Read more

“The key to be becoming a thought leader lies in treating marketing as a form of creative writing.

Personal narratives serve as vehicles to emotionally educate the audience, connect with their gut instincts and provide unique insights that cannot be found elsewhere.”

Mariya’s Introduction

Hi everyone! This is Mariya.

Jeffrey is one of my favorite people to work with. I originally hired him as a writer in November 2022, a year ago. And the more projects we’ve done together, the more amazed I’ve become by Jeffrey’s skill, curiosity, and intelligence. I hope that you can be as blown away by his writing as I am.

This guest post might appear self-indulgent. After all, Jeffrey is writing about me and this newsletter. But honestly - I wasn’t thinking of publishing it on this newsletter. And then, my husband Jack read it out loud to me. And I knew that I had to try and get it here.

Jeffrey nailed exactly what I try to do. He described the purpose and mechanics of this newsletter better than I eve…

Read more

Spoiler: I’m not going to close my business or run away, don’t worry.

It’s not because I want to. I love Kalyna. I adore my job. I have poured my soul into marketing. I truly couldn’t imagine myself being happier doing anything else.

Yet here I am. Looking at applications for jobs I don’t want, and sending my business coach messages like these:

Thankfully, Heather knows me well enough not to believe me when I spiral. She is aware that I will likely go to bed in tears, wake up in the morning, and then start sending her excited updates about deliverables I submitted to clients or cool content ideas that suddenly popped into my head. And I probably will.

Then, at night, despair will claim me yet again. It’s so easy to feel hopel…

Read more

And I, a person that has never crossed paths with Perry or been acquainted with him personally in any shape or form, have been sobbing like a baby.

Because even though Perry was a celebrity that had absolutely no knowledge of my existence, he meant a lot to me. Friends has been one of my favorite shows since I first binged all 10 seasons back in freshman year of college. And Chandler has been my favorite character for most of the time since.

So I want to reflect on why I’ve been crying over the passing of someone I didn’t actually know, and what that tells us about fandom, emotional impact of art and media, and (of course) marketing. I also want to process the emotional pain that I’m feeling, because damn it, this sucks.

Popular Doesn’t Mean Bad

I love Friends. And I do not say that sarcastically or with exaggeration. I sincerely lov…

Read more

I’ve been silently marinating a variety of revelations about marketing in my head lately. Apologies for keeping you out of the loop, but I didn’t want to serve you some bland pickles. The real rich flavor comes only to those who wait.

In other words, my agency signed on 3 new clients recently, and they’ve demolished most of my assumptions about marketing, running an agency, and the base value of my and my team’s work. And I couldn’t be happier.

Because I’ve found out that most aspects of working as a B2B marketer that drove me and so many others to despair aren’t set in stone. We can do better, more fulfilling work. We can make more of an impact. We can get approved for higher budgets. And all of that potential isn’t that hard to reach. In fact, it might already be hiding under your nose.

Let me explain.

My Brain’s Been Exploding This October

I’ve spent the past month feeling mostly like this:

Reader, I’ve been …

Read more

Mariya’s Introduction

Hi everyone! This is Mariya. It’s my honor to present to you the first-ever guest post for Attention Deficit Marketing Disorder (ADMD). 

Wait, What? A Guest Post for ADMD?

To me, this guest program is a way to publish a little more often without burning myself out while also getting to lift up other voices. There are so many wonderful people out there with great insights to share, and I am honored to have the opportunity to give them a platform.

Learn more about our guest writer program (and submit your own pitch):

Today’s Guest Author: Heather O’Neill

Read more

No matter how much time I spend in the business world, or what kinds of people and organizations I interact with… I grow more and more convinced of something I knew when I was a little kid:

Very few things are as worthwhile or effective as the pure love of experiencing something truly great. 

Think of the first time you touched the sleek metal of a MacBook, saw the soft brushstrokes of Manet in a museum, or heard the soulful cry of a rock song. 

Really picture it. Remember how your body felt in that moment, recall the tingling of your toes, the soft ringing of your heart. Do you feel it? A part of your soul just came to life for the very first time.

Why Do We Feel Love?

I’ve been thinking a lot in the past year about what makes someone feel love.

Why do we love certain people? Why do we feel moved by certain pieces of art? Why do we…

Read more

I grew up knowing that nothing I did was ever good enough. No matter what I accomplished, it was never enough to guarantee safety, financial stability, or social acceptance. The world was kind of stacked against me.

I was a severely mentally ill child with undiagnosed neurodivergence, regularly subjected to abuse, and stuck with a passport from a country that was always under threat of invasion (spoiler: this becomes relevant later).

No "A" could fix the threats looming over my head. No teenage rite of passage could ever truly help. Nothing I did could ever be good "enough".

Why Should You Care?

The more I've reflected on my current mental state, the more apparent it's become that I'm not alone.

Sure, my particular traumas and circumstances are my own. But I suspect that many of you reading these words might find a reflection of your own fears and…

Read more

In case you’ve missed my previous email, I’ve launched a podcast version of ADMD.

The episodes here will be the same as the public essays on the written version of the ADMD newsletter, but I will be narrating them in my own voice. I hope this lets more people enjoy my ideas, especially if anyone prefers listening to long-form content over reading it!

The first episode is already out and you can find it here:

How to Subscribe

Substack

Just press the button below and you’ll get emails updating you whenever I publish a new written or podcast episode of this newsletter!

Subscribe now

Note: you don’t need to subscribe to a separate email list for the podcast. It’s the same email list as the main ADMD newsletter.

Spotify

Use this link to find ADMD on Spotify:

Read more

Meta’s new social media app Threads mostly let people export their pre-existing following. Here’s why I think that’s a problem.

Excerpt

The size of your following is often correlated to your power outside that platform (most big accounts are celebrities, billionaires, journalists, or media personalities for a reason). And the amount of effort that you need to invest into your posts is inversely proportional to your following size.

If you’re small, you will only get noticed by making really great content and having some luck with the algorithm. If you’re big, you can kind of get away with posting mediocre garbage. Simply thanks to exposure to so many people, your posts are much more likely to get surfaced via any algorithm. And then the cycle continues.

But here’s the beauty of the internet: because so many of us would end up posting on the same platforms as those celebrities and big personalities… sometimes we’d have a shot. Over the years on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, what-have-you – occasionally some regular person would strike gold and get that algorithmic blessing. They’d pop off with one viral post or continue compounding on previous momentum to grow big. It’s a digital rags-to-riches story, one of the last remaining frontiers of the increasingly impossible American Dream.

So, what happens to that dream of digital meritocracy when a brand-new social media platform is launched with those old hierarchies firmly rooted in place?

Subscribe now

About This Podcast

This is the first ever audio version of ADMD!

I will be making my way through the entire backlog of newsletter posts, but we are starting off with the most recent essay I’ve published:

Leave a comment

How to Subscribe

Substack

Just press the button below and you’ll get emails updating you whenever I publish a new written or podcast episode of this newsletter!

Subscribe now

Spotify

Use this link to find ADMD on Spotify:

Apple Podcasts

Use this link to find ADMD on Apple Podcasts:

RSS

1. Open this podcast episode in Substack (you should already be here!)

2. Press on the button labeled “Listen on” under the episode name and description:

   

3. Select to copy your private RSS feed link from the dropdown menu:

   

4. Enjoy!

Self-Promotional Aside

Hi, if you’re curious to learn more about earning attention and distribution for your content without having to depend on the whims of any particular social media platform or its algorithms… I’m co-hosting a webinar on exactly that topic next week!

