Here is a transcript generated by otter.ai of The Content Mix podcast interview with Noemi Baudouin, who is b2b content manager at JobTeaser:

Carlota Pico 0:13
Hi, everyone, I’m Carlota Pico from The Content Mix. And I’m excited to be here today with Noemi Baudouin, who is b2b content manager at JobTeaser and has over five years of experience in marketing and communications. Welcome, Noemie and thank you so much for joining us today on The Content Mix.

Noemie Baudouin 0:31
Hello, everyone.

Carlota Pico 0:32
Well, Noemie, to give this interview started off, I’d like to ask you to share your background experience with us. What led you to where you are today?

Noemie Baudouin 0:41
Alright, so I started my career within PwC as a consultant, I didn’t start off right off the bat as a content manager. And it was really my experience working with these different clients that made me discover the world of marketing communication. Little bit like an outsider looking in. And then I decided that it was what I wanted to do. So I shifted within PwC, PricewaterhouseCoopers, as a b2b content manager for over a year and a half. Then I just decided I wanted to explore the world of startups more. So this is my second startup. My first startup was OpenClassrooms, which is an online training company. And now I work currently at JobTeaser, which is a company that deals with recruitment solutions for businesses, and career guidance for students, schools and universities.

Carlota Pico 1:39
Okay, excellent. So what makes you passionate about marketing? What made you switch back in the day?

Noemie Baudouin 1:47
I have to say the creativity of it and also the fact that I could see a project from beginning to end. As a consultant, I was always on short mission, sometimes longer, but I could never really see the fruits of my labor. So as a content manager, I was able to implement a strategy to follow it. And also to be more creative and to really own my content. That was something that was really important to me. So I think that is what had an impact on me and made me change my perception.

Carlota Pico 2:22
Okay, excellent. So moving into my next question, let’s say that you’re promoted tomorrow to Xyz global b2b head of content or something like that, and that you need to hire somebody for your current role. So what I’ve always said is that skills can be trained for, you can be educated in a set of skills, but what you can’t really be educated in is qualities. Qualities you’re kind of born with or you gain throughout your professional and personal experiences. So what type of or what combination of skills and qualities would you look for in a new hire for your role?

Noemie Baudouin 3:00
All right. So I’d like to start by saying that for me, the most important thing is the ability to learn throughout your life, throughout your career and having an open mindset, not a fixed mindset. I think that would be the most important thing. And that’s not just relevant for content marketing, it’s relevant for life. That being said, for a content marketer, I think a big part of the job is the ability to communicate and forge meaningful relationships because a network is everything when you produce content, you might need to access experts, you might need to have lots of interviews just like the one we’re making right now. So to be accessible, to be open, to have great relationship skills, I think would be something very important. You never know when you’re going to make you know the right connection with someone and that’s going to help you later on. So, first of all, is this quality. Then I think curiosity is super important when you want to create truly original content. I think it was Steve Jobs who said stay hungry, stay foolish to a Harvard class at some point in an announcement speech. And I think that sums up also the spirit of the content writer is to really want to look for more, to look beyond what is obvious. And curiosity. Yeah, to be really curious about trends about what is interesting in your topic, to find new opportunities for new content. It’s a great asset to the job. And finally, I would say, determination because if you’re curious, if you have great interpersonal skills, but you don’t have the power to push your projects and to see them blossom, then you won’t be able to create powerful, different content. So I would say yeah, determination and to be able to convince people of your project, to be able to convince your manager, this is very important as well. So, of course, I could go on and on. But these would be the three main qualities that would be important to me.

Carlota Pico 5:23
I completely agree with you, Noemie. Pushing the envelope, taking risks, obviously, being able to communicate because at the end of the day, we’re in the game of communication. And if can’t communicate to our team members or with people outside of our network in order to attract them to our content or in order to attract them to our brands, then what really are we doing in the first place, right? And then of course, persistence, because you can’t get anything done unless you’re persistent at it. Okay, well, since you quoted Steve Jobs, I’m going to quote another massive tech giant who is exactly burger Facebook’s CEO. Facebook’s CEO was quoted saying the following, in a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks, end quote. Looking back on your experience knowing what’s a personal or professional risk that you’ve taken, which has really paid off?

