Here is a transcript generated by Otter.ai of The Content Mix podcast interview with VeraContent’s Kyler Canastra and Louise McFetridge, head of content and digital PR Greenlight, on the importance of strong writing skills in content marketing:

Kyler Canastra 0:03
Hi everyone, I’m Kyler from The Content Mix, and I’m excited to be here with Louise McFetridge, head of content and digital PR at Greenlight. Louise has always had a passion for words with a background in Journalism and Creative Writing, it was only natural that she went on to a career in digital marketing. Now as someone who understands the power of language, Louise has been fostering positive change a green light for the past eight years, known for producing integrated transformational strategies across the entire digital space Greenlight is a UK based full service digital and commerce agency made up of 170 people. And we’re excited to learn about more about Louise’s career and how this love for writing has allowed her to make an impact at Greenlight both in terms of marketing success and team motivation. So Louise, thank you so much for joining us today on the content mix.

Louise McFetridge 0:52
Thank you for having me.

Kyler Canastra 0:54
So I gave you this introduction, based on some research I did and this looking more at your profile in which made me really excited for today’s chat. But I also wanted to know if you could just introduce yourself in your own words. So just tell us a bit more about where you’re connecting from where you’re from, in general. And also what’s your connection to content marketing in Europe.

Louise McFetridge 1:14
So, um, so as you just said, I’m Louise, dead of content and digital PR at Greenlight digital, we’re based in King’s Cross in London. And we’re a full service digital and commerce company working across a huge diverse range of sectors, with a number of well known brands, probably probably quite a few that you’d have heard of. They’re based in Europe, but also we have clients that have got a global presence as well. And we, I think working in digital marketing for 11 years, and have been working at green light for eight. And before working at green light, I was working for a small startup company and kind of doing a mixture of everything wearing lots of different hats, as you kind of do in a startup company. And that was where kind of my Introduction to Digital began, where I was looking after search engine marketing. I was looking off sort of what was link very much link building back in sort of 2010 2011 and was what would be probably described as blackhat now but very much what I was doing then and and also a team of copywriters and designers and I was wearing the account manager hat, I was kind of doing a bit of everything really. And fundamentally, they my main job was copywriting. So that’s how I kind of came into digital because my as you said in the introduction, I started off in journalism. So that’s really where my career began.

Kyler Canastra 3:03
Yeah, I really wanted to dive into that part too, just because it’s very similar to like experience that I’ve had, you know, kind of I didn’t come out and you know, were thinking I was gonna do content marketing. I’m a linguist, I, you know, started as a translator, I got a master’s in Spanish linguistics, so kind of random. But also, I feel like a lot of people in this industry, they have these interesting backgrounds. So like I said in the intro in 2008, he received a journalism degree. And I just was curious, because I feel like a lot of journalists are involved in content marketing. So I want to know if this said these studies that you did, they influence your interest in copywriting kind of how did that transition happen?

Louise McFetridge 3:41
So I was really interested in copywriting. But that came at a later date. So my love of English started at schools, and very much I really enjoyed writing poetry and writing stories. And that sort of saw me want to focus when I went to college and further education. And then I, I just had a huge love of magazine when I was a teenager. And I really imagined being a writer for those for those magazines. So I pursued a publishing and journalism degree and that’s where I focused all of that. And that’s where some of my early experience is kind of set. Working in Yeah, working for publishing companies working on magazines in the UK, such as MS magazine, The Woman Magazine, and then went on to work for a Time Magazine and Scarlet magazine so they are kind of like more kind of started off in sort of younger teenage magazines. But work my way around. And I absolutely loved that idea. loved racing editorial, I loved interviewing, I love. And I love kind of basically what you’re doing now being able to like really find out something really interesting about somebody and turn it into a really interesting story. And that was, that’s where my love of writing really blossomed. But after I graduated, and 2008, we hit a recession. And I think a lot of people did, that are similar, like you’re in their sort of mid 30s. In, in a similar background, to me, felt the same way and experience the same things. And a lot of it was trying to, like pivot and understand what I could do with those skills. So I went on to do my masters. And because I really want to continue writing in a structured way. And that really gave me continued discipline, to continue to hone my craft actually got me to think outside of what I was used to, and, and strengthen my creativity, I absolutely loved that. And, and at the same time was writing for the continued writing for some of those magazines. So the good times and Scarlet magazine, where I continued to be like a freelancer alongside doing my masters. And then and then it was really like, once that was finished with it was like, What am I going to what am I going to do? How can I continue to be a writer, and and then I, I continue doing freelancing for a little bit. And then I found this startup, where I joined after my, my postgraduate degree. And like that was where I kind of like got through into the world of digital, I was able to use some of the skills I’ve learned as a journalist. So these interview techniques, or the editorial side very much kind of like lent itself quite nicely to editorial in the world of digital. And that’s kind of where that all began. And then since leaving that startup, I joined Greenlight as copywriter and kind of work my way up to now be head of content, which

Kyler Canastra 7:19
I love that like, you know, your passion for, you know, just English language, for example. Yeah, and then lead you along this way to do different things. And also, I found a lot like, what resonated a lot to me was kind of the 2008 recession, right, a moment of crisis. And similar to what we just experienced with the COVID 19 pandemic, it caused a lot of people like those moments are when people say, How can I pivot my like, what you said, pivot my skills to do something new, because I feel like before, we’re living a lot, you know, on autopilot, just kind of, yeah, you know, I have a job great. But then when these big things happen, although they do really suck, just put it in clear language, they actually give us an opportunity to reflect and do different things to improve our lives. So I think that’s really cool that that kind of led you along this path.

Louise McFetridge 8:06
Because I think, I think in journalism, and in digital marketing, like storytelling, and narrative building is like a huge part of, of both of those things. So it was, it was trying to find the through line to, as I said, sort of pivot my career from being in an industry that continues to unfortunately, and sort of, I don’t want to use the word die, but like, it depleting in terms of like, in terms of publishing and, and editorial. And, and it was what I always loved. So it was how I could continue to do part of that and use some of those skills and that love in into a world that was obviously continuing to. Me mean, that was in 2008. So we’re quite a few years down the line. And, and it continues to be and it’s given me the opportunity to develop my career. So it was the right move. Even if it wasn’t what I set out to do originally.

Kyler Canastra 9:13
So it’s your path. Right? And yeah, I think this should be clear to like what you did your master’s in wasn’t creative writing. No. So yes, yeah. Yeah. So which I think is also great. A modern marketers use creative writing skills, because it’s all about storytelling. And I think that’s really cool that you’re able to, you know, I think it’s bold for people to go back to school and say, I think a lot of people would say, oh, creative writing, why would you do that? You know, get an MBA, do some, I don’t know. People love those like hard skills, practical things. But I feel like creative writing is so important and marketing. That must play an impact on your day to day life.

Louise McFetridge 9:47
Yeah, absolutely. Words. Yeah, in terms of like the written word, but also in terms of communication and being able to adapt in like lots of different settings. So with your, with your team, in writing for the work that you’re doing for brands, how you actually converse with brands and clients, like everything is communication. And it was, it was interesting to be able to talk like not just being able to sit and write in doing the Masters during the post grad and learning how to write kind of short stories and things like, you know, vast amounts of words, which I’d never written before giving me that discipline, but also, like, it’s all the all the little techniques about being able to communicate quickly, effectively using five words, instead of 25. Words, like all of these things were really, really useful and practical, that I personally like to dip into and use now.

Kyler Canastra 10:48
That’s awesome. And I feel like to like, again, a lot of things you’re saying resonate with me, but like, in terms of like, the communication factor, I think it’s so important, especially now that we’re all, you know, virtually working in a lot of cases. And you know, a lot of things are in written communication, and, you know, setting languages people think, okay, study language, and you get to use it. But I feel like you also learned so much more than that, especially the pragmatics of language, how to communicate with different people in different cultures, which for me, has been super helpful in the workplace, but I work in international environment with international clients. So being able to kind of like switch gears and just be able to know how to communicate and the most effective way for this person based not just on, you know, the work itself, but their culture, where they’re from, etc. So it’s been really fascinating to see. And it’s cool to hear that, like, you know, we can pursue our interests that they actually have benefits in our day to day work.

Louise McFetridge 11:37
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Kyler Canastra 11:39
So when I was doing research, now, I want to talk a bit more about Greenlight when I was, you know, researching you, I was like, wow, she’s been here for I think over eight years. So it must be a really cool place. And in my fascinating place. So yeah, you’ve been working there for over eight years now. And from copywriting to marketing content strategy, you had a lot of opportunities to apply your skills, right, from what we’re just talking about, from your journalism degree, creative writing degree, to help the company grow through its content strategy. So I want to know what drives you as a part of the greenlight team, in what ways have you been able to use your love for language and storytelling to help promote the company’s name to connect with its target audience?

Louise McFetridge 12:16
And yeah, so having been here for eight years, I joined I actually joined as a temp. So in that sort of period of time where I was looking for work, and I joined as a temp, my friend was working for the agency. And there was a need for more copywriters, and I joined and just fell in love with the place with its culture, and that word culture is used a lot, but it’s it everything. So not just the fact that it had like a beer fridge for Friday, or like a pool table. But actually, it was embedded in like everything that was about Greenlight in the people, and then it their morals and ethos and the clients that they were working with, and all of that. So there was very much it was very exciting, and could do to continue to growth with the, with the agency at the time, I then joined as a full time copywriter. And then opportunity came up for me to be a lead copywriter. So the the lead copywriter went off actually traveling to Spain. And and then I took her I took on her role and was able to progress from there really, and and in each in each aspect of those roles. Obviously, as a copywriter, I’ve been able to very much use my love of language and and what I learn, but I’ve continued to be able to do that. And even as a head of a department and not necessarily doing as much of the production myself. The role kind of pivots into being much more sort of like admin driven, research driven, financial, financial driven. But it also I’ve had the opportunity to use like storytelling and language to build and previously build the Greenlight tone of voice and to work on our own marketing material or own website copy and being able to throw all of that experience that I’ve developed over the years for other brands on our own brand, which was hugely exciting project very stressful projecting yourself to the agency, but that was really fun. And then, as I mentioned to you earlier Kyler we’re going through, we’re going through a merger and another rebrand and so I’ll also have my foot in again this time round. So it’s nice to be able to still be able to use my skills or for the agency. Yeah, and And I’m working on like, really exciting projects, like I love tone of voice development, and love brand building. And it’s, it’s really fun to to do that for the agency that you work for. And even if I don’t always get to do it on, like deliverable clients, because I have a full team that works on that. And of course,

Kyler Canastra 15:22
so exciting to like I was gonna ask, you know, I had a question prepared about, you know, because you have such a love, you know, passion for words, are you able to still, you know, incorporate that in your day to day role, because I know, as you mentioned, like, you know, moving up, and kind of when you get to these managerial Head of Content type of roles, it’s more admin, you lose the craft, you don’t have much contact with the craft. So it’s great to hear that you still do. But I also was running to like, random question, but like, on the side, are you writing anywhere? Like, do you write a blog, I don’t know, I feel like I just became

Louise McFetridge 15:53
a mom. So my free time is, is not so free. Yeah. So I haven’t done for a little while, which I do. And I practice a lot of, though, when I was doing my studies, a lot of like free writing. So just being able to kind of like, process thoughts or any creative ideas, or like actually being able to have a moment, like if I, we started to come back into the office, a little bit like after the pandemic, so I get a nice bit of time at lunchtime to be able to kind of like sit and be with my thoughts, being able to just freak out a little bit and use some of those techniques for my studies, which has been like being able to see something that inspires you. So it could just be like something you’re watching by you’re sort of like drinking a coffee, eating your lunch and being nosy, like what’s happening, like what’s happening around you, and begin to kind of make a story and free right from that. So I use some of those, those techniques. But I don’t do that I don’t have the time to do that as often as I would like to. And and, and it’s one of those things like as a writer, because I still consider myself as a writer even now that I’m not doing it every day. But it’s one of those things like that you when you talk to other writers and you talk to more like Junior copywriters starting at the industry, it’s like read and write every day, as much as you can. And that’s something that does become increasingly harder when you’re in a more senior position for sure. And also when you become a mum. And so I definitely wish I could write a lot more and but definitely relishing the opportunity to do so I get actually the most recent thing I was able to really throw myself into was really interesting, rewarding. As I returned back to work, I worked on a project for our marketing team, where we submitted a load of award entries. So I got to learn lots about what the guy’s been up to, while I was away on maternity leave. And we’re kind of used that creative writing to, to submit like a number of different award entries, but the guys have been doing and we got shortlisted for a number of them and one we won one of them. And next year, we’ll aim for more and, and that was really nice. And that was good to be able to like after having sort of over a year off on maternity leave being able to throw myself back into stuff. So I definitely wish I could write a lot more. And it’s just part of the part of the progression, I guess. But it’s, it’s still within, like the love of writing and being able to use it I think it was there may not sit and write something creatively all the time. I think communication is in, like the emails that you write it’s it’s in the strategy document documents that you put together for clients that absolutely everything. So it’s just about kind of harnessing that when you’re doing something that might not seem like you have the opportunity to use that creativity is is probably the way that I were trying

Kyler Canastra 19:26
Yeah, that’s awesome. I mean time is something that’s so like, wish we all wish we had more time this like you know being a mother now and all these new responsibilities it’s a lot so I’m sure you’ll get back to the you know, writing more often in the future but it’s great that you’re able to have that lunch break so important to have like mental health breaks.

Louise McFetridge 19:45
Oh no massively especially like more so now than ever with working from home but definitely and I i still have I still have a book in in me that I’d love to. I’d love to take So that’s, that’s definitely something to check.

Kyler Canastra 20:03
Yeah, we’ll keep our eyes open. For sure. Yeah, hopefully. Now you’ve mentioned how like you love, you know, working on developing tones like tone of voice and branding and all that, which is, I think a really rewarding experience from my experience as well, just being able to help a brand or company, just like personify themselves with words. But I was just wondering to like from your all the projects you’ve worked on, like during your time at Greenlight, which probably involved a lot of collaboration, your team, etc, I was just wondering if there’s any, like, content marketing strategy in your experience that you’re very proud of, and why.

Louise McFetridge 20:40
And there are a few so I guess. So my, my role as has content digitally, I look after three teams, the copywriting team, so that to the kind of full production and their digital PR team, so there, and that so charged with getting coverage and links back for campaigns that we run for our clients, and the strategy team that sets about kind of the overall the overarching strategy at the beginning of the year or the beginning of a project. And then see everything through to execution. So I guess in my early days, very much focused on the copywriting side. And then as things have progressed over the years, there’s there’s lots of projects that kind of touch on all of those, and then also have a crossover with lots of other teams within our business. So I was trying to I was trying to think before we spoke. So I guess there was a project that we worked on for eBay, to redefine their customer help and support pages. And we did that through like a in depth, UX research, technical SEO, research, mapping, all of that keyword research to new pages that we wanted to create, and then increasing a full suite of content for their help and support pages. So there was there was help and support pages already existing on the eBay site. I don’t know if you’ve ever that anything, never been a seller. Never. There are loads of help content for a seller for sellers and buyers. And actually, it was the whole experience is quite muddled. So our task was to to make that clearer, and make the user journey a lot clearer. And lots of the results. Before we started, the project ended up in people ringing their phone lines, and they wanted to reduce that, though, what we did was reposition the whole user experience when it came to help content focusing on content that was relevant and useful that they could get quick bits of information to help them with their journey. And that kind of involved, as I mentioned, the technical consultancy team in house, the UX team, the creative teams to to also think about wireframing and what the pages would look like. And then and then our content team to produce all of that content. And the result was yeah, a more streamlined user experience. Awesome. So that was, I guess one for for the brand itself and two for like, actually how many moving parts there were and feeling like the end result was hugely useful. And so that’s kind of one example of a project that I’ve loved working on. And over the years. We’ve also we also worked with a company called Hurtigruten. Okay, and they are a cruise company. And they sell voyages and experiences they’re going to do the Northern Lights is one of them. And, and what we did, after working with them for a few years was to create a 360 video experience that was truly immersive. So giving prospective passengers the chance to get a taster of what life is like on board or Hurtigruten cruise. And mainly in this case, we wanted to showcase the Norwegian coastline cruise setting South Bergen and then taking in like the picturesque views of Trump though and Trondheim. And stopping to experience like a little fishing village and what that whole experience was like and and also then taking into the sights of the mountains along the way. coastline and crossing the Arctic Circle. So there’s so much to kind of sell when you’re wanting to get more people to pick up and be interested in going on one of these cruises and for a long time, we worked on the copy and then selling those packages but and that definitely got people to the pages that definitely helped with from us from a setup perspective. And, but we really wanted to kind of once we, once they got their seller more massive experiential, do you have what it would be like to kind of, I guess have given them no reason not to want to jump on. So that was really fun, hugely fun, actually gave me the opportunity to go to Norway. And do a Recchi. And then we then followed up with a video crew that then went to go and film everything. And then we use that as sort of homepage content for the brand as part of the conversion tactic. But also, we used it as PR a ball material that we could drag links to and to further kind of increase uplift for the keyword search to get more people to convert as well. So that was a huge fun project that I mean, that was, it’s got to be about five years ago. But it was one that kind of sticks with me, because it’s a memorable experience. I bet. And I just liked more,

Kyler Canastra 26:43
but I was gonna say like, super, like, we could talk about those two projects, I’m sure much further detail. Awesome. But I think you know, something, something that I’m pulling out from it is this, this whole idea of like when when it comes to copywriting and content marketing, this whole idea of curiosity, like I feel like we get to one we’re so privileged and the work that we do, especially when you’re working in agency, because you’re working with all the different brands, like, for example, you all had to learn, you know, and I’m sure you’ve learned a lot in that experience of working with so many different teams about UX experience, and all these different aspects that you probably would never even think of. But also with this whole northern lights cruise in Norway experience, like you learned probably so much, not just about the cruise line, and the company itself, but about Norway. And I think that’s a no privilege that we have in concept. I mean,

Louise McFetridge 27:29
I think like in content marketing, and certainly like definitely in in any role in content marketing, but like the how much you learn, you become like a mini expert. And in a very short space of time in a very focused space of time when you’re a copywriter as well. From Yeah, writing about Norwegian coastline to writing about help support content for eBay to like we work with, with a law firm. And where we were we did a dish PR campaign in a huddle focused on women’s health around reproductive health and like understanding women sentiments around reproductive health and the cost of it and how many misconceptions and how much how much misinformation is out there. And then you kind of you have to do so much research and bigger and absorb it all, in order for you to be Yeah, a mini expert for that period of time that you’re focused on that campaign. And that stays with you as well, all of that, you know, I guess, I guess it gets pushed down, the more you learn, and the more you write, but it stays with you. And I think that’s what’s quite fascinating, like the the amount of kind of qualitative research that you have to do in order to write with conviction. As a copywriter, and in content marketing is really interesting. It’s one it’s the bit that that I mean, there’s so much about it. That’s quite interesting, but that like from my copywriting, right, like, that’s the bit that I I really enjoy.

Kyler Canastra 29:07
That’s awesome. Now, I guess curiosity is a skill that we could say like this passion for learning. It’s something that we think is important, I think both UI when it comes to being a marketer nowadays, but do you think. Do you have any other skills that come to mind that you would say would be super essential for a marketer in today’s world?

Louise McFetridge 29:28
Curiosity, communication, but also active listening. So you can be so focused on trying to get your message across and be really set on what you think is really important as a marketer. But it’s really important to stop and take a moment to actively listen to what the client is saying because they can send you a brief and they can tell you what they want, but often it requires active listening and then asking the right questions, and it’s that curiosity bit as well to really kind of delve into the unset and to really deliver your best work. I think that’s the thing where everything’s so quick and fast paced and you want to deliver as efficiently as possible and effectively as possible. But to do that, you kind of need the curiosity, the communicatio be a really active and effective listener.

Kyler Canastra 30:29
Awesome. I agree. 100%. For now, we’re moving along the lines now recommendations and phenol, your things that you want to recommend to the audience, I want to dive a bit further now or deeper, we can say, into more recommendations for me. So I always ask this question. And I always love the answers I get because they’re so diverse. But are there any daily habits that you would attribute to your success that you could share the

Louise McFetridge 30:52
daily habits, or? Yeah, I so

Kyler Canastra 31:02
I’m sure all your daily routine has changed.

Louise McFetridge 31:05
And I think the thing that stays with me is, so rather than doing it to do list every morning, like, what I, I’m a traditionalist when it comes to like less managing to do this, and I don’t, book and pen really can’t be beaten, in my mind. I mean, there’s so many here. I don’t have it with me, but it’s,

Kyler Canastra 31:29
it’s your last.

Louise McFetridge 31:32
And then well, I mean, we use like, we use things like Trello, and Smartsheet, and resource management tools, and all of those things, which are hugely important, but I like to create a to do list, at the end of the day, that kind of like, puts a kind of pin in my thoughts to be able to try and switch off. Because it’s really hard, especially with the working from home thing, everything bleeds into, like, if you don’t have your own, like separate space for parking and have a delineate delineation there. Like, I think you can end up working all the time. And sometimes it is hard to switch off. But I try and create a sort of to do list and put a pin in my thoughts at the end of each day. And that gives me kind of a summary of what was completed what I kind of need to focus on, like the sort of like, there’s like a, I think it’s called like, village and fleet and like, just keep it short and sharp. And then the next day, you’ve got some focus, you’re not kind of opening up your laptop first thing in morning and be hit with lots of garbage. So that’s kind of my that’s my way of trying to get a better focus. And also try and create that separation between work and family life now that they were able to do that. So I think it’s not just for me with family, I think

Kyler Canastra 33:01
it’s probably ever why I love that because I do that. Like, I take five minutes before the day ends, workday ends and just write down everything like kind of reflect, look at everything. Okay, this is I need to do tomorrow, and then I just shut the book. And then I think that’s important. Yeah, I just moved. So like, finally have like a room, that’s just an office. So it’s just so nice to be able to like close that door. And cuz I’m fully remote. So yeah, just nice to leave the laptop there. And then just continue with my life and other spaces within the house so far.

Louise McFetridge 33:30
And if any of you don’t have that, like a lot of my team are, we’re sort of hybrid at the moment working from home and coming into the office, there’s and there, we’re beginning to open, but it’s all sort of tried to manage number two there. So a lot of my team are still working from home at times, but they are perhaps Junior and living at home with their parents or they are in a house share. And they don’t have as much space. So they may be working from their bed or from witch’s house, or desk that they put up in their bedroom because of the period of time that we were working from home. So it’s just those I think it’s really important to be able to draw a line somewhere to for your mental health and to be able to breathe and have spaced away from it. Because then you can be you can bring your best self the next day was.

Kyler Canastra 34:24
So yeah, and even like for us like we’ve done fully we close our office, but I’ve been in different countries. I’m not going to an office, but we’ve done like we’ve collaborated with croissant which is a co working app you can use in different cities throughout Europe and North America. And it’s been awesome because I have one like right across the street and even though I have that space like you said it’s so important to like I went there yesterday for two hours and I’m just able to like change scenery move out of the house is so important. So even if people don’t have the, you know, opportunity to have a home office and stuff like that, there’s always like the cafe down the street, which is even just so helpful to

Louise McFetridge 35:01
definitely just like getting out and having a walk at lunchtime, and it’s that change of space and change of scenery.

Kyler Canastra 35:10
For now, along those lines, you mentioned some tools like Trello that you recommend, I’m sure you use for organizational purposes as well. But are there any other like apps, tools, platforms or books that you would recommend? It can be something personal marketing related.

Louise McFetridge 35:31
I liked the you got in like a meditation app when I was pregnant. So like to to help with that. in mind, that’s a that’s a personal thing. But I think they can be inborn, which, which app, and so are used calm, yeah. And also one that was very focused on pregnancy when I was when I was pregnant during the pandemic. And but really, I never really got into it before, I think as probably for lots of people during the pandemic, being able to find some space. And then further that was whether that was like, at home or over here, where you were able to go for a walk during, and just being able to spend some time doing that. And I think that’s really good for like, yeah, it’s just about like freeing your mind, because it can get quite cluttered with everything that’s going on. And then and then books wise, and I saw that you mentioned books on the list before and I was thinking there are so many books out there that are good to read. And for something new and interesting, or like content or content marketing, and, and so many that I have still get to read even now. So what I think is kind of like more important almost, is to understand what other agencies are doing, what other businesses are doing, what other brands are doing, and also what other marketers are doing. And and so what asked, in my team, at Greenlight, we host a regular sort of round table for everyone to join from the team to bring them with them a piece of content, to share and discuss that could be good, it could be bad, it could be an insight from the industry, an article or a blog or a piece of thought leadership. And that really resonates with them, and to bring it to the table and discuss because busy, I guess busy schedules and busy workloads, you may not be able to consume all the content out there. So bringing it to the table and making sure everyone’s got a unique piece to talk through. And we take a view on it from a creativity perspective, or a strategic perspective, the quality of it, and how it’s performed. So we run it through Buzzsumo and majestic the two other tools to bring back to your question, and to look at performance and kind of get an assessment on lots of different things from a qualitative and quantitative perspective. And I think those, that is a really good way that brings it back to what we do in the department, and also keeps us kind of like understanding what’s happening with our competitors and other brands out there. And discussing them as a team. And it really kind of helps them with food. Like it’s sort of like mini audits which we would do for clients with their own brands, but kind of doing that on an industry level. That’s something that we like to do across the content and digital PR department. And yeah, we look at it from a creativity perspective, and also that kind of PR perspective as well. Where the how they’ve gone about that. Sometimes we’re not sure we spent ages trying to work out, actually how, how did that how did that work for them? And it’s an it gets lots of discussions. And sometimes we agree, sometimes we disagree. That’s always the good bit. And, yeah, we just just keep kind of keeping our finger on the pulse of lots of good websites and blogs out there. Content Marketing Institute conflict content Copyblogger, SEO Moz as I mentioned,

and then from a search perspective, we were very much connected like agreement, we’re very much connected to

the SEO side of things. So then we look at hrs and we look at search engine roundtable Search Engine Journal like loads of the other ones as well. So they’re kind of within our back pocket to always be looking at and seeing what is what later. I guess you’d Like what the latest updates are that we need to be aware of. And leadership. And that’s probably rather than because i There are so many books I need to read. That’s that’s probably that’s, that’s probably like the AWARE our main focus, and it’s part of it’s part of our kind of day to day.

Kyler Canastra 40:21
And I love that like, I think, again, it ties back to the idea of curiosity and making sure that you’re, you know, reading and learning and that whole idea of like a brainstorming idea sharing session, and like looking at content out there now, it’s so cool that you foster that in your workplace.

Louise McFetridge 40:36
Yeah, I think it’s important not to just be so focused on what you’re doing. Like, it’s, it’s the awareness of what else is happening around you. Whether it’s good or bad, because you can take learnings from it all. So yeah, that’s something that we’ve had in place for a good number of years now within the departments of the creativity review. And that like sharing mentality, it gets everyone like cross, like across the team, like talking, especially when we get new people joining the team as well. It’s a really nice place to kind of like learn about each other and ever as well. So yeah, that’s probably the probably the best approach. For sure.

Kyler Canastra 41:20
That’s awesome. Well, fortunately, we’re coming to the end of the interview, I seriously like to chat forever. I know, this could go on maybe could be a part two in the future. This is really interesting this to learn from your experience. And just I don’t know, I feel like it must be great to work with you at GreenLife. It seems like you really care about your employees as well. And yeah, well being and just allowing them to be creative, because you know how that is, as Yeah, definitely, definitely. Do you have any final takeaways or parting advice that you could share the audience from today’s chat? And hard question?

Louise McFetridge 41:56
Is a hard question. I think I’m stumped snacks, I feel like a shared lots of little nuggets already. I know.

It’s hard. But definitely going back to the communication, curiosity and active listening. And I think those are the three things that as a marketer, I think it’s really important. And, and as and as people as well, like, just from our kind of, like empathetic perspective, and, and thinking about, like culture and what everyone’s been going through over the last sort of, like, almost two years, in some cases. So it’s just being able to take a step back and breathe, and that curiosity can lead to excitement. And that excitement can lead to like not listening properly, and not really understanding. So I would definitely say those are my that’s like my key takeaway, and something that I like my team to kind of like, take a moment and try and do as much as possible. And so yeah, I guess I’d share that with everybody. Again, it’s a repeat of what I already said. I can’t think of anything else on platinum

Kyler Canastra 43:17
on many different points today. So it’s hard to get into that. But I love that advice. I think it’s great. And I know that we connected on LinkedIn. So that’s like the way we got in touch with you. But Are you active anywhere else besides LinkedIn? If someone was listening to this and wanting to reach out

Louise McFetridge 43:32
about tennis, the best place to yeah is the best place to catch me.

Kyler Canastra 43:36
Is your name as Louise McFetridge? Yes,

Louise McFetridge 43:39
yeah, exactly. Exactly. And please do Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I’d like

Kyler Canastra 43:43
to. Well, I want to thank you so much, again, for taking the time to join us today and for sharing all this great insight with me and also with the audience. So thank you, Louise. And I also want to thank our audience for listening or watching. We also have the video on YouTube as well. But as always, for more perspective on the content marketing industry in Europe, check out very content.com Flash mix for more episodes. And keep tuning into the podcast for more interviews with content experts like Luis and maybe there’ll be a part two of this chat. I never know. Anyways, we’ll see you all next time. So thank you so much. And thank you again, Louise. Thank

Louise McFetridge 44:20
you. Thank you

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