Join me and two of my marketing friends on Thursday, July 20 at 1:00 PM — 2:00 PM EDT for a free webinar that’s all about finding content distribution opportunities by building strategic relationships with others.

Sign up for my webinar

Read more

Why You Should Care

If you make or read stuff on the internet, this essay should concern you.

I want to tell you a story about how I, a marketer with a small social media following, accidentally blew up Mastodon with some war reporting. And then I will show you what that experience, together with some recent developments on other social networks, can tell us about this weird moment we’re living through and what the internet might look like on the other side of it.

My thesis? How about this:

For the sake of keeping this post concise (at least, for me), I will focus on my personal experience and recent developments on specific platforms. In particular, I’ll touch on LinkedIn, Twitter, Bluesky, Reddit, and the larger Fediverse (which includes Mastodon and many other decentralized apps).

Did You Say… “War Reporting”?

Let’s back up and cover some basic facts.

Last weekend, I got suspended from LinkedIn. So, like any reasonable marketer who got cut off from her top promotional channel, I… became a war reporter on Mastodon.

Yes, you read that correctly. I ditched content marketing and spent three days reporting on a coup attempt in Russia to a rapidly expanding audience from Mastodon and other corners of the Fediverse.

Does Anyone Even Read the News on Mastodon?

Before you click away thinking that anything on Mastodon or the Fediverse is “too small” to care… look at my statistics from that weekend:

Adding up those numbers for three days of my Mastodon activity, we get:

• Likes - 3,089

• Shares (Boosts) - 1,567

• Replies - 272

Keep in mind: I’m a small account. On Friday, when the coup began, I had around 800 followers. On Monday, I had 1,973 followers. Huge jump, but still nowhere near top accounts on Mastodon or the Fediverse as a whole. I wasn’t known as a Russia or Ukraine reporter. I was just some marketer who happens to speak Russian and Ukrainian. And then I began posting.

Oh, and one more thing: Mastodon doesn’t have an algorithm. All of these numbers are 100% from people seeing my posts and deciding to share them with their own followers. Fully organic reach and engagement. The “Holy Grail” of digital marketing.

Yes, you should care about this. If you’re a marketer or a content creator, my little weekend adventure should matter to you.

Subscribe now

Is Organic Reach Dead?

You’ve probably heard others say lately that “organic reach is dead”.

It would be easy to dismiss that worry. I could say “pfft, people have been saying that about Twitter / Facebook / Google / etc. as long as they’ve been around.” Or I could pretend to be more sympathetic and remind you “you’ve just got to play the game. Algorithms change and we need to adapt.” But neither of those are the full story, are they?

Every day, I see marketers wondering why they can’t reach most of their following or how they can actually get exposure for their brands. At the same time, I see users frustrated that their feeds are flooded with spam and intrusive advertising on platforms run by billionaires who chase one hype cycle after another.

The internet does kind of suck right now. Both casual users and creators are unhappy, and there’s a growing sense that something is… off. That these platforms are getting worse and we are losing our systems for making connections, finding information, and building audiences.

Old Internet Giants are Probably Dying

One popular term to describe this current wide-ranging internet awfulness is “enshittification”. As the term’s author, Cory Doctorow, describes enshittification himself:

“Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.”

Many popular platforms are definitely going through that final phase of taking away their own value from individual users and business customers. Just take a look at what’s happened with the internet in the past month or so:

• On Twitter, Elon Musk blocked viewing posts without an account and then limited free users to reading 600 (soon to be 800) posts a day.

• On Reddit, CEO Steve Huffman decided to charge for API access and then squashed a massive user protest by kicking out moderators from their own communities.

• Meta has been losing money and failing to convince anyone that virtual reality (or a “metaverse”) is the future.

• Bluesky had to pause sign-ups because that many users were fleeing Twitter.

• LinkedIn changed its algorithm, sending creators into a tailspin. In the meantime, they’ve been struggling to take down fake profiles and their systems are flagging real people (like me) for no real reason. (They’ve also announced an AI post generation feature!)

• And… AI content in general is already flooding the internet with garbage websites.

The internet is definitely changing. And clinging on to “eh, this site’s survived thus far” won’t help any of us. We can’t adapt to new circumstances when we’re busy burying our heads in the sand.

It’s Okay for Businesses to Die

Warning: spoilers for Disco Elysium. Skip to the next section to avoid them.

The internet today reminds me of the Doomed Commercial Area in a brilliant RPG video game titled “Disco Elysium”. In that game, you play as a detective who is trying to solve a murder in a forgotten and poverty-ridden district of a fictional city called Revachol. And one of the zones that you can discover as you play is a literal basement filled with abandoned and failed businesses.

"It's just capitalism." She shrugs. "We only hear about tales of success, so it's often surprising to realize how many ventures actually fail."

Those words are spoken by a woman who works as a Novelty Dicemaker and is the owner of the sole surviving business in that entire building. If you’re lucky, and you successfully try a particular dialogue option in the game, you get to experience some of the most beautiful dialogue I’ve ever seen in a video game:

Novelty Dicemaker: “It’s a mourning ring,” she replies. “I made this when my first company failed. It was a small jewelry shop right here in the East Delta Commerce Centre, built with the little I inherited from my parents…”

“I drove it to the ground within a year. I didn’t have what you would call a viable business plan.”

You: “Why are you telling me this?”

Novelty Dicemaker: “It wasn’t just the jewelry shop either. I always thought that it was just the world, that you were supposed to try again and again until you finally succeed.”

“And now you’re telling me, what,” she closes her eyes, “that it was all because I didn’t run my little shops and ventures from a dump inside an abandoned chimney?”

You: “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. It’s entropy.”

Novelty Dicemaker: “Yeah.” She stares out of the window, not really hearing your words. “Or maybe it’s the entire world that’s cursed? It’s such a precarious place. Nothing ever works out the way you wanted.”

“That’s why people like role-playing games. You can be whoever you want to be. You can try again. Still, there’s something inherently violent even about dice rolls.”

“It’s like every time you cast a die, something disappears. Some alternate ending, or an entirely different world…” She picks up a pair of dice from the table and examines them under a light.

Everything new is the death of everything else that could have been. And sometimes, the things that die might have been wonderful places of digital community. Maybe it was the site where you met your best friend, or even your partner. Maybe you found your job because of that site. Maybe it was where you first fell in love with the craft that now makes up your identity.

Even if something once made life worth living, its end doesn’t mean you should die inside. We go on. We roll the dice again, and again. We can take on new roles with new usernames and play new games on new platforms. And whenever we make a choice… some alternate ending disappears.

Where Did Everyone Go?

It feels like everyone is gone. But people are still there. Millions of people still have phones and computers. Many people still have internet access. And most of them still want, just like they did two years ago, to log onto the World Wide Web and find other humans talking back to them, directly or broadcasting content at larger crowds.

These internet communities that we all miss? They appeared because we wanted them to. Some tech companies provided the infrastructure, sure. But the moments of connection, jokes, friendships, creativity, art, business deals, obscure references, elaborate explanations, announcements, and shared frenzy – all of the beautiful things that made the internet enjoyable and useful were created by us. Humans. Normal people who need to eat food, shower, and sleep. People like you, reading this post, and me, writing it.