Noemie Baudouin 6:23
I would say that a professional risk that has really paid off was a really challenging content that I produced and changing it on the spot when it needed to be changed. I have a practical example for that. We often held you know, physical events during the year and this year because of COVID we had to shift to online events. We had to do it very quickly, we had to be very agile about this. And it was a risk because we were talking to a very traditional type of person that didn’t really know how to deal with technology, so we had to be very intuitive, very simple about it. So that was a risk that I took and it was worth taking in the end because the satisfaction rate was the same on our events, but we doubled the number of participants. So that was a good risk. Otherwise, in a more general way, I would say that to never stay stuck in a place where you don’t feel like you belong, is very important, and not hesitate to move on to the next adventure. I would say this risk is always going to be worth taking, because it’s going to challenge you and it’s going to make you better at your job also.

Carlota Pico 7:50
Yeah, okay, so obviously, you’ve done very well in the events sector, being able to double your account overnight in terms of people that are digitally attending your events. So I want to talk a little bit more about that. Webinars as the solution to in person events have actually become the norm during the health crisis. But brands are having to fight now more than ever to have a voice online. So it’s actually getting harder right to be heard. Taking into consideration your interest in online events, and obviously, your success so far, what can a brand do to make their webinar or online event really stand out? And it’d be great if you could also focus on this question when it comes to content.

Noemie Baudouin 8:36
All right. Well, you’re right, in the sense that we have observed a saturation of content. It was already the case before the COVID-19 crisis but after a brief moment of a lot of content and people clicking, people reacting after the months of April and May, there has been too much content posted. And now saturation is reality more than ever, I think. So it’s really important that people shouldn’t waste their time when they are dealing with your content. So my first advice about the quality of content would be to never hesitate to mix different points of view, bring in more experts and have roundtables. This format is always something that people are attracted to simply because of the richness of the exchanges. And also because you know you’re going to get some practical examples in a roundtable and no over the top problematics without diving in, and also I would say interaction is key. Part of the success of these events is the fact that we can constantly communicate, we have a team of moderators that chats during the live events. We have lots of polls, and we have live q&a right after or even during event, which makes it very lively. It’s a lot of preparation, but it makes everybody engaged. And that’s very important as we know that the focus is less important after 10 minutes of content or even five. So very important to interact. And I always think about my audience and I know that they don’t have the time, half of the time they are going to attend an event and go about their day and then come back and watch the replay. So really being able to promote snacking content after the event is very important. Building on the community, highlighting the members of your community and dialing it down through short videos, key figures, everything that people can find useful actually. That’s also something I would recommend.

Carlota Pico 11:02
Yeah. Okay, so snippets of content more so than the long format. Rather than a long format, your advice would be snip parts of the content and create like 30 second videos that are very engaging, but that are quick, because we move in such a fast paced world that people really don’t have a lot of time. And going back to one of the points that you brought up, which is relevant to time, time is money at the end of the day. So if the audience is giving us their time, it means that they’re not giving other people or other platforms that same time, right? So we have to make sure that we’re giving them value. And we are at the same time giving them information that will come in handy, which ties back to value. Okay, excellent. So let’s finish off this section with a practical example. Which marketing campaigns have you admired lately and why? And obviously, feel free to zoom into any of your own projects or campaigns.

Noemie Baudouin 12:09
Alright, there’s two things I would like to talk about that are very different. The first one is not a very recent campaign, but it had a strong impact on me. It’s by Google, it’s about the toothbrush product, which is a VR product that they put out onto the market. And what they did was that they asked different artists, they call this artists in residence, and they asked different artists to use the product and to create compelling works of art. And that allowed people to see the possibilities of the product that they would be pushing forwards. So having really a test and learn approach and then a really immersive approach to a product. I thought that was great. And it really made you want to buy it and make you want to try VR, even if you were not attracted it in the first place. The second thing is very different than the first one, it would be our own campaign that we did. It was a very targeted campaign. We targeted this at universities and schools for our biggest online event that we call the career services day. So we had a very targeted approach on LinkedIn. And via email, via phone, we even did phone calls, we did everything to attract this audience and in the end, what was cool about it is that we really highlighted successes of our speakers, and our participants, and we had people from 23 different countries in the end, so that was really representative of our ecosystem. And even we had lots of prospects watching the events. So that was a really cool campaign, I thought because it was very personal and it was very targeted. So that was very efficient as a result.

