Awesome People - Ep 80
Awesome People - Ep 80
Content strategy, community building, going viral
Hi founders and fellow VC Friends!
Each week we deliver one awesome person to your inbox. These are the people you need to know—the marketers, sales gurus, engineers, ops wizzes— who give your startup superpowers 🚀. The best part is, everyone is hireable on an interim basis.
Today’s episode is brought to you by one of my portfolio companies, On Deck. They’re currently taking applications for their On Deck Catalyst program.
The program is designed to accelerate your career — whether that’s starting a company, launching a new project internally, or ramping up investing. If you’re looking for a career catalyst, consider applying!
It’s an 8-week remote, global, part-time program that emphasizes learning from peers, learning career tactics like finding mentors & cold emailing, and building new projects together.
Apply here and let me know if you want me to flag your application as an Awesome Person 🙏
Now, with no further ado 👇
Please meet Vicky, Your Content Strategist 🤩
I met Vicky via Behzod Sirjani from Yet Another Studio. Behzod always sends the most multi-talented, impressive people. The first time I met Vicky, I knew I had to feature her.
Vicky started her career in food and media and worked her way into startups. She’s trusted by some of the best restaurateurs in the world, including the founders of Momofuku and Eleven Madison Park. She’s also trusted by IDEO and OpenIDEO leaders, and global editors across food, tech, and culture publications.
Most recently she helped start and launch Currant, a very cool food publication -- it’s a great blend of artsy, techy, and worldly. It’s been featured by Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab and CreativeMornings.
Over the course of her career, she has led creative marketing campaigns for B2B and DTC companies under Very Great and Pattern Brands (raised $60M in VC funding). She’s built communities from 1K to 100K.
Fun fact about Vicky: she was a music nerd in high school. She did everything from volunteering with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra to learning a full K-pop dance routine 💃🏻.
You can hire her to articulate your brand purpose, develop and produce your content strategy, and cultivate a community around your brand.
Want an intro to Vicky? Reply to this email and I’ll connect you!
She was kind enough to share 3 pro-tips with us here
Get edgy with your content strategy
Stories are cheap, blogs abound, and social media marketing all looks the same. If you want your content to stand out and withstand the test of time—find your unique angle.
Instead of just asking "What's our story?," ask "What's our edge?" This avoids marketing based on the already popular and over-saturated trends. Use your mission statement to uniquely anchor your content strategy.
For example, robo-advisors Wealthfront and Ellevest both "democratize access to sophisticated investment products." Yet Ellevest takes it a step further and says we aim “to get more money in the hands of women+."
Ellevest’s content addresses the lack of practical investment advice for women+. They frame their articles through holistic money topics: pandemic takeaways for women founders, talking salary with friends, and navigating divorce finances.
On the other hand, Wealthfront’s content leads with industry speak: inflation, tax loss harvesting, and tax benefits of QSBS. While valuable information, it’s more challenging to digest for the new investor.
Ellevest has less than half the funding of Wealthfront, but by targeting their content to address the real needs of their customers, their Instagram following is 12x larger and has 10-20x the engagement of Wealthfront's. These are the marks of a loyal and sticky community.
Your community strategy and content strategy should work together
It's not enough to just create content—or run ads to promote posts. Impactful stories should yield healthy engagement. To drive engagement, you need to understand your community.
It's tempting to prioritize clever copy that leads to quick sales, but remember, people are more than potential customers. They have needs, wants, and interests. How might you engage with your community around your brand's core truth?
For example, the ceramic dishware company East Fork understands that $42 can be a lot to pay for one dish. They also value transparency and fairness. So they break the pricing down on their blog—while also explicitly asking for questions and responses.
Social engagement skyrocketed: likes increased 4x and comments increased 12x. By inviting the community into honest conversations on craft and capital, East Fork enabled more people to make guilt-free, regret-free, and informed decisions about the products they buy for their homes.
Lastly, remember that building relationships with your community can extend beyond social media. You can build relationships via surveys, other online forums, community platforms, and ambassador programs.
Don't try to go viral—instead, try to understand your community’s desires
What's the anatomy of a successful post? Consistently producing content specifically for high engagement (or, "hype") isn't sustainable. It stretches creative and marketing teams, but it doesn't necessarily keep audiences coming back. Rather—listen to what excites your customers, create in response, and keep iterating to learn what resonates most.
Two years ago, I managed marketing at W&P, a food and drink consumer products company. These were two of our top-performing Instagram posts. They saw a 5x increase in engagement.
One post announced a new product launch:
And the other a brand giveaway with millennial-ubiquitous bag company BAGGU:
Sounds simple. But, in fact, our top posts came after several months of working with our creative team to hit our production stride. We managed six previous brand giveaways, cultivated relationships with 200 influencers with 1K-500K followers, and worked to intuit our followers’ hopes and needs.
We weren't thinking about creating ‘cool content.’ We were focused on aligning business priorities, creative production, and editorial timing to produce magic. Trust the process.
Many brands don’t put in the work to nail content and community. Remember, great content and community take time.
Want an intro to Vicky? Reply to this email and I’ll connect you!
As always, let me know if you have any questions and if you want an intro to any of the folks in this email (including the PS section 🎉).
Stay awesome,
Founder of Awesome People Ventures (join the syndicate here)
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Awesome People continued 🚀
Most recent features
Katya, your Content Strategist and Copywriter. Most recently, Katya managed all of Tesla’s internal communications — everything from the internal website redesign, to company-wide emails, to employee onboarding.
Brian works with founders to become high-performing and conscious leaders. He’s been a founder, VC, and product manager. Most recently, as a coach, he’s helped multiple founders close their Series As and scale their teams.
Tomasz is the Chief Data Science Officer for hire at Tooploox, one of my favorite dev agencies. I worked with Tooploox at Rise. Tomasz built Tooploox’s team of 30+ AI engineers, has worked with world-class startups, and is trusted by Stanford faculty.
Want intros to anyone here? Lmk and I’ll connect you!
Part-time opportunities
Want to make some extra $$$ and work on interesting projects? The Awesome People job board is filled with awesome flexible advising and consulting roles. They’re perfect for fun-employed folks, self-employed folks, and moonlighters!
Awesome People Bounty Board
Yes! That’s right! Get paid to do cool shit for awesome people. Help with this newsletter, work on deals, or suggest whatever you want. Check out the bounty board and respond to this email with how you want to get involved!
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