Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
In-the-trenches content marketing advice from the world's best content marketing agency. Hosted by Ty Magnin, CEO, and Tim Metz, Director of Marketing and Innovation.
Heike Young [00:00:00]:
I think, like, product marketers, you know, we can get a little scared of them sometimes.
Like, they know so much about the product and they're, you know, they they hate us.
You know, do they just want us to write their blog posts? But I have actually found over
the years, like, product marketers to be some of my best advocates when we can really
agree on shared goals.
Ty Magnin [00:00:24]:
Welcome to the Animals Podcast. I'm Ty Magnon, the CEO at Animals.
Tim Metz [00:00:28]:
And I'm Tim Metz, the director of marketing and innovation.
Ty Magnan [00:00:31]:
This season on the Animals Podcast, we are pulling back the corporate curtain to show
you how the largest, most complex b to b SaaS teams actually get content out the door.
Hear from content leaders at some of the biggest names in SaaS, sharing the systems
they've built, the battles they've fought, and the lessons they've learned along the way.
Today, we are joined by Heike Young. Heike Young is the head of content, social, and
integrated marketing at Microsoft under their advertising or AI business. Before
Microsoft, Heike led content teams at Salesforce for almost a decade. And if you check
her out on LinkedIn, which I recommend you do, she has a solid following, and
produces these delightful short form humorous videos about b to b content and and b
to b marketing at large. Excited for you to take a listen in to our conversations today with
Haika Young. If you're like most b to b content marketers, you wanna lead the
conversation in your industry.
Ty Magnan [00:01:26]:
At Animals, we help b to b software companies do exactly that by creating standout
survey driven state of the industry type reports that help you grow your brand authority,
backlinks, and pipeline. In just 12, we run a process that helps uncover narratives from a
unique dataset packaged into a beautifully designed flagship content asset that your
whole team is gonna be proud of. Book a consult now at animals.co/whitepapers and
find out how to set the new benchmark for your industry. Heike, thank you so much for
joining the Animals podcast. Welcome. The way we start every episode, as you well
know, is with this critical fastball question. What content have you been consuming
lately?
Heike Young [00:02:09]:
Oh my gosh. I wish that I could say that it was some super cerebral high brow content,
like a really, a really insightful book that I got at the library. But I just, I really try to let my
brain rot as much as I need to in the evenings after a long day of work. And recently, I
started watching The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, and it's been a balm to my soul
just to disconnect and totally tune out. So I really enjoy that one. Shout out to my friend
Paul who recommended specifically the Salt Lake City Housewives because there's so
many of these seasons, and, like, I can't get into Real Housewives if there's gonna be,
like, ten or eleven seasons. I just haven't seen enough in the show. So Salt Lake City is,
like, perfect.
Heike Young [00:02:53]:
There's a couple seasons. You can get into the drama and just, like, let I
Ty Magnan [00:02:57]:
love it. There maybe there's a hack there of, like, to create great content during the day,
you have to watch, you know, junk content in the EFA?
Heike Young [00:03:05]:
Everybody has their own process, and there's probably some content marketers I really
respect who are, like, yes. Love Salt Lake City, Real Housewives. That's the best. And
then there's probably some other ones who are, like, oh, no. I no longer have any respect
for Heike. And if that's you, that's totally fair. No problem. No harm.
Heike Young [00:03:25]:
No foul. But hopefully, we'll get into some other things that I I in this podcast that I can
earn some of your respect back.
Ty Magnan [00:03:30]:
And maybe with that, we could start with a short intro. So a little bit about your
background and then your current role at Microsoft. I'm also curious what attracted you
to this role in particular.
Heike Young [00:03:40]:
Yeah. I'm so glad you invited me on this show because I understand it's specifically for
content marketers, and content marketing is, like, that is just my very favorite part of the
modern, you know, kind of b to b marketing, role and responsibilities stack. It's where I
came up through is many, many years in content marketing. And, you know, I guess if I'm
taking a step back, I am in marketing because I it's make cool homes with other people.
I love the creative process, and I love the collaborative nature of getting to make things
with others at work. So whether it's a video, a research report, an integrated campaign,
new brand messaging, whatever it might be, that is really what keeps me in this field and
what gets me out of bed every morning is that creative flow and that process. I started
my career in book publishing, and so I was, you know, English literature major. Writing
and editing was kinda my background.
Heike Young [00:04:37]:
I edited books for a little while. And, I found that for me, you know, the publishing
industry was pretty slow paced. Think about it. You edit this book for eight, nine months.
By the time you publish it, some of the stats might already be out of date, and you might
need to publish an addendum. And so I really craved something with more immediacy,
and so, I found my way into social media marketing. So my very first marketing job was
as an organic social manager, but then we also did a lot with content at the agency that I
worked at. And so, you know, you can't really have social content without content to talk
about.
Heike Young [00:05:13]:
And so it's like these I think these functions, in my mind, they've always been, like, you
know, butter and jelly or matcha and boba. Like, they just content and social have to go
together. It's just like the perfect pairing. And so did some social stua at an agency for a
while, added on a lot more content responsibilities, and then that is when, I began to
kinda hear I mean, honestly, I think just, like, I don't I didn't have some grand plan when I
set out on this path to work at Salesforce and work at Microsoft and be in b two b tech.