Carlota Pico 13:59
Yeah, no, that’s awesome. So basically what you did was you gave the mic over to your community. Basically making the community the protagonist of the story. And through their stories, you were able to attract new prospects. And then going back to the your VR point, absolutely. I’ve never been big on virtual reality but one of the things that I love at events is actually testing out the products. And I remember when I was at the Mobile World Congress back in 2015, they had this like massive VR setup. And, again, I’m not big on VR, but just having the gadgets there and seeing everybody so excited about it made me want to test it out as well. So I literally waited in line for like 25 minutes just to be able to put the headset on and see what everybody was watching.

Noemie Baudouin 14:48
Yeah, it’s about the desire you create for your product. And also, this idea of testing a product seems something exciting and new and seeing the possibilities of it, I think it’s pretty interesting.

Carlota Pico 15:03
Yeah, I think there’s something to be said about emotions. So when you see somebody else getting really excited over something, you automatically want to do it as well. Like you want to buy it, you want to try it, you want to test it. Like there’s just something about the power of excitement and emotions in particular. Okay, excellent. Well, Noemie, moving into the next section of our interview is going to be our set of rapid fire questions. Basically, it’s your recommendations to our audience to get the section started off, I’d like to ask you about your source of inspiration. Who do you admire?

Noemie Baudouin 15:36
All right, that would be, recently and throughout the year, Simon Sinek. I know maybe I’m not very original, but I think he’s a great influencer and his two books, Start With Why and Find Your Why are very inspirational, because they come back to the very important question of the missions of businesses, of individuals and its common sense in a way, but finding why you do things gives purpose to everything and you’re more likely first to be happy, but then to be relevant in your field of expertise. So I would have to say him. I’ve watched a lot of his videos throughout the year.

Carlota Pico 16:17
That’s a great recommendation. I always say that why and purpose brings it down to my audience. So if I understand why my audience wants to consume my content, it’ll help me to create better content, because it’ll help me to really better with my audience. I stopped talking about what I want to talk about. And I started talking about what my audience wants to read, which is really what’s important, right? Because content is only king if somebody wants to read it? If not, you’re irrelevant. Okay, moving into the next question. So what about a group, an event, since you love events, or a book or publication that you’d like to recommend, basically a resource?

Noemie Baudouin 16:58
Okay. For me, there’s a publication, I don’t know if it’s well known, but it’s called After Right Now: Exploring the new realities for brands and consumers in the COVID-19 era. And it was published right after the COVID crisis. But it’s such a brilliant piece because it explains all of the macro societal trends, political trends, even our emotion of psychology, all of that evolved with a crisis. And I think being able to absorb and understand that is really important, moving forward, understanding the new realities that we have to explore. So this would be my recommendation for the months to come.

Carlota Pico 17:41
Yeah. Okay. Very interesting. I’ll have to add that to my summer reading list. And last but not least, what’s your favorite app at the moment and why?

Noemie Baudouin 17:50
Okay, my favorite app is Skillshare, at the moment, I love Skillshare. I think it’s been promoted on YouTube. That’s how I discovered it. It’s a great app with a great community that allows you to be trained on any topic you want. And it’s really cool because it’s divided into little videos. So you can actually consume the content when you have the time. And you have practical exercises for each topic that you want to follow, and it’s very interesting because you can see what other people have done on the same topic. So it gives you a lot of inspiration. And also it’s about art, it’s about writing, it’s about many, many different things. And you can really explore topics that you know, you’ve always wanted to explore one day, but you never had the time. And I believe everything is linked. So it’s cool to explore things that might not be useful right now, but one day will prove useful for your job, or for your inspiration, or for your creativity.

Carlota Pico 18:56
Okay, and it also provides with a great little full circle about snippets. Okay, excellent Noemie. Well, thank you so much for joining us on The Content Mix. It was awesome. And to pick your brain about so many different subjects.

Noemie Baudouin 19:11
Thank you so much for having me.

Carlota Pico 19:13
The pleasure has been ours, and to everybody listening in today. Thank you for joining us on The Content Mix. For more perspectives on the content marketing industry in Europe, check out The Content Mix. We’ll be releasing interviews just like this one every week. So keep on tuning in. Thanks again. Have a fabulous day and I’ll see you next time. Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai