Written by Esther Lee Cruz (李亮芸), Insights & Content Marketing Manager at LinkedIn
Originally written for LinkedIn on Esther’s blog
Everyday I’m hustlin’… to be an awesome B2B content marketer. Read on to learn more what the #$&% I do.
A day in my life
7:45am Wakey wakey! Try not to feel bad about not waking up earlier to be a more “productive” and “centered” person.
8:30-9am Bike to work. Avoid buses, cars & sudden death on the roads of SF.
9-9:30am Grab breakfast at the office (yay, free food!), prioritize to-do list, chat with teammates about questions, life, etc.
9:30-10am Respond to urgent overnight emails from Europe & Asia marketing teammates. Give them information they need to create their localized marketing campaigns, translations of our English content, etc.
10-11am Meet with my team of ~10 to pre-brief and debrief on marketing campaigns. Get updates on what’s happening around the world, in our business, and across the company.
11am-12pm Write the first draft of an infographic in Google docs. Share with teammates for editing.
12pm-1pm Lunch in the cafeteria to catch up with a colleague visiting from Asia. If I’m swamped, I’ll succumb to doing lunch at my desk by myself.
1-2pm Meeting with an influencer to brainstorm topics for an upcoming webcast & blog post.
2-3pm Collect feedback on a 30 second video.
3-4pm Project manage the launch of a global marketing campaign. Email cross-functional partners in demand generation, marketing operations, PR, design, and insights.
4-7pm Edit 7 reports we’ll publish in a few weeks. Send them to marketing operations to upload to our website.
7-7:30pm Bike home. Avoid cars & sudden death on the roads.
7:30-8:30pm Catch up with the hubby over dinner.
8:30-10pm Plow through personal emails, news, & errands.
10-11:30pm Journal, read, play with our pet parrot, wind down & crash.
What motivates me
I feel like I’m creating useful & beautiful never-before-seen stories & materials. Working in the talent industry, I feel fulfilled helping people find jobs they love.
My goals
- Create Awareness: Build LinkedIn’s brand in the recruiting industry. We measure this mainly through positive, negative, and neutral social sentiment although we need more and better ways to track impact.
- Get Engagement & Sales: Get XX content downloads which eventually will lead to XX marketing qualified leads and $XX in sales for each marketing campaign. Right now I launch about 1 marketing campaign every 2 months, so ~6 per year.
Skills I use
- Writing
- Project management
- Giving creative feedback on writing, design, public speaking presentations, videos, etc.
- Analyzing marketing campaign metrics & ROI
- Search engine optimization (SEO) research to make my content more findable on Google
Nice-to-have skills
- Data visualization & analytics for creating reports
- Public speaking for webcasts & events
Important traits to do my job well
- Creativity & openness to try new things.
- Global mindset.
- 20% strategy 80% execution. You can’t be afraid to get your hands dirty.
- Partner well with creative agencies, sales, PR, demand generation, country marketers, product marketing, insights & marketing operations
Common past career paths
- Social media marketing
- Demand generation & outbound marketing
- Blogging
- Journalism & writing
- Sales
- PR & communication
Guess what? I didn’t have a background in any of these things! If you want to get into content marketing without experience, try switching internally at the company you’re working for now. This way, you’ll already know the business and/or industry and you can just focus on learning a new function & skills.
Common future career paths
- Brand marketing
- Demand generation & outbound marketing
- Product marketing
- PR & communications
- General management in marketing
5 things I love about my job
- Left & right brained: The chance to use both the creative and analytical sides of my brain. One moment I’m selecting music for a video and the next moment I’m creating charts for a data-driven white paper on where the recruiting industry is headed.
- Meaning: Doing marketing for a meaningful & motivating cause – creating economic opportunity for every professional in the global workforce. Nothing feels better than connecting your work with a product / service / cause you believe in.
- Business impact: Seeing that what I do has a quantifiable sales impact for the company. It’s satisfying to know that I brought in $XX million through what I’ve done.
- Cool people: Meeting and working with savvy people from different parts of the company, who give you great feedback and help you do the best marketing work of your life. I enjoy talking to PR about stories to pitch to the press just as much as I love working with our insights team to do hard core data analysis.
- Innovation: New forms of content constantly emerge — podcasts, interactive websites, etc so there’s no shortage of things to learn. It’s also invigorating to try to one-up yourself to create not-boring yet super useful content, even using old forms of media.
3 things that irk me about my job
- Support vs essential function: Marketers can be viewed as “the people who make things pretty” while product and sales are more often seen as the essential parts of the business. This is an unfortunate perception and couldn’t be further from the truth when marketing is done right. Marketing is a strategic partner to generate leads for sales, shaping the product and brand experience so customers love it, and owning insights on the voice of the customer to shape product & business decisions.
- Undefined career paths: Content marketing is a new field and there aren’t really any defined career paths. I’ll have to carve one out myself, which is kind of exciting but nerve-wracking at the same time. But the dirty truth is, no matter what field you’re in, you’ll have to carve out your own career path – like it or not.
- Low expectations: As a B2B marketer, there are lower expectations to do jaw-dropping, award-winning marketing. This is unfortunate as B2B marketing can be boring as hell. It sorely needs refreshing, entertaining, and emotionally engaging content EVEN MORE than B2C marketing needs it. The quality and wow-factor expectations for B2C and B2C marketers should be the same, but for some reason they aren’t. Fellow B2B content marketers, let’s change this and set new standards together!
Hobbies & when I pursue them
- Biking: Luckily for me, I get to commute by bike for an hour every day! On weekends, I’m all about the leisurely rides to explore the beautiful city of San Francisco.
- Hiking & traveling: The hubby and I try to get away from everyday mundane activities (i.e. “dates” to the grocery store) and escape to nature to remind ourselves how short life is, how small we are, and what a fan-f-ing-tastic world we live in.
How I balance friends & family
- Once a week: Invite friends to lunch at LinkedIn during the weekdays
- Every Sunday: Church & brunch with friends
- Once or twice per weekend: Dinner date with the hubby
- Every so often: Coffee/brunch/weekday dinner with friends and “side project” buddies