Show notes from Quuu’s podcast, in which Lucia Fontaina-Powell interviews leading markers and entrepreneurs to learn about them and from them.
In the seventh episode of Conversations with Quuu, Lucia talks to Brian G. Peters, Strategic Partnerships Manager at Buffer. Listen to the full interview here:
Highlights:
- Brian’s career so far:
“I started at Buffer as a social media manager and then eventually moved more into digital marketing, which included social media, and started a podcast. Today, my official title is Strategic Partnerships Manager, which still includes a lot of co-marketing, digital marketing and podcasting.”
2. Why building a strong personal brand is crucial for success as a marketer.
“Building a personal brand if you’re in marketing is crucial, not only to the company you work for…but then it also helps any future company you work for because you’re able to take your brand and your knowledge with you wherever you go…building a personal brand gives you leverage and freedom, in a sense that you aren’t just tied to the company you work for, you’re actually your own person, with your own thoughts and expertise, who’s able to help businesses wherever you go.”
3. On Buffer’s approach to customer-facing roles.
“One of the strong points of Buffer is that we all have our own faces and are very personal…it’s just great for developing conversations, if nothing else.”
“We don’t have these huge brand guidelines saying you have to say these specific words or be happy all the time. When we’re hiring people we look for certain personality qualities and traits. We hire people more based on their company culture fit and whether we think they’ll make good Buffer teammates rather than their expertise because we really do believe people can learn something very quickly….All of our teammates are actually just themselves on social.”
4. Why learning is Brian’s only career plan (check out this blog he wrote).
“The way you make yourself an invaluable asset to a brand is that you morph and fit and learn things that the brand needs at the time, particularly in marketing and social media…with marketing and social media the world is your oyster; you can do whatever you want, as long as it’s on-brand.”
“I’m passionate about social media and marketing, so I know that’s what I want to do, but I’m not necessarily tied to ‘oh I’m a social media marketer’ or ‘I’m a paid advertiser’ or ‘I’m a podcaster’. For me, the ability to learn and do things across the board not only helps Buffer in ways that they wouldn’t get if they only hired a specialist, but it also helps me in my career, too, because I feel like marketing and social media changes so fast, that if you only dedicate yourself to one line of work and ignore some channels or tactics then…you’re not giving yourself the opportunity to really grow and [acquire] what will be the skills in 5–10 years from now.”
“You do have to focus…if you find a niche or semi-niche of where there’s a mix of passion and skill, that’s where you can open up the learning. But you can’t learn everything at once.”
5. The reason Brian isn’t starting his own business (yet!).
“I think I’m the type of person that likes to help brands that already serve a great mission. I love being part of a team and having something to work towards every day.”
“Today, it’s like…are you really successful unless you’ve started your own company? I try not to get into that mindset. You can be successful and happy working for a brand and working for someone else the rest of your life. I think there is a bit of a stigma about not starting your own company, especially in the SaaS world.”
6. What ‘success’ means to him.
“All of us have a bit of impostor syndrome…one of the most dangerous things, particularly with personal branding, is comparing yourself to others. There’s always going to be someone else more successful than you are and that’s just a fact. People should try to find success in their own minds and define that for themselves. I don’t think success is based on starting my own company or my salary. It’s more, what have I done that I can be proud of in the last year work wise? What have I done personally that I can be proud of? What are my own definitions of success?”
7. While Buffer’s core values remain the same, their approach to marketing has changed.
“Our culture has always wanted to be perceived the same way, for our great customer service and our positive attitude — that’s always remained a core part of Buffer…Our target customer has changed, so the marketing side of what we’re known for has changed. Our target customer are entrepreneurs and small businesses, so we want to be known in the small business arena. So what do small businesses worry about every day? We ask ourselves, if a small business comes to the Buffer website, what do they want to know about? It’s not just social media any more, it’s the whole marketing gamit — ecommerce, selling, customer service, community…”
8. What Brian has learned about podcasting through Buffer’s ‘The Science of Social Media’.
“Podcasting is a medium that’s very hard to promote. Podcast platforms don’t give a tonne of analytics and there’s no search algorithm for podcasts…it’s very hard to figure out how it works.”
9. On Buffer’s content strategy.
“We talk about the upcoming subjects on the podcast and how we might be able to repurpose that for blog content…it’s very much how much can we get out of all our mediums so that we can rally around these subjects. It’s not just one and done, we try to repurpose content in lots of different media formats.”
“Our blog is the cornerstone of our content. Everything we do revolves around the blog. What we’ve done over the last few years, with Ashley Read at the helm, is focus more on blog content being long-term keyword searchable. So we’ve put a lot more time and effort into optimising our blog, figuring out best ways to target and research keywords and ensuring our blog is healthy in the long run.”
10. How Buffer’s content and social media teams work together.
“What you have to figure out is finding a balance between searchable blog posts that solve problems for our customers, but we also really want viral, social, shareable content to keep the blog top of mind.”
11. Buffer’s secret sauce for Facebook marketing.
“Facebook is the platform for the best of the best content. I always recommend people don’t just post everything to Facebook. We almost use Twitter as a testing ground for content..and then we’ll see what worked on Twitter in the past week — does that make for a good Facebook post? Then we’ll beef up the Facebook post, maybe add some video content or other media there…”
12. The number one type of content businesses should be creating.
“We’ve been focusing more on research-backed content because we find that if you can do your own original research, it’s more shareable, you get more backlinks, people quote it more — it’s information you can’t find anywhere else as opposed to standard blog posts…you can read anywhere.”
13. Where to find Brian.
Brian’s website: http://www.briangreggpeters.com
Brian’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/Brian_G_Peters
Brian’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/briangpeters/
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