing to get it out there. I think that one thing that’s really important is being on all the social channels. So, you know, Eighty-Eight is constantly very active and engaged on all of the platforms today: Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Twitter. We have our own internal blog which very clearly identifies and reflects our personal brand, which is where we do a lot of our storytelling in content creation. We have a website where we drive a lot of content to, and also, we’re not, you know- We’re happy to put down paid media and put money towards SEO to share our content if we think it’s going to be providing value for other companies and other agencies. So I think those are just a few of the different channels that are important to us, but, you know, one of the ways that I do it is writing for publications on topics that I’m passionate about. So, currently I’ve built my personal brand around hacking outbound sales. So, I love writing for publications that have my target audience, which is small and medium sized businesses. So The Globe, Strategy, BetaKit, and Huffington Post. And I think you really have to tailor it to what content you’re creating on a regular basis, but I think one thing that I would add is making sure that the content isn’t promotional salesy. I think the core philosophy when it comes to content marketing is to give more than you can take and always give as much value as possible without expecting anything in return. And I think marketers really need to be creating educational and valuable content for the viewers and a lot more than just shooting out large quantities of promotional content. |
| Randy: | I love that! I love that idea of giving more than you take. I think that’s a great lesson for people to take away when they think about the content they’re putting out there. So, going back to the beginning, Fatima, you listed off some really exciting brands that you and the team at Eighty-Eight Creative work with. Maybe you can talk to us about a campaign that your team was excited to get involved with. Because I think some of us struggle sometimes these days with this idea, as we said at the beginning, that we are now content creators internally and we know how to distribute content because there’s tools out there for that and we can buy our own placements. This isn’t like back in the media days anymore. So, what is it that you’ll get involved in? And maybe you can take us through one of the clients you’ve worked with, an account that you’re really proud of a certain outcome. |
| Fatima: | Absolutely! I would actually love to walk you through a couple of examples! I’m really proud of the content we create at Eighty-Eight and I think we do a really good job of sort of reflecting our personal brand. One of the- Recently- And it’s also, I guess, I want to take it a step back and really define what is content creation? What do you consider content? And personally, before Eighty-Eight ever creates content, we always want to ensure that we’re enhancing a customer or consumer’s experience with a brand and engage them in a way that adds value whether it be through education, utility, or entertainment. From a consumer’s perspectives, there’s a few things that we look at. And for April Fool’s Day, for example, we did the campaign for our clients, Foodora, and we wanted to come up with something that was quirky and funny and really reflected our personal brand, which aligns very closely with Foodora’s personal brand, which is we’re a very easy-going company and we’re fun to work with and we have a great sense of humor. So we created a video that sort of became viral where we said that Foodora would be- And Foodora is a food delivery app, and their differentiating USP is that they deliver food on bicycles. So, we came out with a video that said that they’re going to start delivering food on unicycles. And- |
| Randy: | That’s fun! |
| Fatima: | Yeah! |
| Randy: | I love that! |
| Fatima: | It’s really funny. We positioned it as they’re trying to become more Eco-friendly, and instead of doing it on a bicycle, they’re going to be hopping around on this unicycle and on the day, April Fool’s Day, we actually had people going around in unicycles. And I think that- Is it very deep and value-added content? No, but at the end of the day, it’s really fun, got people laughing, we were covered in outlets like Blog TO, CP24, CTV, Strategy magazine. We got a lot of coverage around it. But from a value-added content piece, I’m very proud of the Next Canada micro site video that we created. So, to give you some context, Next Canada is a national non-profit charity and they basically help entrepreneurs through innovation and they’re sort of like an accelerator. And we launched a marketing campaign called, “What’s Now, What’s Next.” It’s a video which highlights innovation in current industries and contrasts them with predictions for what the next 150 years is going to hold. And I think all of the answers in the video from these different, successful Canadian entrepreneurs really gives us a glimp into the future potential of a range of industries and really helps us plot the development of what we can expect to see, which, you know, I feel so proud of the Canadian content that we’re creating because I just feel like we highlighted some really great industry success stories and I think there’s a lot out there from a U.S. perspective that I have yet to see more promotion done around successful Canadian stories. So, I was just really proud of that video. |
| Randy: | That’s great and I volunteer with Next Canada. It’s such a great organization with really brilliant entrepreneurs coming through those doors. So, it’s great that you’re giving them a voice in that way. But I want to go back on the Foodora one a little bit because I know Next Canada is very lean, right? They’re lean so they need a team like you almost to probably run a lot of their marketing campaigns. But I imagine Foodora actually has some of these in-house capabilities. But yet they’re still relying on this modern day concept of an agency to compliment and I think that’s the part that some of our listeners who are maybe with larger organizations and trying to figure out, okay, what do I do versus what do I ask for help with, right? Or what do I outsource? And I’m wondering if there’s starting to be a better guideline for that in this day and age and whether you can tell us a little bit some of the trends you’ve seen in that way. |
| Fatima: | Yeah, definitely. I think- It’s interesting, I feel like some people either get it or they don’t. They really understand the value of PR, or they don’t. And at the end of day, I feel like you can definitely hire someone in-house to do it, but they’re going to be a Jack-of-all-trades and not a specialist. We, as an agency, specialize in start-ups and tech PR so that is sort of a niche that we’ve carved out for ourselves. And there’s only so many capabilities you can have in-house and you’re really going to need a team of 30-40 people and a lot of hours spent to get to the level that we’re at where we’ve worked with a range of different clients and companies and a range of different campaigns, whether it be influencers, content creation, media relations. And, again, I do think that people can hire in-house, but I think it’s more of a modern day trend and approach where people are really relying on those creative agencies to be the specialists and they do what they do best and then we can come in and supplement where there may be an opportunity. And I think at the end of the day, it’s- Some of the bigger campaigns to be executed, it’s a lot of effort, it’s a lot of work, you need to have those relationships. We got them a lot of coverage during this Foodora unicycle video. We did a similar one for Valentine’s Day where we created an aphrodisiac menu and we partnered them with Durex and anyone who ordered off this aphrodisiac menu got a package from Durex as well, which was super gimmicky and super fun, but again it’s really making those connections, working with partners like Durex, having those relationships in media relations to get the coverage. I think it would be very- A lot more hours spent rather than just outsourcing it to an agency who specializes in those relationships. |
| Randy: | Yeah, I like that. I think the other thing- And, Tyler, I’m curious if you’re ever doing this in Vidyard, but I can tell you here at Uberflip, I mean we’ve sometimes found value in bringing just an outsiders view. Like, we’re so close to our audience, we’re so close to our product everyday, that sometimes there’s value in having that third party perspective. So, you know, earlier this year, we were coming up with like our big campaign and it’s actually become somewhat of our rally cry. It’s this idea of owning the journey, or own the journey as we call it. And we actually brought in some help on that. We knew what we wanted to do, but we wanted some other perspectives and we wanted someone to help us with the thinking, the types of campaigns that we could run off about rally cry. And to be honest, it’s not so much of it fully forming our opinion, ’cause I think we had one, but it was a matter of getting us to think a little bit outside the box. And I don’t know, Tyler, if that’s something that you guys have invested in from time to time at Vidyard. |
| Tyler: | No, I totally agree. And it’s something we’re actually doing right now as we think about, I think to your point, not just what’s the main story that we really want to tell and what’s that kind of core message, but more importantly for me, it’s how do we think creatively about how it manifests itself in the market, in interesting stories and interesting content. And that’s the part that I find having an external voice and opinion on that can go a long, long way. Because, you know, usually, much like yourselves, I’m sure, we sort of sit in our bubble here, we brainstorm, but there’s a lot of recycling of ideas and when you have somebody come in, and maybe, Fatima, you can comment on this, I doubt that somebody internally at Foodora would have thought the first thing is like, “Do a video. Let’s do this. Let’s go and have fun over here.” I think even the kinds of content mediums and channels and ways you can create a fun story, I think it’s a huge value to people who just live in that creative PR, kind of journalism world. |
| Fatima: | I completely- Couldn’t agree more with you, Tyler. |
| Tyler: | Yeah. |
| Fatima: | And it’s interesting, I do also want to point out that as a creative agency, we don’t only do creative campaigns for our clients. We often do them for ourselves as well because we want to get our personal brand and we want to get our messaging across. And I think it’s through one of our internal campaigns that we’ve done that have been very creative in the past that Foodora reached out to us and wanted to work with us because they could really identify and align our values. And, you know, this is a fun agency! They could come up with something that’s hysterical and funny that could go viral and this is how they’re going to represent us and this is how they represent themselves. So my advice to agencies would be also don’t forget about doing marketing and PR and campaigns for yourself. |