And when people are still there, you can find them. It might just be a little harder than you are used to.

A New Place: Why Mastodon and the Fediverse are Important

Mastodon is a decentralized Twitter alternative that’s part of what’s called “the Fediverse”. The Fediverse is a large network of different social media websites & apps that all talk to each other via a protocol called ActivityPub. It’s pretty cool and you can get very nerdy with all of it.

Mastodon is most popular app in the Fediverse right now. Even so, it’s often dismissed as an irrelevant Twitter alternative. But regardless of total user counts or what might happen in the future – Mastodon is important. Not even for the app itself, but for what it stands for.

If I told you, in 2014, that thousands of people would be passionate about decentralized social media, opting in to pay volunteer administrators for server costs, and determining digital privacy norms via open forum – you wouldn’t believe me. You’d ask me why everything wasn’t owned by Facebook yet, and I’d gleefully inform you that the decentralization people have been voting whether or not to ban Meta (sorry, Facebook’s name is way more lame now) from interacting with their independent servers. Because yes, even Meta wants to join the ActivityPub party now.

The mere fact of those conversations happening at all, let alone the extent of resistance to big corporations like Meta connecting with the Fediverse, is incredible. We have a whole group of online outcasts, many of them queer, trans, non-binary, or neurodivergent, who made their own corner of the internet. And now that corner of the internet is successful enough that the old social media giants are crawling towards it, in their final bid for a second life.

More so, this social media without an algorithm or an owner is by far the most active, engaged, and interesting online space that I’ve been on in recent memory. The Fediverse is buzzing, with people sharing what they’re working on, thinking about, or enjoying. So even if this particular moment doesn’t last (even though I really hope it will), the Fediverse has proven its concept plenty.

What We Lost with Web 2.0

So-called “Web 2.0” made us complacent to consolidation of many internet spaces for different interests, contexts, and demographics into a few universal “public squares” where everyone hung out. Instead of clicking from a news site to a Flash game library to a cybersecurity forum… we got used to following a bunch of accounts tied to every interest we have and then finding all of that information in one easy, convenient feed.

It was comfortable and simple. I enjoyed it as much as anybody. It was nice to log into Facebook and see everyone I knew sharing their recent photos. It was fun to scroll through Twitter as every current event imaginable was reported upon in between horribly crass memes. It was quick to research industries for client projects on Reddit, which hosted data engineering experts one click away from women with ADHD.

Look, we’ve lost our muscles. We haven’t had to actively seek out our crowds because everyone was in the same place. We lost the art of curating our own internet experiences because algorithms would simply do it for us. But that’s not happening anymore. The internet of 5-7 giant websites has fragmented and that’s okay.

I promise you that people are still there, ready to listen. Because you can still post fast translations from Russian and Ukrainian Telegram channels one Friday evening, and suddenly you might get flooded with gratitude like this:

I am not special. I’m not some genius with hidden talents and a masterful understanding of social media. I’m not an unusually charming creator or the best writer alive. I’m not even that good of a translator, simply a native speaker of a couple languages.

But I managed to provide something truly valuable to a fair number of people. And they showed up. Many of them stayed, even when I switched back to my usual posts filled with marketing, tech, and cat pictures.

Trust me, you can still find people too.

Why Does the Internet Even Matter?

You’re probably thinking: “finding people on a new platform is hard, especially needing to do that over and over again with fragmented communities. Why should I put in all of this work?”

You’re not alone if you feel that way. Many have resigned: either to a digital dystopia where the same corporations continue fighting over a rapidly diminishing pie of human users, or to giving up on the internet as a project entirely. What you do is your own prerogative, but I can’t give up on the internet.

I believe in the internet as something worth fighting for. From the bottom of my heart, I believe that the internet is worth it.

I believe with the faith of a little girl who grew up in a small town in Ukraine, undiagnosed with ADHD and severely bullied for her strangeness. A little girl who felt like an outsider in the real world, but who ran to her computer to talk to her online friends. Those friends only knew the girl through a screen, wholly unaware of her strange mannerisms, her hyperactivity, her fear of eye contact. This girl discovered her confidence dreaming up stories in forums and chatrooms until 3 am, exploring, sharing, falling in love with other humans and the things they made.

For the sake of that little girl, I will not give up on the internet.

I will not give up on finding connection in digital spaces. I don’t give a shit if every single website I use today burns down. I will rebuild from their ashes. I will find my people wherever they go next. And I will, again, marvel at the love and beauty of spontaneous connection and deep exploration of mutual interests.

Without the internet, I had nothing. I was a little girl bullied, alone, and severely abused. The internet gave me dreams and I will preserve that for others. I have to.

Why Should We Create Stuff Online?

The internet is important. Even if it’s not important to you, the internet is still important to so many people around the globe, for reasons we can’t even imagine.

So, if we consider ourselves creatives or content producers of any kind – do we have an obligation to make and publish stuff online? Should we carry on posting, hopping from one platform to the next as everything falls apart?

I think that creating stuff online is even more important when everything feels pointless. In those moments of chaos, destruction, spam, and unbearable cringe – that’s when taking our craft seriously matters more than ever.

To illustrate my point, let’s go back to another time in recent memory when this whole “Internet” thing felt kind of silly: the year when the COVID pandemic shut down the world, 2020.

Welcome to the Internet

It’s easy to think of the internet the way it’s described in Bo Burnham’s song “Welcome to the Internet”. The entire comedy special, “Inside”, was incredibly popular and even won an Emmy. So I assume that even if you haven’t seen the whole performance, you will at least recognize the GIFs:

“See a man beheaded
Get offended, see a shrink
Show us pictures of your children
Tell us every thought you think
Start a rumor, buy a broom
Or send a death threat to a boomer”

The internet presented to us here is a malicious, mind-numbing, radicalizing ray of stimulating garbage. It’s a feed that’s gotten out of control. A poison fed to a population that’s too numb to resist. We’re all very familiar with the internet that brought us ISIS, Cambridge Analytica, and TikTok.

As creators, we were chained to never-ending algorithmic demands that we continue making more and more content, feeding that parasitic hose. We didn’t want to add to the sewage, but if we wanted to maintain any relevancy in those universal online spaces we had to play by the rules. We tried to go viral. We posted more often. We stuffed our blogs with keywords and polluted our captions with irrelevant trending hashtags. We were prisoners of a system that we enforced.

Why would we want to hold on to any of that?

I see “Welcome to the Internet” now as a eulogy for the old web. It was exciting, it was overwhelming, it was terrifying, it was… a little bit of everything, all of the time. And this song is a reminder for why we should let that version of the internet rest in peace, dead.

All Eyes on Me

I actually don’t think “Welcome to the Internet” is Burnham’s most interesting song about the internet within “Inside”. I am much more interested in what he says in another part of that special – the finale, titled “All Eyes On Me”

If you haven’t heard this song before, I highly recommend watching the entire thing on YouTube (warning: deliberately uncomfortable eye contact):

Welcome back. Was that a relaxing experience?

No, of course not. Burnham is trying to stress you out and jolt your brain awake. From the very first lines, even as he sings them ever so softly, Burnham is telling you not to trust him or the safety of the screen between you:

I feel so seen, exposed in my own skin, whenever he makes eye contact with the camera in those shots. Because while in “Welcome to the Internet” Burnham obscured himself by hiding his eyes with dark glasses, in “All Eyes on Me” he takes all that distance away. This song is about the sad, stressful, and soul-crushing reality of a performer who doesn’t have anyone to perform for.

We’ve been taught that as “creators” online, we needed to sanitize away every uncomfortable facet of the creative process. “Show your work,” but only in social-media-friendly formats preferably with some nice filters, cropping, and lights. “Become your personal brand,” but don’t swear or talk politics in fear of offending anybody. “Build an audience,” but only from the people who the algorithm determined to be relevant enough.

Be a creator in a way that is always friendly to all advertisers. And don’t look too uncomfortable! Just tell your new borrowed audience to calm down:

Don't overthink this
Look in my eye
Don't be scared, don't be shy
Come on in, the water's fine.

Don’t talk about controversial, even as climate change threatens to turn our entire planet into a hostile, uninhabitable hellscape:

You say the ocean's rising like I give a shit
You say the whole world's ending, honey, it already did
You're not gonna slow it, Heaven knows you tried
Got it? Good, now get inside.

When Burnham dances in that shed, all alone with his shadow multiplied by his lights, I feel shivers running down my spine:

This is a man, all alone in a dark room, singing about the exhilaration of holding the attention of a live crowd. The performer’s desire to get everyone’s eyes on himself. The energy of getting people to do something in perfect sync, controlling the mood of a room as everyone gets up from their seat.

As humans, we find joy in feeling like part of something bigger with other people. Most of us know the feeling of going to a live show and getting swept up in the emotion of everyone around us. For a moment, we can forget about our own problems. For a second, we feel less alone.

Even if the performer is selfish in wanting the spotlight on them, the performance is good when that selfishness disappears in the illusion of a good show. Sure, we’re watching someone else on that stage. But when they do their job right, in watching them we can finally see ourselves, together.

Keep Making Stuff on the Internet

Even if you can only reach one or two more people, you should continue making stuff on the internet.

You are not a “content creator,” even if you call yourself one. You are a performer. You are an artist. If you make stuff for other people to see, you are so much more important than the amount of likes that an algorithm might bless you with.

As an artist, you have a job. Your job is to help other people navigate the darkness of their own lives by exploring your own. You can turn that darkness into whatever you want: from “how to” tutorials about using software to heavy comedy specials to overly emotional newsletter essays. But don’t avoid it. You can’t be a guide for others if you’re too afraid to walk the path yourself.

The internet is dying. A new internet is being born. However indestructible a social network, way of life, or Russian oligarchy might seem… everything is vulnerable to being replaced.

So if we can replace the old, how will you write a new history of the web?

Reading Recommendations:

1. “The only way to win is not to play” by The Content Lab. A great reflection from one of my Mastodon friends on similar topics of creating and social media.

2. “Fail Limit Exceeded” by Cheryl Platz. An excellent analysis of how what’s happened at Twitter will be a significant blow, even if the platform recovers.

3. “No, Social Media Is Not The Same Thing As Lead Paint” by Mike Masnick. A more nuanced take on social media than “it’s bad for mental health”.

Musical Minute

On the topic of performers faking their smiles - this was always my favorite song by Queen:

Share

But here’s a problem: how can you maintain a happy face when most of your past, even the joyful memories, are tainted by horror and loss?

I’m not trying to be hyperbolic. As a Ukrainian, being reminded of tragedy in the most mundane details is simply my everyday reality. For example, I just opened Facebook to this set of photos that I posted 9 years ago:

What could be upsetting about that post? Those photos show two teenage girls, happy to be reunited over summer break, having fun in Mac’s Photo Booth app.

Except, those are photos that I took with my childhood best friend in my family’s apartment in Zhytomyr, Ukraine.

My friend is currently in Poland, having fled from the war but trying to stay close to the border and her loved ones who aren’t able to leave. My family’s apartment, with those same blue shelves, is left abandoned. All of us have left the country with no return plans, besides the impossible hope that if we can safely come back… those shelves will still be standing, filled with the books that my family collected there for four generations, across more than half a century.

Today, I return to this newsletter to talk to you about the question we’re all avoiding, despite thinking about it all the time: how can we continue to do our marketing work when the entire world is ending around us?

TRIGGER WARNING: Discussions of death, war, destruction, loss, discrimination, mental health, personal tragedy, apocalypse, violence, nuclear weapons, suffering, terrorism, and the worst disaster of all: Twitter.

Face It. The World is Ending

I can’t deny it. It feels like the world is ending from every possible direction.

As I return to writing this newsletter after a concussion-induced hiatus, I am certain that this is the only topic I could possibly write about.

Because whether you are vocal about it or not, I’m confident that you feel like your world is ending too. And neither of us benefits from putting on a fake smile and keeping on as if we aren’t dealing with deep, existential, debilitating fear.

Even as I’ve tried to ignore that fear and keep talking about conversion rates, content quality, and audience research… the apocalypse kept knocking on the door of my consciousness. It continued to chase me from every website I visited and every direction I tried to run to.

A Brief List Of Recent Apocalyptic Events

1. My native Ukraine is dealing with unimaginable tragedy and long-term ecological disaster, as the Kakhovka Dam in Kherson was blown up by Russia.

2. Olena Bomko, a wonderful marketer who I follow on LinkedIn, took a break from talking about her work to tell us that because of that flood, her house in Kherson no longer exists.

3. New York City, where my husband and I will be moving at the end of the summer, has looked like the set of a dystopian movie while covered in smoke coming from wildfires in Canada caused by climate change.

4. Meanwhile, Shell has decided that profits are more important than sticking to reduced oil production targets.

5. All around the world, including the United States (where I live), queer people, trans people, women, and far too many others are being actively denied humanity and bodily autonomy by hostile, cruel legislation. And yet, so many professional conferences are still being hosted in those places.

6. AI is being used by giant corporations to try to distract us from both immediate harms caused by this technology, and other pressing threats to humanity & our wellbeing.

7. Marketing jobs, especially in tech and SaaS (where I work), have become more scarce and unstable.

8. Twitter, which I used to love, continues disintegrating into a confusing hell-hole of fascism and spam.

9. Donald Trump has been charged with serious crimes, yet his supporters continue to call for violent upheaval of American democracy.

10. Reddit, which is another site that I absolutely loved for work and personal reasons, is currently self-destructing as their leadership is refusing to listen to users and moderators.

11. As I began writing this piece today, a news headline popped up that Russia delivered nuclear missiles to Belarus.

All of this doesn’t even account for the apocalyptic undertones in my current reality that aren’t making news headlines.

For example, I’m currently sitting not too far away from what used to be the Rocky Flats Plant, a manufacturing plant for nuclear weapons in the Denver area. We drive past a reminder of that dark history nearly every day, in the shape of a pretty fun horse statue wearing a Hazmat suit that’s known as the “Cold War Horse”.

And my personal life is in the middle of an apocalypse of its own: my husband graduated from law school, and we have moved out of our home in Ithaca, forever. We are currently wandering around the country staying with family and friends, waiting to feel “ready” to move to New York City for the foreseeable future. Those events are mundane, sure. But every move (especially between cities) is the ending of one world and the slow, agonizing transition to a new one.

Subscribe now

But… Can’t We Just Get Back to Work?