To be honest, as a young person growing up in Indianapolis without a lot of tech
companies around me, I had heard from some of my friends in Indianapolis that there
was this really cool tech company, ExactTarget, and I heard that the benefits were really
good if you worked there. I heard that the oaice was really nice. And when you're in your
twenties, these are the things that you care about. And so it wasn't some Machiavellian
plan to get into tech and get RSUs.
Heike Young [00:06:12]:
At that point it was really just, oh, this seems like it would be a cool place to work, and
they got content marketing as a new job. And so I was the first content marketing hire at
this company, ExactTarget. And so I, you know, was hired on to do research reports and,
you know, run a bunch of blog content, etcetera, do some ghostwriting for executives. A
few months after I started working there, that company was acquired by Salesforce. And
so that is sort of, like, my, you know, origin story of how I got into this crazy world. Then I
moved into the brand content marketing team at Salesforce. I was quickly thrust into
this very high growth tech environment. And Salesforce at the time, it was really, like, at
the center of a lot of these really big movements and changes in marketing, things like
community marketing and the Trailblazer program.
Heike Young [00:06:56]:
They were doing a lot of things with events and branding that I think were pretty
innovative and still are. And so, yeah, it was just kind of as fate would have it. That's sort
of how I came into this world. I did a number of diaerent content marketing jobs over the
years at Salesforce, on that brand team, but also on the product marketing team and
more of a, channel centric team running things like the YouTube channel for a couple
years. So, yeah, I just was able to jump around to a lot of diaerent roles and
opportunities within Salesforce. And after ten or so years of doing that, it was kinda time
for me to get a new role, find some find a diaerent type in my step. If anybody listening to
this, you know, you've been with the same company for a long time. You know how it is.
Heike Young [00:07:38]:
Like, you get super comfortable, and you just need that little push to get you out of your
comfort zone. And so that's where I was last year and kinda what brought me to
Microsoft.
Ty Magnan [00:07:47]:
Yeah. And tell us about your current role at Microsoft and and what attracted you to it.
Heike Young [00:07:52]:
Great question. So my current role, I think it's super awesome and still so grateful that
they picked me. They had a ton of great candidates. My current role is head of content,
social, and integrated marketing for, some products that live under the Microsoft AI
division. So there's this really awesome guy, Mustafa Suleiman, who heads up, MAI or
Microsoft AI, and this is all of the really cool innovation around, you know, Copilot and AI
and all of this this amazing stua that's happening in Microsoft. There's an incredible TED
Talk from Mustafa about AI if you just go on YouTube and search for it. I would highly
recommend it if you are at all AI curious and just want sort of a future looking view into
some of this stua, but you're also not totally sure where it's headed. That would be a
great one that I would look into right away.
Heike Young [00:08:41]:
And my world is sort of the b two b arm, which is all about, Microsoft advertising
products. So there's all of these advertising products that live under MAI, and it's
basically just like advertising on Microsoft surfaces. So this could be ads that happen in
Bing. It could be Copilot in Bing. There's a lot of ads you could do through, like,
Activision and gaming, etcetera, and so, Xbox. And so it's basically all of these diaerent
places where you can advertise as a marketer or advertiser through the Microsoft
ecosystem to the many, you know, billions of users that are on Microsoft, devices and in
those systems every single day. So it's a bit of marketing to marketers, bit of marketing
to, you know, advertisers and people who are kinda on the forefront of creativity. And I
think what attracted me to this job the most was the mix of areas that I'm able to
oversee.
Heike Young [00:09:38]:
And, again, it's sort of like that mix of content, social, and integrated marketing, which is
really just like campaigns is the way we think about it. So it's like integrated campaign
work streams where we're funneling a bunch of diaerent virtual teams toward a specific
outcome, you know, within the context of these campaigns. So the campaign has a
dedicated audience and objective, you know, a bunch of tactics that we've used to land
that message with our target audience. And so, you know, as I was looking for content
roles last year, I had been promoted from content specialist to senior director of content
strategy at Salesforce. And they're just to be honest, like, there just weren't that many
great content leadership roles out there that I saw, And I think that's a miss. There
should be a lot of high level, you know, content leadership roles out in the world, but it's
kind of like you're forced to take some diaerent paths. Like, maybe you go do VP of
brand or, you know, there could be some other ways. And some companies do have VP
of content, But it's few and far between.
Heike Young [00:10:39]:
And so I was really interested in this job because it was one of the only ones that I saw,
to be frank, on my job hunt that combined a few of these things together and just really
had enough inertia around distribution and actually getting all this content up to market.
And so it's not just how can we create the most number of blog posts, it's how do we
really resonate with our target audience through all of these diaerent work streams. And
so it's super cool. My team also has like, I've got a team member that just works on
customer success stories. I have somebody that just works on employee influencer
programs for social. And so it you know, I'm able to kinda tie a lot of these things
together in a much more strategic way.