| Randy: | I think that’s great advice. So, we’re going to take a quick break here while I order myself lunch through Foodora and then we’re going to get right back to dig more into PR content and a lot more with Fatima. We’re back here on Content Pros Podcast and we’ve got Fatima Zaidi joining us from Eighty-Eight Creative and what I wanted to kind of jump over to now is this concept of where should we send the traditional press release to, right? And I find that in that past, we just kind of submitted it through the channels and that was enough. And I don’t know if everyone’s finding this, but some days I wake up in the morning and I’ve got these LinkedIn e-mails and half of my LinkedIn notifications are just press releases that are being shared on LinkedIn, and I’m wondering what your perspective is on where we should be distributing these for pick-up these days? Because we’ve kind of moved away from just caring necessarily about the media sources of the past. |
| Fatima: | Yeah, and I think that’s a really great question and I think I would- Like I mentioned to you earlier, I think that we really should be focusing on the target audiences of our clients. So, if LinkedIn is where your customers are at and your audience is at, then it’s a great place to start, but I think at the end of the day, there’s a ton of different- Whether it’s CP Wire network, or PR Newswire distributions, or whether you’re pitching directly to journalists, there are a ton of ways that you can do this. I think more important than that is really building those relationship with journalists and editors and the press over time, and sort of having a brand ambassador of people that you can reach out to in a given industry. So, I think I sort of mentioned this earlier, it’s important for agencies to start specializing and have a niche; What is your USP? What is your unique selling proposition? And for us, it’s Tech PR. So we have relationships with all of the editors and the networks where we should be sending out press releases to so when we have a client like 111 who- Or Next Canada, who is sending out a press release, we know exactly who to send it to and we’re not just sort of blasting it out on LinkedIn or generic sites. We’re really honing into their target audience. |
| Randy: | Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It’s funny, I mean, I used to write more content than I do. I still commit to like one post a month here, and we always start with, okay, where do we want this to be? Who’s our audience? And often, it never ends up actually on our own site, which is a good thing because we have relationships with, in our case, we- I think one of my last posts was on LinkedIn. Before that we had it on the Salesforce Blog because that’s where we find our audiences are and we’ve been able to develop relationships with some of their editors on their site to get those placements, which ultimately is a modern day PR play. |
| Fatima: | Definitely. Couldn’t agree more. I think it’s 100% about relationship building and really becoming the specialist in that space, and- Rather than doing a generic blast out. And LinkedIn can be great for say Canadian Tires, one of our clients. And if we were doing a press release for them, I think LinkedIn would be a really great corporate place to start, but for the tech industry, not so much. |
| Tyler: | So let me expand on this topic of the press release because I’m going to play devil’s advocate and just throw out there that the press release is largely dead in the market. And, Fatima, we can debate this, but I think one of the big things we’re seeing, and I cringe when I hear our own marketing team say that, “Hey, we’ve got a big product launch coming up,” or, “We’ve got an amazing customer story. Let’s get the press release ready,” right? And it’s like, well, okay, the press release is something that we care about and it feels like it’s a check box, that it probably has to happen, maybe it doesn’t. But to me, it’s no longer the most important part of an announcement of news that you’re generating. And to me, it’s like what’s- Of course, how do you manifest the story in a bigger way and get out of this mindset of an announcement equals a press release? And I’m curious what your perspective is and what you’re seeing people doing to approach announcements and news in different ways from the traditional press release? |
| Fatima: | I think it’s interesting that you bring that up. We were just having a conversation about that at our agency a couple days ago and I think that traditional PR and media relations will never really be dead. I think that it’s always going to be supplemented with other initiatives and strategies and I think at the end of day, you really need to have something disrupted in the space, which sort of sells itself. So, I’m just going to give you a really quick example, we created a online game site recently. It’s called Agency or Porn and it just started off with an innocent conversation that we were having at our agency, and we decided to come up with this game where players have to distinguish between a name, whether it’s an adult film name or an agency name. And it’s actually- You know, sounds kind of boring, but it’s very addictive and because it was such unique content that we had created, we literally had so much coverage over it. And it was inbound coverage, like we weren’t going out and pitching. It was people reaching out to us and wanting to get us covered in Strategy magazine, in Design Taxi, and Media Post, and we were also covered in international publications like Japan, Germany, France, Lithuania, Spain, which just goes to show you that good content doesn’t have boundaries. And I think that people really need to be putting in that effort to create stuff that is newsworthy rather than having something and then trying to make it newsworthy if that makes any sense. |
| Tyler: | Yeah it’s- This is such a cool example where it’s the notion of you know, that- And I did, by the way, I did do Agency or Porn and I did not score well. I will admit. Any of you out there, Agencyorporn.com, it’s quite fun. Just keep the audio off if you’re in the office. But it’s such a cool example where it’s a fun, interactive experience. And I’m seeing, again, more and more people looking at interactive content, looking at, of course, videos and interesting, fun, trying to generate humor or inspiration and really leaning back again on creative content, on interactive content, or on story-telling to wrap their news. And I’m much more inclined to dive into a fun parody video of a Saturday Night Live skit that’s telling me somebody just launched a new product, than I am to go and read their four page press release. |
| Fatima: | Yeah and it just goes to show that at the end of day, it’s not that press releases aren’t important and media relations aren’t important. I think those traditional PR tactics will always be there, but I think it really needs to be supplemented with other things. Whether it be a digital marketing campaign, or good content creation, or something that’s disruptive and innovative and ground-breaking in the space that hasn’t been done before. And I think that’s really where the question comes in, how do you measure content success and what is of value? |
| Randy: | I love that last point and maybe we can go to like the scariest word of all, right, which is results, right? |
| Tyler: | NO! |
| Randy: | What- |
| Tyler: | No, don’t go there. |
| Randy: | I know, I know. I mean usually that’s when you fire agencies, isn’t that what it is? But, I mean this is why- And full disclosure here, I’d really recommend Eighty-Eight Creative. I’ve sent a lot of people to Erin Burries’ way and now your way in terms of a great place to work with because you guys understand the importance of growth in companies. But outside of the traditional way that we would measure results with PR, which is maybe shares or views, what are some of the key metrics that you’re starting to track more from the KPI perspective with some of your clients and being held accountable to? |
| Fatima: | Yeah, I think that’s a really good question. So, it’s interesting, I actually measure content success in a variety of ways. So, before we ever build out a campaign, I always want to make sure that it enhances the consumer’s experience. So, you know, like I mentioned earlier, through value, education, utility, or entertainment. But there are a few things when I look at content from a consumer’s perspective; Is it original? Have I heard the concepts over and over again? And if you don’t have anything useful to say, then don’t say it at all. It has to- Your content always has to be original. Because there’s so much content on the internet these days, I think that your content needs to have a strong headline. So, it needs to catch people’s attention. When I’m skimming through all the different forums and looking for a great article to read or a great video to watch, it needs to catch my attention. And I think it’s also very important to make sure that the content is actionable and it provides answers. I think that the best content out there really gives users a sense of how to apply the information, and it needs to be easy to scan so people can, you know, pick up the important bits quickly. And I don’t know about you guys, but sometimes when I see inaccurate reports or sourcing of information, or I know if I see something’s been linked to Reddit, it drives me absolutely crazy. So, is it accurate in reporting and just, from a business perspective, it’s just the amount of engagement. So, click through, open rates, shares, re-tweets, coverage, media relations and all that good stuff. |
| Randy: | Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think as companies we’re becoming more targeted, obviously in terms of how we go after our segments. I mean, the rise of ABM for businesses that have become even more focused from that perspective. So, it’s only reasonable that we’re going to expect agencies to deliver us the right audience, not, as you said, a Reddit audience because you got a whole bunch of clicks. |
| Fatima: | Yeah, absolutely. And I think that it’s funny because just the open rate isn’t just matter, it’s the click-through rates, the amount of engagement. It’s not just about the number of followers that you have. It’s really about are people commenting? Are people really engaged in a meaningful conversation? Is it making a difference? And I think that- Well those are all the things that I personally use to measure content success, I think it’s different for every agency, but we really want to just provide value from a consumer’s perspective. We mainly look at it from the consumer’s perspective and less from the business perspective. |
| Randy: | So, we’ve got a few minutes left here and I want to pick up on that word value, but we’re going to shift completely out of talking about PR and marketing and talk a little bit more about you. And get to know you and how you got to this point in your career and all that kind of fun stuff. And there’s a company that you were involved with at the early stages called Rent Frock Repeat, and it was all about value, but a whole other type of value. Not content value and how do you get more from your content, but how do you get more from your- Finish the mad lib. |
| Fatima: | So, yeah, to give you a little bit about my background, before Eighty-Eight I worked for quite a few years at a start-up called Rent Frock Repeat. We are a dress rental company and we rent out designer clothing for a fraction of the retail cost. So we save our customers time, money, and closet space. So, Jess, I know you’re based out of Connecticut, I’m sure you’ve heard of Rent the Runway. We are the Canadian version of them. And I think that at the end of the day, it was an amazing experience for me because I handled- I went in there to scale the company and I went in there to handle all outbound business, and content creation was a big part of that. We created- I’m a weekly commentator on Global News so I cover fashion trends and that’s where my love of content writing really started. And I think that that was sort of the trajectory to where I started realizing that to make yourself relevant, to make yourself current, you really need to build a very strong personal brand for the company. |
| Randy: | That’s awesome! If anyone listening to Content Pros who tunes in on a regular basis is wondering, Fatima did not just call Tyler Jess. Jess is our awesome executive producer of Content Pros Podcast who sits in the background, makes all the magic happen, and we all love Jess so we naturally call her out all the time. Usually it’s off, but it’s all good, Fatima, you’d don’t have to worry. We’re more than happy to give her the spotlight every now and then. So, one last really cool thing about you that I’m always intrigued to meet these types of people, is you were one of the top 30 Under 30 women in our region. So tell me a little bit about what that was like and maybe the coolest person you met through that experience who was also in the 30 Under 30. |
| Fatima: | Yeah, so we are- I would- It would be really hard for me to pick just one person through that network. But, yes, in 2016 I was listed as a top-run marketer and developer. It’s- It was absolutely incredible and I’m so grateful for it, but I think at the end of the day there are so many people that go unnoticed and I think that the advantage I might have had in this situation is that I have started building a personal brand early on. Whether it be for myself, or for the company that I’m working with, and I think that there are so many people that also deserve that recognition. In terms of people that I’ve met through this network that I think have been really, really impactful in what they’re doing is- There’s someone called Sarah Bajaya from Loblaws and she is a digital marketing guru. And I just- She’s a conversion expert at the end of day and I just love the work that she is doing. And we were actually having a conversation recently. I was moderating a panel down at Twitter and it was on influencer marketing and we were having a conversation about why we’re so excited about content creation these days and when having that conversation with her, I realized that this network of 30 Under 30 people are really aligned in their thinking. We really do get marketing and we get the possibilities for content creators today. And I just think it’s so exciting that in the history of the world, there has never really been an opportunity to make a decent living as a content creator. And there now is such a great opportunity to monetize on your writing, your design skills, your love of video and editing, and I think we’re just at the beginning. I think that the web’s appetite for quality content is insatiable and I love that about the marketing 30 Under 30 network because that is what everyone is focused on. They’re focused on creating good, quality content and I’m just so excited to be a part of this group. |
| Randy: | That’s great. You know, Fatima, this has been so much fun having you and you touched on some awesome parts there that we could go so much deeper on around the idea of our own personal brands. If you’ve enjoyed this Podcast, tuning in, first of all, we- Tyler and I truly appreciate you taking the time. There’s so much other great podcasts we have recorded at ContentProsPodcast.com and if you go there, there’s even one I was thinking about from only a few weeks ago with Barry Feldman and Seth Price where we talked all about building your own brand and if you want to dig in more, listen to that one for the first time, or listen back on it and a lot of the things that Fatima is doing is right in line with that. So, Fatima, it’s great to have been able to learn from you. If you want to hear more of these podcasts again, aside from going to ContentProsPodcast.com, you can find us on iTunes, on Stitcher, on Google Play. Wherever you find us and you can leave us feedback, please do. Please let us know what you’re enjoying. And until next time, on behalf of Tyler Lessard at Vidyard, I’m Randy Frisch at Uberflip and this has been the Content Pros Podcast. |
Join the Social Pros LinkedIn Community
Join a community of real social pros doing social media on LinkedIn. Receive all the inspiration and ideas straight to your feed and add your thoughts to the conversation.