Whatever your life circumstances, location, or political beliefs might be… if you live in 2023, then apocalyptic thoughts are inescapable. We are fooling ourselves if we think that personal and world tragedies won’t affect our work.

In case you don’t believe me, let me make the case with some more marketing-centric examples.

Tracey Wallace, Director of Content at Klaviyo, posted on LinkedIn that she is temporarily returning from maternal leave to write a few newsletters. My suggestion for a potential topic got 13 reactions and a comment supporting the idea:

Over on Superpath, I’ve been following a thread where someone asked how they can keep getting clients when work feels like it’s all dried up. This mirrors many conversations that I’ve had in the past couple of months with other agency owners, freelance consultants, in-house marketers, founders, and clients. Our industry is struggling. Many people have been laid off. Others, like me, are fighting tooth and nail to get enough work to keep our businesses going.

My first marketing conference, SaaS Open, was hosted in Manhattan, right next to the World Trade Center. As I ran to the venue that morning, late to the opening talk… I stopped right before the tunnel that would take me into Brookfield Place and the conference venue. I stopped to look at The Sphere that’s displayed in Liberty Park. This sphere.

Why was that sphere worth stopping for on one of the greatest days of my professional life so far? Why did I choose to take in the dissonance between the buzz of my professional conference and this physical reminder of the tragedy that was 9/11?

Because I think it’s important to remember pain when I’m happy.

As I wrote recently on my personal blog:

“to me, the existence of beauty in a place that was, at some point in the past, the center of suffering… that’s the most hopeful fact of them all.

A war zone can become a playground. A bomb shelter can turn into a library. A destroyed building might be transformed into a park. A corpse could fertilize the soil for a strong tree. And a broken child, shaking in fear, can become the love of someone’s life.

I have to remember suffering when I’m happy. Because if I forget… then I’ll have nothing to hold on to when the world falls apart again.”

Repressing Our Darkness Will Harm Our Work

If we repress these difficult realities of our work and refuse to acknowledge them, our work WILL suffer. Just because you’ve distracted yourself for a minute, an hour, a day, or even a whole month… all of those scary shadows haunting your subconscious will not disappear. They are simply waiting for the right moment to strike. And then, just as you’re in the middle of finishing up a deliverable hours before the deadline – you’ll see a LinkedIn post, an email, or a news headline that destroys you.

I believe that facing our personal and psychological demons is essential to doing good work. And I’m not the only one! Here’s what Rand Fishkin (who I somehow end up quoting in every single piece I make), wrote in his book “Lost and Founder”:

“It’s hard to make logical connections between these personal, emotional experiences and the output or quality of work at the company. Could it really be true that sharing stories of brain tumors and gender transitions, or accepting our children's sexuality, impacts the value our software delivers or the success of our marketing? Or that discomfort in sharing personal conflict or fear of retribution for speaking up about harassment could have negative impacts on those same outcomes? According to both the research and the anecdotal experiences, yes.”

And if we repress any of those uncomfortable emotions weighing us down, we will cause ourselves more pain. Rand found this out the hard way, when he went into work at his old company after his wife Geraldine was diagnosed with a brain tumor:

“The discomfort of having to pretend that everything was normal drove me mad. I kept up the facade for about two hours. After lunch, I called an impromptu all-hands meeting in the lobby, at the time the only space big enough (just barely) to hold us all.
I didn't say much. I could barely make it through a few short sentences. I just told everyone that the prior week, Geraldine had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and that we'd find out more soon, and that until we did, I was going to be a wreck. I told them I needed their help to make it through, and Moz did, too.””

Thankfully, Geraldine has recovered. But back then, they didn’t know if she would be. And pretending like they did… that would have slowly destroyed him. If any of you reading this were fans of Rand’s old content back in his Moz days, think about it this way: do you really think that he could have effectively taught you marketing while this secret was eating him alive?

Marketing work is not separate from the rest of the world. Marketing work is not separate from personal tragedies. Marketing work is not separate from our worlds, personal or otherwise, collapsing around our computer screens as we chase traffic boosts or increases in CTR. Even if you’re hiding in a bomb shelter, that won’t stop the bombs from falling on the ground above your head.

Finding Hope at the End of the World

Now that I have sufficiently depressed you, I’d like us to try and figure out how we can get through this crappy, crappy time.

Yes, the world is kind of terrible. Yes, our industry, our jobs, our countries, our climate, and our lives are all dealing with a never-ending barrage of “unprecedented” (and very much precedented) dangers. It sucks. It’s depressing. It’s terrifying.

But none of these terrible things mean that we should give up.

I’ve been looking for hope in a couple of places that I’ll share with you right now. If I do my job correctly, maybe you will resonate with them too.

The Man Who Made My Writing Career

My entire marketing career is built on a foundation of seeds that were planted by a single man.

Ken Nielsen was a professor at NYU Abu Dhabi, where I went to school. He taught classes in the theater department, in the freshman writing program, and he led our university’s Writing Center.

I spent a lot of time with Ken during my college years. I took his writing class in my freshman spring, where I was finally shown that I actually did have room to improve my writing ability (I was a little cocky back then). I worked in the writing center for the remaining three years of my degree. And I would regularly spend time in his office and the nearby library café, talking to Ken about everything under the sun.

Ken was the person who taught me to write the way I do. Ken was the person who taught me to think critically about everything I read and research. Ken was the person who nurtured my aptitude for teaching and asking questions. And Ken was the person who I ran to when I decided to change my major from physics to literature.

I will never forget running into his office that day, tears either already running down my face or welling up in my eyes. I sat down across him, in that small room covered from end-to-end in books and scribbled up papers, and asking him the most desperate question on my mind: “am I making a mistake by switching to writing, when it seems like the world doesn’t care about it anymore?”

Ken was the person who made me believe, with my entire heart, that writing and reading are important. That regardless of what path I might take after graduation, regardless of what I studied, regardless of where I decided to work… writing would continue to be important. Ken taught me that even when every economic force seems to knock down the importance of wrestling with difficult ideas, looking through dense texts, and then sitting to write out one’s thoughts – those activities continue to be some of the most significant work that humans can do.

Ken died last summer, on June 19, 2022. He passed unexpectedly for most of the students who knew him. He was still young, but according to his obituary, he died after “a period of illness”.

I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. I didn’t get a chance to speak with him after graduating. I didn’t get a chance to tell him that I remembered nearly every conversation we ever had, and that my entire professional life has been an attempt to keep living out the values and skills that he instilled in me.

I cry whenever anybody mentions his name. Even now, nearly a year later, I’ve had to write this newsletter with a box of tissues by my side. Whenever any of my writing does well, my heart shatters into a thousand pieces, thinking that I will never be able to share those successes with him.

But I haven’t been able to stop thinking of Ken for the last couple of months because one of the books he introduced me to is the reason I continue to believe that my work is worth doing.

Writing at the End of the World

Months before I decided to change majors, Ken lent me a book.

This book is a bit of an obscure academic text, read almost entirely by arts and humanities professors around the US. Most of the text is the author analyzing a variety of literary texts, diving into quotes and pairing them with discussions of current events.

But here’s the thing: the title of this essay is actually a direct reference to that book. Because that book is called "Writing at the End of the World" by Richard E. Miller.

While Miller phrases most of his thoughts around academics and teaching the humanities, if you change those phrases to “marketing” or “content creation” all of his points become very relevant to our work as well:

“Why go on teaching when everything seems to be falling apart? Why read when the world is overrun with books? Why write when there's no hope of ever gaining an audience? Posing such questions aloud is not a sign of despair; it's a way to start a conversation about how and why reading, writing, and teaching the literate arts can be made to continue to matter in the twenty-first century.”

Reader, if you work in marketing, I am confident that you’ve asked some version of these exact questions to yourself at some point this year. Why should we go on promoting products when everything seems to be falling apart? Why read blogs when even search engines are overrun with crappy content to the point of becoming unusable? Why write when organic growth seems impossible?

And most importantly… how and why does reading, writing, and publishing marketing content continue to matter in the age of apocalyptic world news and generative AI?

While thinking about death and tragedies, Miller describes a despair that sounds very similar to many of the LinkedIn posts appearing on my feed these days:

“The senseless loss of life always trumps the efforts of the meaning makers. Why bother with reading and writing when the world is so obviously going to hell?”

But in contemplating darkness, Miller shows us a source of hope:

“Violence, suicide, war, and terrorism recur in these discussions, as do fraudulence, complicity, and woundedness. If there is to be lasting hope for the future of higher education, that hope can only be generated by confronting our desolate world and its urgent, threatening realities. The only way out is through.”

Confronting tragedy in its full, unbearable, terrifying ugliness is the only way to move past it.

A Marketer’s Responsibility During the Apocalypse

As marketers, we are institutional sense-makers. Whatever we might be promoting, we have to make others believe that those products, services, or causes are worthwhile. And if we are wondering why SaaS even matters when the world is “obviously going to hell”, then why wouldn’t the people we’re marketing to wonder the same thing?

Like it or not, as a marketer, you are in the business of influencing others. And in times of fear and uncertainty, your work takes on a new responsibility. You can either choose to influence to ignore what’s going on, continue feeling afraid without a way out, or to navigate out of despair into a better tomorrow.

Look, even if whatever you’re promoting feels irrelevant, you still have power. When the world is ending, providing meaning can serve as a ray of light piercing through even the most impenetrable darkness.

As Miller describes in his chapter about 9/11 – families of victims would keep going to disaster response teams looking for explanations more than anything else. They’d ask about what happened, how the experience could have felt for their loved ones as they died, and where their bodies might have gone. They were “looking for stories that have an ending of any kind.”

Tragedies will continue to happen in the world around us. And when we try to address them, we should ask ourselves:

“Whose job is it to clean up after the apocalypse? After all the judgment calls have been made, what does life begin to look like on the other side of the unthinkable?”

I believe that all of us, marketers or not, have a duty to clean up after the apocalypse in whatever way we can. And in processing the unthinkable, but continuing to do our work alongside it… that’s how we can find hope.

The world might be ending. But the more hopeless everything feels, the harder you should fight to keep on living.

I want to leave you with some lyrics from one of Hozier’s new songs, All Things End:

And just knowing
That everything will end
Should not change our plans
When we begin again.

I urge you, reader: begin again. Rise up, no matter how many times the world might knock you down. Even if everything will end. Keep marketing at the end of the world.

Top 3 Reading Recommendations

1. ”The End of Influencers on Instagram“ by Wired. A surprisingly optimistic vision of the changes that social media is going through and its impact on creators.

2. “4 Ways to Say It: How to Use Stories to Amp the Power of Your Advice” by Jay Acunzo. If we hope to continue creating content in the age of AI writing tools, we need to become better storytellers. Jay shows us how.

3. “Should You Use AI Art In Your Marketing?” By Fenwick. My friend Carina Rampelt co-wrote a wonderful piece for her agency about AI and creating visual marketing assets.

Musical Minute

”Не Твоя Війна” by Okean Elzy.

This song was released in 2016, back when the war in Ukraine was concentrated in the East. But ever since Russia began raining bombs on the rest of my country, I’ve found more and more meaning in its lyrics.

You can read a full translation here, but here’s a quick snippet of the chorus (with some tweaks that I think reflect the original lyrics better):

Guelder rose branches bowed down.
Mother, to whom did we pray?
How many of your children
Will the war, which is not yours, take from you?

Note: This post is part 2 covering my Content Distribution & Outreach System that we use for certain client projects. You can find Part 1 here, which goes over the high-level overview of the entire system and the “Distribution Opportunities Database” template.

Now that we’ve covered the first template, which forms the backbone for the whole distribution system, we can look at three more templates (with links to duplicate them to your own Notion workspace):

Read more

Note: This post will cover the high-level overview of the entire system, the reason we built it, and detail the “Distribution Opportunities Database” template. I will be publishing guides to the other templates in this system over the next 2 weeks.

Problem: B2B Content Distribution

Recently, our agency has started taking on projects that don’t involve any direct content creation. Instead, we are supporting clients with operations surrounding content, like:

• Auditing previous online presence

• Locating patterns, themes, and gaps in competitor content and industry publications

• Summarizing audience sentiment (combining social listening, forum and review mining, and direct interviews)

• Building out detailed and truly practical audience personas

• Listing out available marketing channels and influential online spaces

• Discovering untapped opportunities for content creation and distribution

• Improving outreach with creative, personalized, and relevant collaborations.

While we’ve been providing all of these services to our clients for a while, they were typically thrown in as an add-on here or there together with our typical writing offering. Because of that, we never created a proper system for recording our insights or presenting them to clients. Instead, we’d throw together some hodgepodge report or dump our notes on our poor point of contact and call it a day.

But now things have changed. We are signing contracts exclusively for audience research, content strategy, or distribution support – so our presentation of those deliverables has to be top-notch.

This week, I’ve finished designing a v1 system for content distribution, collaboration outreach, and associated strategy analysis and now I’ll walk you through it step-by-step.

NOTE: The templates are built out in Notion and rely heavily on SparkToro data. You can implement most of this process in your own tech stack, but I can’t advise you on any specific adjustments.

Solution Overview: Content Distribution & Outreach System with Notion and SparkToro

Read more

Disclaimer: Don’t worry, nothing will change for free subscribers. I won’t paywall new essays or stop publishing them. I don’t want to impact your experience in any way. The paid tier is simply an extra for those who want it.

Hi! I’ve got a special announcement for you today.

Thank You

Since I’ve first started publishing this newsletter in January, so much has changed.

There’s now 91 of you subscribed to receive my half-crazed ramblings in your inbox at odd hours of the night. It might not seem like a flashy number, but all of you mean the world to me and I treasure every single one of you. Thank you for your support, feedback, and all the love you’ve shown me.

We’ve been on quite a wild ride, talking about AI, mermaids, insecurities, hustle bros, conferences, and love. I’m not quite sure what any of you expected when you signed up, but I do hope that I managed to surprise you at least once :)

Future Content

The good news is: if you’re a free subscriber, nothing will change.

I adore writing…

Read more

Loving what you do is a competitive advantage in marketing. 

Yep. You heard me. All the squishy, fuzzy, disgustingly ineffable emotions are a competitive advantage and a business asset. Because great marketing is built on a foundation of empathy for the target audience. And what’s empathy but an annoying abstract set of emotions?

Whenever you hear somebody say “there’s no place for emotion, it’s just business”, laugh them out of the room. Or, if you’re feeling particularly understanding, send them a link to this essay. I’ll take care of it from there.

It’s NOT “Just Business”

Whenever somebody dismisses a conversation about emotional resonance, authenticity, or creativity by claiming that all that matters is “just business”, it makes my blood boil. Because that statement (and the mindset behind it) doesn’t make any sense!

What is “just business”? Can you point me to a place in the universe that only business…

Read more

This week, I’m in New York City for a tech conference. I’ve been invited as a speaker, and now that the first half of the two-day event draws to a close, I’d like to reflect on how my experience has felt so far.

What Happened?

I’m writing these words while alone in my hotel room at 7:00 pm, while my husband is at a dinner with a work friend and my calendar says that I’m at another dinner with some other speakers. Yet, I’m typing away on my keyboard in the company of only the heater’s consistent huffing and the array of fluorescent lights from all the office buildings in FiDi.

Let’s address the question on all of your minds: yes, I’m supposed to be at a dinner right now. No, I’m not showing up later. And no, nothing bad happened to deter me away from it.

I am not at that dinner because I reached my limit for how much social anxiety I could keep at bay in the artificial environment of a professional conference.

Since …

Read more

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching a YouTube video about the new wave of Gen Z "business gurus" on TikTok, fresh off the all-too-recently disgraced Andrew Tate's content academy.

For those of you still blissfully an aware, allow me ruin your innocence: Andrew Tate is misogynistic, bitter, and allegedly even guilty of some serious crimes. Yet… teenage boys would fall for his "sweet" cocktail of angry rants about the Matrix and superficial financial advice. And even with the man himself currently in custody, his influence lives on.

It’s uncanny how much all of these Andrew Tate clones remind me of LinkedIn marketing bros. 

Andrew Tate’s fans are simply a younger version of the same unwarranted confidence, disdain for others, insistence on shallow advice, obsession with money, and a healthy dash of “alpha-male” BS coated with a thin layer of angry delivery.

Subscribe now

Hustle Bro Content Grindset

I’ve seen older versions of these guys pushing their frameworks, paid content “courses”, and template bundles that are just copy-paste versions of some fake inspirational story out of an IG account posting tips like “DM 5 new accounts every day”.

I’m all too familiar with this mantra of “I am rich, you are poor, if you want to stop being worthless, give me money, and become my clone”. Make a course about making courses, so your students can make money making courses about making courses about making courses! None of this is shaped like a Dorito, don’t think too hard about it.

This approach to “marketing” and “growth” (hard not to put these words into quotation marks in this context) is so… icky.

You might be wondering if those courses are any good.

Perhaps you’ve ever seen one of them floating around, seemingly recommended by everyone on your social media of choice. They are talking about all the money they’re making thanks to the unique frameworks shared behind that paywall. There must be something to all the buzz, right? 

Trust your gut. If a paid offer smells rotten, it won’t taste good either. 

A couple of months ago, someone shared their access to a few of these paid content courses with me, and it was… a journey in disappointment, to say the least.

These things were being sold for $700+ and what would you get for that amount of money? A 40-page PDF or a single poorly edited video of some dude telling you all about the money they make, how cool they are, and their “marketing” advice boiling down to:

“Show your work. Post a lot. Grind hard. Use my template about growth. Pretend you know everything”. 

I have yet to see a paid course that’s 1–2 hours of pre-recorded content or a single PDF that’s actually worth more than $100.

(This section doesn’t apply to more comprehensive pre-recorded materials or live cohort classes! Some of those are genuinely phenomenal.)

A Wild Content Bro In His Natural Habitat

While drafting up the initial idea for this post, a real-life example of a viral content bro reared its head on my LinkedIn feed.

Shallow advice, overly confident tone, and a strange amount of enthusiastic comments… all served on a silver platter for us to look at.

Note: all the identifying details have been removed from these screenshots, but I’ve preserved the post in its entirety:

As I stated on Mastodon, seeing the number of likes on this post made me feel insane. 

When I first found it, the post had 400+ reactions in only 6 hours, but the advice they give is… kind of absolute garbage?

This kind of blog post template isn’t special or unique. Most SEO optimized posts look like this already: intro, benefits, surface-level advice, quote or listicle, conclusion. Any content mill worth its salt churns out 50 of these bad boys a week. 

I am particularly frustrated seeing the point about “Unique Content” reduced to one subsection including “insightful” tips like: 

“If you don’t have experience, ask someone internally – ‘Why should companies invest in TOPIC?’ and use their quote.”

Aside: My Husband’s Take on the LinkedIn Content Bro

My wonderful husband (who has now been poisoned by all of my marketing talk) was also so frustrated with that LinkedIn post that he sat down and wrote his (much funnier) version. 

I include it here in full for your entertainment:

The whole thing reads like “How Pickup Artistry Will Forever Change Your SEO Game”:

“I’ve slept with hundreds, if not thousands of SERP-topping blog posts (but that’s the only thing they’re being a top about 😏 I would know, I’m an AlphaMarketer 🐺 💰💪). It’s pretty cool, but I’m not satisfied. As much as I like rolling about in ALL OF THIS M$NG COLD HARD BITCOIN, I want YOU to come join me. Totally not seeking vulnerable young upstarts who haven’t had enough time in business to know any better than to boost my following and legitimize my useless/lazy/scummy practices. I actually care about you. I want you to succeed, and I want to help you get that 10/10 dream Stacey client that your businessChad ass deserves! Here’s a uselessly vague guide on how to do that, and if you want to know more, I’ll tell you everything in my 10-part course on multilevel-pickup-crypto-artist-hustling for just 15 easy installments of $199.99”

Shallow Advice Isn’t the Full Picture

The advice to follow a universal 7-step framework for your blog posts is so blatantly shallow. 

Yet, that post I mentioned above is way more successful than anything I’ve ever published (or worked on for clients). Am I wrong? Should we pack up our bags and give up on talking about content quality?

Not so fast.

If advice this simple worked, all of us marketers would be out of a job. This LinkedIn poster and a clever AI script would have taken over the internet by Christmas last year. Yet here we are, reading newsletters about content marketing in March.

So, what’s missing?

What “Sounds Off” About Hustle Bro Marketing Advice

Beyond the general annoyance or the desire to smack your computer monitor, why does this type of “Hustle Bro Culture” content advice seem… off?

Here are a couple of my guesses:

1. Impossible to replicate strategically. You can easily apply one of these templates and do a TERRIBLE JOB at it. I could describe the benefits of using a content agency as “hiring out your content work to professionals will save you time and grow your revenue”. Sure, that technically touches on a pain point. Will you remember that statement 20 seconds later? Of course not.

2. Formulaic content inevitably becomes repetitive, diluted, and annoying. The first classic SEO optimized article was probably useful and fun. They aren’t anymore now that our search pages are flooded by hundreds of them on any imaginable topic. The first ChatGPT generated draft was also really cool! The 50th…. Not so much.

3. Tactics without a strategic “why”. If you don’t understand why a particular tactic has worked for someone – how will you know when to apply it? You need to back up every tactical decision with a specific strategic rationale that fits in with your larger goals and context.

4. Shallow answers are unsatisfying to read. I think this type of advice is like junk food. But not even good junk food, like a freshly cooked McDonald’s Double Cheeseburger with extra pickles. Bad junk food, like a gas station hot dog with grease stains that kind of taste like tires. Sure, it scratches the itch. But you wouldn’t come back for more unless you had to. (Or really like the taste of tires, I don’t judge).

Don’t Be A Content Bro. Think Deeper.