Ty Magnan [00:11:21]:
That's awesome. What a journey you've been on, and what a cool opportunity you're at.
If we can help the audience understand the role of content at Microsoft or at, you know,
Microsoft AI, that would be huge. It's kind of it's usually hard to kinda to define, but
curious how you would articulate that. And maybe you've hit on it already talking about
distribution and then, you know, there's this integrated campaigns piece, but what
would you say the role of content at MAI is?
Heike Young [00:11:50]:
It's an awesome question. And I think, when I started this job, I put together a few slides
for the team about my content philosophy. Because even though I'm managing
integrated campaigns and social in this broader functional area, I would say content is
the one where I was really hired to kinda make a big impact on day one. There wasn't a
lot of content being created in the strategic way, and so, I was kinda coming out the gate
with a lot of perspective and inertia around content strategy specifically. And I
remember putting together a deck for the team, and I essentially told them, I am not
here to create high performing content for you. I am here to help this group change our
audience's hearts and minds when it comes to Microsoft advertising. And we have to
shift perspectives with our target audience. You know, they don't necessarily know
about the Microsoft services that they could be advertising on.
Heike Young [00:12:49]:
They may know a lot about the competitors out there that they could be advertising
with. And our awareness, to be clear, is not really the problem. Like, they know that
Microsoft Advertising exists. And so the role of content is not kind of that top of funnel,
increase brand awareness by creating the ultimate guide to x y z topics, you know, type
of content marketing. It's really more oaering our bold point of view, our spicy POVs
around changes and shifts happening in the market, layering in how generative AI and
capabilities with Microsoft are gonna help you uplevel your marketing and advertising
strategies and really convincing people to work with us and invest with us. And so it is
more of a if you wanna think of it as a funnel, almost more of a middle and bottom
funnel strategy mixed with, of course, like, thought leadership and some of those spiky
point of views to attract a broader audience. So those are some of the things that I am
thinking about as I'm tackling the content strategy.
Tim Metz [00:13:51]:
Can you speak to also what does team look like? Like, how many people on the team?
What kind of roles do they have?
Heike Young [00:13:57]:
Org charts are so fascinating to me. And, I was at a session at Content Marketing World
a few years ago. I it was like, you know, a dia, there was a panel and a few diaerent
brands were talking about their content teams, and people showed a slide of their org
charts. Every single phone went up to take a picture because I think, it's like we never
know, yeah, like what other people's org charts look like. It's like, what the heck is that?
And so within our team, I report to a brand marketing leader. So he's, like, our senior
director of brand marketing for this area. He reports to a general manager slash global
CMO for this area. So she's, like, our marketing lead, and then my boss is our brand
marketing lead.
Heike Young [00:14:41]:
And then my team is, you know, a few diaerent parts of social media. So, I have a couple
people helping me. They've got social responsibilities, also a couple other things that
they do. But there's, there's a couple of people that are helping me, like, day to day with
social. One person that's mostly dedicated to kind of that employee influencer stua that
I mentioned. There's a content team that has primarily one person powered by a big,
agency support model. So, like, an editorial manager, content marketing manager doing
a lot of editorial guidance, content marketing operations, and content analytics, and
then supported by an agency that does a lot of writing for us and just a lot of that really
creating a bunch of content. And then there are, four integrated marketers on the team.
Heike Young [00:15:30]:
And so these are my, like, campaign leads. They have one, maybe one and a half,
maybe, like, a smaller campaign each. And, one of those people is entirely dedicated to
customer success stories. So that they are they are sort of the connective tissue tissue
between me and the content and social strategy and the rest of the organization. So
they would have a virtual team put together for their campaign. They would have weekly
calls with the product marketers and, yes, the other stakeholders that are working on
that virtual team, And then we work really closely together on, bringing the full vision to
life through content, social, and these integrated campaigns. So, you know, some of the
pieces shift a little bit here and there, but that's kind of at a high level, how everything is
how everything is, structured.
Ty Magnan [00:16:20]:
Nice. In our correspondences leading up to today, you talked about the four wheels of
the car. Right? We're talking about stakeholders for your integrated campaigns and for
content. Can you help, the audience understand, like, what are the four wheels of the
car for you? Does it only apply to Microsoft? Does it apply to all content types? How do
you see that? And then maybe we can get into after that, like, the stakeholder
relationships, and how do you relate to product marketing versus demand or some of
the other wheels of the car?
Heike Young [00:16:50]:
Yes. So I have to shout out some of my former colleagues at Salesforce who really
helped me, live out, a lot of changes together. We saw a lot of content transformation
when I was there, and we actually there was a whole bunch of us content marketers at
Salesforce several years ago that embarked on something that internally we called the
content revolution. Uh-oh. Because we saw that there is this need inside of the
company to really be revolutionary in how we were distributing gated content, you know,
using forms, using, you know, all of these kind of old school tactics to market our, our
ideas to our audience. And so we put together this framework, a few years ago together
when we're doing this to really spark cross functional collaboration, which you've spoke
to. And so it was this idea of the four wheels of the car, and I'll explain exactly what they
are. So we felt like to make the car go, to make the ideas go, you would need content,
like a content strategy arm, a creative arm, so somebody that's looking at the branding,
the look and feel, somebody doing product marketing, so guiding everything with the
messaging and with regards to how this actually supports and ladders up to the product
narrative.
