Finding the perfect work environment isn’t easy—but you should never stop searching for it. Natalia Bochenska has held several marketing roles throughout her career. Today, she is working at her favorite job yet: as senior strategic marketing manager at Somo, a London-based digital product agency that’s been awarded as Best Place to Work on numerous occasions.

According to Natalia, what makes a company have a positive work culture is when everyone—from employees to management—feel empowered to make decisions, contribute ideas and improve processes, be treated as experts and trusted to deliver the work they were hired for. It also means creating a culture that your whole team can be proud of.

In today’s episode, Natalia sits down with Shaheen Samavati to share great advice for fellow marketers. She stresses that you should be patient when looking for the right job. Get work experience early. Always continue to learn, no matter how senior you are. And keep improving the core skills that are vital for marketing today: copywriting, design and strategy.

Natalia also tells us about her current role at Somo, including how she helped create the company’s tone of voice guide, why it’s essential, and how to document it properly so your team can follow it seamlessly. In addition, she discusses how Somo benefits from creating their white papers—and why content must always add real value by delivering what people need right now.

You can watch the full conversation in the video above or on YouTube, and listen to the podcast on Apple or Spotify.

Rapid-fire recs  

  • Key takeaways:
    • Work for places that build you up and build your confidence. And if you’re not feeling it’s a place that helps you do that, then it’s time to move on.
    • I’m a true believer in being a T-shaped person, learning as much as possible from different areas so that you don’t have to depend on other people to deliver your work. Being able to produce a piece of content—design it by yourself, write it by yourself and deliver it from end to end. I think that’s key. 
    • Just keep growing, be curious and be brave!

“Treat people as humans, not as machines. Empower them to make decisions and do the work they were hired to do, without going through hundreds and hundreds of approvals.”

  • Productivity hack: 
    • To-do lists and setting achievable goals each day. “I always start the week with a to-do list of things that I want to achieve that week. And then every morning, I look at it and scope what I want to achieve that day, without overwhelming myself, because that only leads to more stress. Setting achievable goals for the week and the day ahead helps boost productivity” 
    • Taking breaks. “Especially during the current environment of working from home, taking a break during lunchtime and ending on time is key. It’s so easy to burn out. As the boundaries of work and personal life are becoming more and more blurred—when so many of us work from our living rooms or bedrooms—it’s quite difficult to forget about work and switch off at the end of the day. Setting the boundaries, creating a separate working space—and simply taking a break or looking up once in a while—can help with that”
  • Source of inspiration: 
    • Monzo. “I’m a massive fan of Monzo, the UK bank start-up. The way they talk to customers and get them excited and involved in creating new features, their transparency, the simple yet effective copywriting. It’s a great source of inspiration for how to communicate with your clients—whatever sector you work in.” 
    • Amazon. “Amazon is another great example, with their relentless focus on improving the customer experience and innovating to always bring something fresh to the table”
  • Learning resource:
    • The Marketing Meetup. “The Marketing Meetup is an amazing resource. They do weekly events every Tuesday morning, on various topics like content, copywriting, emails, SEO—all the different areas of marketing. Very interesting, and always with great speakers anyone can learn a thing or two from!”
    • Benedict Evans newsletter: “He always puts together a list of interesting things that are happening in the tech world. A great read anyone will enjoy.”
    • Somo newsletter: “Somo newsletter is of course another great resource! You can sign up to it on our website.”
  • Preferred app: 
    • Clockwise. “It’s an app plugin for a calendar and for Slack, which helps you structure your day and move meetings so they’re all booked together. This helps create ‘focus time’ and enables you to actually sit down and deliver some work, instead of attending endless meetings. It’s one tool that I’m personally enjoying a lot.”

Connect with Natalia and Shaheen on LinkedIn.

This post was edited by Daphne Binioris.

For more insights into creating a positive work culture:

To read the full transcript, click on page number 2 below.

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