I’d been involved in trying to build contributed programs for a long time and I always saw a lot of problems. That was job number one, was to design a blog that was beautiful and people felt proud of being on. We will empower them to write about the topics that they care about.” Instead of having an editorial line, we put together a framework where we’re like, “If your topic falls within design skills and methodology, design culture, and design leadership, we will publish it.” We would happily contradict that point of view the next week. We empowered people to write about what they wanted to. The third thing was that we staffed differently than a normal content marketing team. We actually have people who will sit in a Google document and co-write with an author to make them feel better about the direction that their piece is taking and actually give them a really great engagement layer with a real human that makes it feel more like a partnership and less like they’re doing us a favor. The last thing is that we did a lot of outbound work. Designers, how do they want to read? We’re trying to communicate to designers something that they don’t know how to do yet around design leadership. If you want to hear the full podcast, we’ve posted it above, and you can read a full transcript of this talk on Convince & Convert, where it was originally posted!
Teaming up with the team at Convince & Convert, Vidyard’s VP of Marketing Tyler Lessard hosts the Content Pros Podcast. For this week’s episode, Tyler is joined by Clair Byrd, Director of Competitive Marketing at Twilio to talk about creating the perfect content vehicle. Check out the full podcast:
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There are a couple things that when we were building this program we wanted to shift. I’d been involved in trying to build contributed programs for a long time and I always saw a lot of problems. I tried to go in with the mindset of just taking those problems off the table. One, you have to make people look really sexy. That was job number one, was to design a blog that was beautiful and people felt proud of being on. Beyond anything else, that was our job number one, make them look really great.
Number two, let them write about what they want to write about. So many contributed programs that I’ve been a part of have so many strict editorial guidelines and rules and they actually prescribe topics to you. That’s not how we approach this at all. We were like, “That’s nonsense. No one is going to actually write about something that we want them to write about. We will empower them to write about the topics that they care about.” Instead of having an editorial line, we put together a framework where we’re like, “If your topic falls within design skills and methodology, design culture, and design leadership, we will publish it.” We would happily contradict that point of view the next week. We didn’t feel like there needed to be any sense of stream of consciousness around what we were trying to do because we really wanted to represent a healthy cross-section of the design community. We empowered people to write about what they wanted to.
The third thing was that we staffed differently than a normal content marketing team. We actually have people who will sit in a Google document and co-write with an author to make them feel better about the direction that their piece…
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