Heike Young [00:18:06]:
And so you got content, creative, product marketing, and then campaigns or demand
gen kind of being that last one. And some organizations will structure that role a little bit
diaerently depending on how their sales, their sales team works, etcetera. But at
Salesforce, it was really sort of like a campaigns team that was doing a lot of paid
boosting of the content, making sure that if we were doing ABM or events, all of that was
wrapped up into a demand gen. Yes. Like, all of that was wrapped up together. And so
we came up with this model. We felt like these four functional areas really need to not
only play nice together in the sandbox, but they need to be deeply, deeply integrated.
And so, with varying degrees of success, I'd say, some of the years that we did it, it
worked better than others.
Heike Young [00:18:54]:
But the goal was to have an integrated planning process, but we didn't have a creative
strategy being made over over here and a content plan being made over here and
product marketing doing this thing. But it was all four of these groups coming together
on one slide deck that brought the full team to bear. And I bring that same philosophy to
my team. You know, now at Microsoft, some of the players are slightly diaerent. But I
really think in most organizations, you have to bring probably all of those functions
together in order to be really, really successful.
Ty Magnan [00:19:27]:
Yeah. They all have something to bring to the table. No doubt. Like, what is content
without creative? You know? And you're gonna get in trouble if you don't loop in the the
product marketing team and get that messaging right. You know?
Heike Young [00:19:38]:
And I think, like, product marketers, you know, we can get a little scared of them
sometimes. Like, they know so much about the product, and they're, you know, they,
they hate us, you know, do they just want us to write their blog posts, and they, they
think that we're just the, you know, the content intern team. Are they gonna just throw all
of our our ideas into chat GPT or something if if, push comes to shove? But I have
actually found over the years, like, product marketers to be some of my best advocates
when we can really agree on shared goals and, like, shared objectives. And when you
really show them that you're thinking through their ICP, their goals, you're using their
messaging the way that you're supposed to. I'd say probably some of the best content
plans I've ever made in my career were ones where I got into a room with a team of
product marketers, and I used their exact frameworks to just be the foundation of my
content plans. And I so I'm not gonna take the exact words that they use. Some of them
might be a little cheesy or not audience centric or whatever they might be. But I'm gonna
take that framework because they have laid out.
Heike Young [00:20:49]:
This is the ICP. This is the product they should buy. You know, they have laid out that
information. I'm gonna layer that with what I know about channel performance, about
audience, and sites, etcetera. We're gonna combine that, and then once we do, we can
sort of be unstoppable. So, you know, if you can, yeah, I think if you can get your product
marketers aligned to where they see that the content's gonna perform so much better
once you're working on it, they will be your your best friends.
Ty Magnan [00:21:17]:
So I love the positive outlook on that and and sort of how you think about what a good
collaboration looks like between content and product marketing. One role that wasn't in
the car or one of the wheels of the car and I'm curious where you tuck it in is, what do
we wanna call it, marketing ops or, like, measurement or analytics? How do you see that
part? Like, where does that part sit? Is it under demand gen? Is it under an integrated
campaign manager? Maybe it's diaerent in diaerent roles.
Heike Young [00:21:48]:
One of the best content teams that I've ever been a part of was probably the one where
my VP of content had a direct report that was, like, the director of content operations
reporting to her. And this person was just in charge of the tech stack for all of the
content marketers. This person was in charge of one dashboard dashboard that every
content marketing in the company could use and access with all of the data in it. They
would do regular refreshes of that dashboard and really treated it like a product that we
could all, you know, access and benefit from, and get analytics from and just have every
content marketer in the company measuring the same way. I've seen too many times
that when these things are not centralized and everybody's measuring things their own
way, somebody's coming out of the woodwork, especially in bigger org. If you're at a
smaller company, you might not really relate to what I'm saying. But if you're in a bigger
org, you know, few hundred employees, a thousand plus employees, there's people that
come out of the woodwork. They say, oh, you know, I just did our best performing blog
post ever.
Heike Young [00:22:55]:
Look at this. It got this many views. And then somebody else says, well, what dashboard
are you looking at? Because the one I'm looking at says, this is the highest performing
piece of content. And then someone else says, oh, no. But you aren't looking. You didn't
you know, we've got this Adobe dashboard over here. And so suddenly everybody is not
speaking the same language. They're not speaking from the same dataset.
Heike Young [00:23:14]:
And this is a really big problem at big companies. You just not everybody is reporting
from the same information, and they're just not all aligned. So I would say it depends on
kinda how this is structured. I would say at many companies today, I would prob with
the proliferation of, like, great writing talent out there that you can access on a freelance
basis, you know, so many great agencies that are out there that can support you.
Honestly, I just feel like I would rather have a content marketing manager focus heavily
on operations and analytics than just, like, being an editor and, like, copywriter these
days, especially with all the tools that you could use, whether they're, you know,
Grammarly, whether you train an internal agent on your editorial guidelines. Like, there's
so many tools and so many ways you could empower people to focus on the editorial
stua. Like, I would rather just have a content marketing manager or leader that's looking
after some of that ops and analytics stua in a really structured way.
Ty Magnan [00:24:19]:
I like that answer a lot because, I think content teams sometimes don't take ownership
over that dashboarding over the measurement of the work that's being done that they're
doing, right, or responsible for. And sometimes they leave it to demand gen or marketing
ops or, like, it sits somewhere else. But, really, maybe they don't get, you know, the
attention, the kinds of reports they really need to be most successful in order to, like,
you know, advocate for themselves in the business. So I like the idea of, like, having that
be an internal seat. Makes a lot of sense to me.
Heike Young [00:24:50]:
Yeah. And it's easy to just kind of say, oh, well, we we didn't get the data that we wanted,
so we're just not gonna use it. Or, oh, well, we're still waiting on x y z and just not take
ownership. And I just don't think that isn't good in most situations. Look. If you're
listening to this, you're like, no. I truly don't have any way to access the data. They've
locked it up.
Heike Young [00:25:13]:
I mean, you are between a rock and a hard place, and by all means, take a load oa, go
log oa for the day. Don't stress yourself out about this anymore. You've done enough,
and you should just stop trying if if people are truly disempowering you in this way. But if
there is a way for you to get some ownership of that data and do it yourself and, like, DIY
this type of dashboard, even if it's a slide once a month. You know, like, hey. Once a
month, we do this slide on our blog channel, our social channel. We update these
specific things. Something you can actually go dig up metrics for and own and come
back to your leadership and say, here's what we did.
Heike Young [00:25:58]:
I always think it behooves you to have ownership of that stua.
Ty Magnan [00:26:02]:
I like it.
Tim Metz [00:26:03]:
Are there other roles that you would love to see on content teams that are not on the
content teams that often or, like, new roles that you see emerging that you're excited
about?
Heike Young [00:26:12]:
The two jobs that I and when I first joined this team, there were two roles that I really
saw critically important that we didn't have somebody dedicated, you know, kind of full
time staa for. And I touched on them a little bit, but one was a dedicated customer
success stories person, and the other was a dedicated kind of employee social
influencer person. And for both of those roles, like, I had people one person had been
doing a bunch of customer success stua previously, but it was, you know, with a little bit
more of, like, a sales focus. And I was real with that job, I was really trying to bring it into
the integrated marketing model. So, like, regardless of what your campaign is, when you
need a customer story in that research report or in that social campaign or whatever it
is, you have a person to go to that has relationships with sales, that knows how to get
these customers talking, that has templates for all these things, and is improving those
templates over time and rooting them in the rest of our content strategy. And so that
was, like, super, super important to me. This is some customer success stories is
something that was really, I guess, instilled in me when I was at Salesforce. If you've
ever been to a Salesforce event, you know that they lead with customer stories.
Heike Young [00:27:23]:
Like, you show up for Dreamforce and every single billboard in a city is, like, littered with
pictures of the customer, not the Salesforce executives. Right? It's the customers. And
that's one thing that the company does really well. And then the other thing that I had
somebody start focusing on was this idea of employee influencers and employee,
advocacy on social media. And I don't see that many content teams doing this role yet,
and I think we will very soon. We already are starting to see more teams take on this
focus. But, you know, I I've spent the past year plus in my personal life kind of dedicating
a lot of my time to figuring out what works on LinkedIn, you know, what are some of the
trends there in terms of, like, innovative content on LinkedIn. And it just struck me as I
came into this job and I got ownership of a LinkedIn and an Instagram account.
Heike Young [00:28:13]:
One of my very first days, I pulled up the analytics for the LinkedIn page that I manage,
and it's got, you know, 50 thou 5,000 plus followers. Like, it's not a tiny page. It's not
huge by any means, but it did no. It's a decent sized page, in the grand scheme of b to b
marketing, especially for something where nobody's been, pushing it that hard. Right?
They've got a little bit of organic content, but not a ton. And one of my first days I opened
up the analytics, I had only seen, like, my personal analytics for the past year on
LinkedIn, and I was just, like, used to those numbers. And so when I went in and I saw
that there were posts that had, like, hundreds of impressions, like a few hundred
impressions or something. I was like, wait, what is going on here? And it just it became
so clear to me.
Heike Young [00:28:59]:
LinkedIn, all these other platforms, and I love LinkedIn. Shout out to LinkedIn. Microsoft
owns them. Best, you know, best social media platform ever. I spend a ton of my time
using LinkedIn. Yeah. I love it. But, like, they want you to buy ads on LinkedIn.
Heike Young [00:29:12]:
They don't want you to buy get free organic reach for every single brand post that you put
out there. And so it makes so much sense that personal profiles would outperform
company profiles every day of the week. And so, I'm like, you're putting me in charge of
social media. What you think you're doing is giving me control of this LinkedIn account.
What I'm actually gonna do is make our employees vertical video celebrities. Right? And
put them, put their content in front of our target audience in new ways. And so we
basically stood up, you know, we'll program for this. There's decks.
Heike Young [00:29:48]:
There's slides that employees can use. Like, I'm way more interested in 20 employees
that are gonna do this really well than a hundred people copying and pasting links
Ty Magnan [00:29:58]:
Right.
Heike Young [00:29:59]:
You know, to our blog posts. Like, that doesn't really interest me. I'm interested in those
15 or 20 people that see the value, and they're gonna wake up in the morning thinking,
how can I turn this customer meeting into a cool video? Or how can I, you know, film
something at this event that I'm at and make it into a really interesting TikTok? Like,
those are the people that I'm super, excited to work with.
Ty Magnan [00:30:20]:
Man, there is so much to unpack here. So, yeah, excited we made it to this point in the
podcast. So for folks listening, if you haven't seen Haika's LinkedIn, go there now. Okay?
It is fun. It is clever. It's, funny. And and really, she's kind of, I don't know. What do we call
it? Like, you've you've you've you've mastered this kinda genre of
Heike Young [00:30:43]:
Link talks. Yeah. I don't know. LinkTok is something that some people call it, like, the
combination LinkedIn and TikToks, the Shorts. You know, you can call them, like, yeah,
Shorts. Yeah. And I know, like, I hear people complain sometimes. They're like, oh, I just
don't want LinkedIn to turn into TikTok.
Heike Young [00:30:59]:
TikTok. Like, I like LinkedIn the way that it was. But we have diaerent media for telling
diaerent types of stories. The types of stories that I tend to gravitate toward, you know, a
lot of times, they are a little bit more humorous, like a skit a sketch. Like, there's a
character being portrayed. And I just have never found a way to do exactly that in, like, a
text post. Like, I just I find that a video is a really compelling medium for exactly what I'm
trying to do. So I try to bring that while also educating people.
Heike Young [00:31:29]:
Like, I'm not trying to purely just, you know, entertain you for absolutely no business
value for you, no career growth value for you whatsoever. Like, hopefully, you will leave,
a tiny bit, a tiny bit more informed about something, but also entertained. So I think we
can have I think we can have both, on LinkedIn and definitely not trying to take away
anybody's, text posts. I am trying to take away the polls, though. Those are the polls. I'm
sorry. We just don't need the polls on LinkedIn. We're all done with the polls.
Heike Young [00:31:58]:
Right?
Ty Magnan [00:31:59]:
Yes. You heard it first here. No more polls. And, also, I love that you came clean on, like,
the, the algorithm favoring the individuals. It's like, okay. Yes. We've heard about this.
We've talked about this.
Ty Magnan [00:32:10]:
It feels a little more oaicial hearing it from you being a Microsoft person.
Heike Young [00:32:14]:
To be clear, nobody has ever told me that. Like, no one's, you know, I I know a few people
from LinkedIn. They're all wonderful. Nobody's ever said to me, you know, oh, yeah, the
brand profiles underperform standpoint, it always does better on the personal page by
many, many times over. And it's not just the engagement. Because I think there's an
element of of course, you know, you wanna engage with the person. Like, if I'm just
thinking about me, I'm the consumer, put on my consumer hat. If I see you guys post a
video, I'm more likely to like that than animals posting a video.
Heike Young [00:32:49]:
Right? Because I wanna support you. I want you to think, oh, yeah. Haika, you know,
gave me a high five virtually today by liking my video. Like, I'm thinking about your
reaction to it, and, like, I wanna be kind and supportive. Whereas, you know, I see a
brand post something. I'm not my immediate reaction isn't give love to a brand per se,
and some brands are It's
Tim Metz [00:33:09]:
behind me.
Heike Young [00:33:09]:
Yeah. They're creating great content and that's exactly. Exactly. It's like and so, you
know, I think that it stands to reason. And so if you are a person, especially in b to b, I
just think if you're a person in charge of social, you know, take the brand pay the brand
page is like a tiny part of the equation. Like, think about everything else that social
means. Like, social doesn't equal organic posting from a brand account.
Ty Magnan [00:33:33]:
Right. Right. I could take us back to your two k months or year. Okay? You had two k
followers, not 32 k. I'm imagining you didn't, like, nail it on the first go. Right? And as we
all know, putting out putting content out there, like, you're putting yourself out there.
Right? You're in a vulnerable state. Can you take us through maybe, like, what some of
those first iterations were and kinda, like, how you found your way to this pretty what
seems like pretty dialed in, formula that's helping you grow your reach.
Tim Metz [00:34:07]:
And that you're also teaching others. Right? Let's let's and let's then go into that.
Heike Young [00:34:11]:
Yes. Yeah. Thank you for saying that. And, yeah, I have kind of based on my learnings, I
had so many people over the past, especially, like, half a year or so, start to ping me and
ask me, like, well, what kind of equipment do you use, and how do you come up with
these video ideas? And so as you astutely said to him, I put it all kinda into this guide
that you can check out. It's, like, the main link on my LinkedIn page. That's kind of, like,
my first, you know, ebook oaering of this type of content because I spent so much time
thinking about it. I when I started this, you know, I had a couple thousand followers. I
just it never ever would have dawned on me.
Heike Young [00:34:47]:
It just never would have occurred to me that I would one day monetize my, you know,
audience on LinkedIn, that I would do, like, brand partnerships, some amazing
companies. I mean, it was all just, like, so far out of the realm of what I was trying to do
at the time. And I say that because if you're kind of like, oh, this is totally overwhelming.
Even doing, like, one video seems overwhelming. As overwhelming as that might seem
to you now, that is exactly how overwhelming what I'm doing now would have seemed to
me then. So just don't worry. If you're kind of thinking about it, like, oh, I wish I could do
this more, maybe it's not even for your personal self. Maybe you're wishing you could do
this for your brand, or maybe you're an entrepreneur, or maybe you are a content and
social marketing manager at a company, and you wish you could harness the style of
content more.
Heike Young [00:35:33]:
You know, I had very little video editing experience. I had done a TV news internship in
college. I'd done, like, I've done, like, some radio DJing in college. That was on old
technology, not on TabCut, like, none of the tools that we have today. So it's not like I
had a bunch of experience working in these, types of systems to make this kind of video.
And so I had this idea, you know, had very few followers on LinkedIn, mostly just the
people that I was connected to. But I really I was on maternity leave, and I was spending
a lot of time watching these TikToks late at night, like, watching all these funny videos,
and I was, like, super inspired by the people that I saw making this really funny, like, skit
style content. And I was like, I wish that I could make something like this that would be
for b to b.
Heike Young [00:36:22]:
Yeah. And then just, like, remixing it for, like like, I had the idea, but I had no idea how I
would get there. And, my first few tries at doing it, I mean, there was a lot left on the
cutting room before that you'll all probably never see, you know, didn't see the light of
day that I just, like, deleted because it was, like, way too embarrassing. I remember
filming a lot of stua, like, at certain times of day in the morning because I was like, oh,
this is the only time that there's, like, enough lighting. Like, I didn't know how to work
with the lighting that I had in my house. Like, I just was like, oh, if it's 08:30, like, it's too
late. Like, I can't record a video that day. Like, I just didn't know anything about, you
know, setting up a shot.
Heike Young [00:36:59]:
I would I would love to tell you that I looked at the data and came up with this grand
strategy. But to be honest, I kind of ignored a lot of data in this journey. And I had a lot of
data early on that told me my text posts outperformed my video posts for a long time.
Long, long time. Like, I would get hundreds of likes on my text posts on LinkedIn, and I
would get, like, fewer likes on my videos. And I just kind of didn't believe that. I was like, I
just think that if I keep trying, you know, I'm gonna I'm just miss DeLulu is the salulu so
often, and this was definitely one of those moments where I was just
Ty Magnan [00:37:42]:
like Yep.
Heike Young [00:37:42]:
So DeLulu. I just, like, I kept doing it against all
Ty Magnan [00:37:46]:
Yeah.
Heike Young [00:37:46]:
Odds, because I just believed in it. So, yeah, I kinda went against some of the data. I
would use text posts to give me topical insights, but then I would keep feeding that into
the video format. If you're listening, you're kind of inspired, but you're not sure what to
do. I just think if you keep, iterating it doesn't even have to be something you show to
everybody. You don't even have to post all of it on LinkedIn. But if it's, like, you keep
showing it to friends, I had a few friends that I texted my first few videos to, and I was
like, is this embarrassing? Is this cringe? Like, what do I do with this information, guys?
And they were really honest and helpful in giving some very good directional feedback.
So, like, a trusted circle of friends and mentors can serve you really, really well.
Ty Magnan [00:38:32]:
That's great. Some really practical tips there. Bring it back to Microsoft. This brand of
humor, right, that is shining through your LinkedIn profile, has it been challenging to
bring that through? And not that, like, Microsoft AI's brand your brand by any stretch.
They're diaerent things. However, like, you know, having a brand in a I don't think a
Microsoft is, like, this big brand. I mean, it's a huge brand, but it's not like this, like,
playful, humorous one. Right? So I'm just curious how those two things, have you been
able to bring forth any of that into, what you're doing, you know, through the corporate?
Heike Young [00:39:09]:
I think it's a really good question. And what I would say in response to that is I think that
video is gonna perform the best when it's authentic to you. And authenticity, kind of a
corporate buzzword, but I feel like I totally warranted in using this right now. I am
creating these humorous get style videos because it's authentic to me. This is drawing
on my experience as an improv actor, something that's taking comedy writing classes.
Like, this is authentic this is something I've been practicing for a long time. That might
not feel authentic for you. What might feel authentic for you is writing parodies of songs
in a b to b way or, I don't know, like, doing, like, parodies of, like, exercise.
Heike Young [00:39:55]:
I have no idea what your interests are. Maybe you're doing maybe your personal passion
is, like, cooking, and you're doing a cooking show when you're making it b to b. I think
that is my takeaway for you, not, like, be funny. It's just, like, be you. That is the
takeaway, and that is what I try to tell the individuals that I work with on the employee
influencer program. It's like, don't watch my videos and think you're supposed to do this.
Watch and think, how does this inspire something in me that, like, I'm gonna now bring
to the people that follow me because it's authentically me and myself? And so I also
think you get away with more authenticity when you do post from personal profiles.
Right? Like, brand accounts, like, yeah, they're always gonna have to be on brand.
Heike Young [00:40:38]:
Posting from our CMO's page, our VP's page, other, you know, even, director level or
other junior level employees that have something to say, we can let those people be
themselves. They're posting it from their own channels. And, like, not only is that okay,
it's actually encouraged.
Tim Metz [00:40:54]:
Nice. Thank you. Where should people follow you and your work?
Heike Young [00:40:57]:
LinkedIn is still the best place to follow me. You know, I'm Haikai Young on LinkedIn. If
you find the person that works at Microsoft, it's probably me. I don't think there's that
many Haikai's that work at Microsoft, so hopefully they'll find me on LinkedIn. If you're
so inclined as to follow me on TikTok, I do post a lot of I guess I would say the the jokes
are, like, slightly diaerent. I post a lot of, like, parenting jokes, like mom content, and I'm
I'm testing I'm actively testing a lot of things on TikTok.
Ty Magnan [00:41:27]:
Nice. Well, thank you so much for spending some time with us. It's been great to get to
learn from you, take some inspiration, and, yeah, I'm excited to carry it forward. I'm sure
our audience is too. Thanks, Heike.
Heike Young [00:41:38]:
Oh, thank you all so much for having me. Getting to chat with content marketers is, like,
truly my fam, So appreciate everybody, listening in.
Ty Magnan [00:41:46]:
So, Tim, are you ready to be a LinkedIn influencer?
Tim Metz [00:41:48]:
No. I'd rather be on TikTok. No. There was an interesting distinction that I never thought
about, like, how how people respond diaerently on TikTok versus, LinkedIn a bit more
professional. It makes sense.
Ty Magnan [00:42:00]:
Yeah. Well, and the point, like, of one, that's, like, where professionals are hanging out,
you know, people are wearing suits. I don't think a lot of people have their TikTok profile
as someone wearing a suit, as themselves wearing a suit. But also the fact you put your
name on it is interesting. Right?
Tim Metz [00:42:13]:
Well, one thing I wrote down is, like, I think there's a lot like content marketers should
learn maybe from product marketers. That's something that came up. It's like this
almost like a blog post maybe. It's like, I think there's some stua to unpack there.
Ty Magnan [00:42:25]:
So I think there was a discussion.
Tim Metz [00:42:26]:
Blogs. Yeah. Kind of knew this but like, yeah, the employee advocacy side of like getting
employees on LinkedIn and getting them to post there and that's yeah. Thinking like,
yeah, there's a lot more to it than just saying, oh, for example, here we have a workflow
where you can leave your voice message. It's like like how can you really empower
people to use their personal brand and then how do you how do you bring in the
company brand and, yeah, just focusing a lot on that whole process and training and
things like that. Like also the soft aspect of that. I think that's actually quite interesting
for companies and even for us as an agency.
Ty Magnan [00:42:59]:
Yeah. Definitely that. Right? I feel like we could have gone another, Could've gone three
times as long just like going way into the weeds on that alone or going way into the weed
on, you know, how the campaigns team is collaborating with other folks within Microsoft
or like, there are there's a lot to learn from Haika. I think that's why she makes a a good
follow on LinkedIn too. It's because she, like yeah. There are some fun videos there, but
she's actually sharing some, like, insights along the way too that compound nicely. One
thing I liked that she talked about was having someone who's focused on content ops
on your team, right, and prioritizing that over potentially having writers in house. If you
lead measuring the ROI of content to demand gen to someone outside of your org, you
just might not get the views you need to be able to, like, advocate for yourselves or
optimize the program versus if you do have that owned in house by someone, you know,
very capable, you can do those things.
Ty Magnan [00:43:57]:
And then I also, of course, like, biased, but Heike is right. Like, there are a lot of good
freelancers and agencies out there. I know one of them, animals.co. Check us out. You
can, you know, request the sales, demo at any time. They can help you fill those gaps.
Right? And help scale better than you can. Right?
Tim Metz [00:44:14]:
Yeah. It's almost like the distribution or the or the production fallacy at scale that we all
just always keep focusing on the production. And then and then, like and so what she
was saying, what you're now also saying is, like, actually the production in some ways is
getting easier. There's other solutions for that. So, like, why not focus on other, things
that are important like the analytics and maybe even distribution is something we've
talked about before as well.
Ty Magnan [00:44:37]:
Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Alright. Sure. We're good. To our next enterprise episode. Thank
you all for listening.
Ty Magnan [00:44:43]:
We'll see you in a week or so with another great guest.
Tim Metz [00:44:47]:
See you.
Ty Magnan [00:44:47]:
Bye bye.