If you are ever tempted to post or uncritically adopt the types of shallow frameworks that I’ve discussed here, go back to this newsletter and watch that YouTube video I linked at the start. 

Take a long hard look at those Andrew Tate clones, and then look again at whatever framework you drafted up. If you see any similarities… you might want to think about why.

Self-Promotional Aside

Here’s a rare bit of explicit self-promotion: my content agency, Kalyna Marketing, is currently looking to book 1-2 new clients! 

We love working with post-MVP (growth or expansion phase) B2B startups who appreciate the value of good content but may have struggled to find a good angle with their previous campaigns. Perhaps your product is a bit unusual, or maybe your audience is so technical that most marketers struggle to dive deep into the specifics. In either case, if you want a team of marketers & writers to really dig into your industry, product, and audience, we might be a good fit.

We are a small team, so spaces to work with us are limited, and we only take on projects that we are sincerely excited about. 

If you resonate with my thoughts in this newsletter, send me a message at hello@kalynamarketing.com.

Looking forward to hearing from y’all. :)

Top 3 Reading Recommendations

1. “Nothing Is Boring: How to Tell Gripping Stories About the Seemingly Mundane” by Jay Acunzo. As a writer with a bachelor’s in literary analysis, I am a sucker for storytelling, and Jay expressed the value of good writing in business so eloquently.

2. "Content Marketing Trends and Insights” (2023) by Siege Media. Some fresh statistics on content marketing, including interesting takes on content effectiveness and AI use.

3. “How to market to a platypus” by Fio from Contentfolks. Great discussion on why simple marketing funnels can easily miss the point.

Audience Research Corner

According to SparkToro’s fresh-off-the-press audience tracking data, content marketers have been really into crappy design on Reddit lately:

How could we not be, with gems like this one?

Musical Minute

I’m in love with this new Ukrainian song. The name means “Slowly” and I would translate the chorus roughly as:

”Dance with me, slowly.
This crazy world around us can wait.
Dance with me, slowly.
We have to be happy, no matter what."

Thanks for reading. Until next time!

Share

A particular thought has been gnawing at me for months now, starting out as a mere flicker in the back of my mind and growing louder and louder every single week. Today, I have finally figured out what it is that I’ve been thinking and why it’s important. 

I want to talk to you about why so many marketers (and other professionals) are deeply afraid of kindness, sincerity, and emotion. 

Subscribe now

Sincerity

Our Unreasonable Expectations of Professionalism

Last week, my husband and I were driving to the Syracuse airport to pick up a friend of mine. That drive is around an hour long, and we were planning to listen through a podcast episode on which I was a featured guest. Once we got through the first five minutes of me desperately covering my ears to avoid the pain of listening to my own voice, we both sat in silence and listened for only a couple more sentences until he hit pause and turned to ask me a question.

“How does it feel to realize that you’ve already come so far in your career?”

That question has been on my mind a lot the last 3 months. I started my consulting business in December of 2021, and as that one year anniversary crept up followed by the holidays, I spent many hours reflecting back on everything that happened and how different my life has been.

Everything has been going shockingly well. I have been extremely lucky. Most businesses don’t do this well only a year in, especially when bootstrapped by a single person who is financially supporting a family of 5 without any prior savings. It’s a fair question: how did I get this far? In many ways, this success can be attributed to a particular combination of coincidences, my propensity for getting obsessed with work, previous skills, and the help of wonderfully kind people.

But as my husband asked me that question and I stared out onto the snowy highway in front of us, I thought of another inquiry that people tend to ask me.

When I get on calls with other marketers for casual coffee chats, the same question inevitably pops up: “are you always this sincere?”.

I’ve heard multiple version of their follow-up statement by now:

• You’re really refreshing to talk to

• Wow, you’re really honest

• Huh, nobody’s ever talked to me so openly before

• You aren’t afraid of saying what you think, are you?

Each time this exchange plays out, I tend to shrug and dismiss it as a pleasant exaggeration before moving on to whatever we were talking about. 

But as my husband and I were talking about all the wonderfully crazy things that have happened to me in the past year, he brought up the same thing.

“People like you because you are so honest. Most professional interactions aren’t like that.”

The more I’ve reflected on how all of my friends and family talk about their work, the more I’ve realized that he was on to something.

For many people, going to work means putting on a fake “professional” persona and suppressing their authentic self. The office is not a place to show your eccentricities, strong opinions, or share your feelings. You are lending out your time for money, and you need to fit into the peg of “professionalism” if you want to keep receiving a paycheck at the end of the day.

But I’ve never been good at acting “professional”.

In fact, I’m terrible at it. From my very first internships in high school to my full-time job out of college and now to my current business…. I can’t put on a professional persona. Whether it’s a job interview, a sales pitch, or a client meeting – my excitement for some nerdy aspect of our work or my over-the-top enthusiasm for meeting new people will make itself known. 

I am the person that loudly squeals in meetings and asks 100 questions about some particular phrase that caught my attention, before launching on an extended tangent about funky socks or some new feature of my favorite software, all while taking pages and pages of notes on the nuances of the work that we are doing. You might find me annoying (and I’d agree with you), but the more open I’ve become with my eccentricities, the more people seem drawn to me.

I’ve learned to foster those types of connections a long time ago.

Why I Disarm People with Sincerity

In middle school, I developed a method for getting people to open up. Whenever I wanted to make a new friend, I’d find a time for us to talk one-on-one, and then I’d casually announce some deeply personal fact about myself. That fact could have been a deep-seated insecurity, some random tidbit of family trauma, a crush on someone in our class, etc. The details weren’t important: my fact simply had to be something that most people would never share with a stranger. 

My description of this approach may sound manipulative, but I was 12 years old and not fully conscious of what I was doing. All I knew was that people wouldn’t trust me unless I first showed that I trusted them. And my instant vulnerability-dumping would instantly show me if the other person could become a friend. 

Because when I would surprise someone in this way, the conversation would only go in one of two ways:

1. They would get uncomfortable and switch the topic back to safe small talk.

2. They would earnestly respond to whatever I shared and share back some personal fact about themselves.

Those who embraced my transparency would often become good friends. Because I immediately dropped the pretense of acting like a sanitized version of myself, the right people also felt liberated from keeping up a fake appearance. When the chemistry was right, a deep and close friendship would blossom within weeks of that first interaction. 

Now, I’ve learned how to create the same level of trust with more grace.

I no longer trauma-dump on innocent strangers or shock anyone into a deep conversation despite their discomfort. But to this day, if you get on a call with me for the first time, I will probably share some personal fact about myself that you wouldn’t expect. Because if you are my kind of person, then you will also crave deep conversations. And my invitation to share will feel like a relief from keeping a fake smile plastered on your face in the pursuit of ephemeral professionalism.

Everyone wins when we feel safe enough to act like ourselves.

Kindness is Scary

But making myself seem like some wise expert on sincerity would be a lie.

Like many marketers and public-facing professionals, I am deeply insecure. All of the personal branding gurus we see on LinkedIn preach to us about never showing weakness, playing hard to get, and only talking about our strengths. After all, how can you ever position yourself as an expert in your field if you are doubting your skills and experience? Why would anyone listen to you if you’re doubting your own advice?

And worse yet: why would anybody ever buy the products and services that we’re marketing if they find out that we are frauds?

Impostor Syndrome: Every Marketer’s Professional Affliction

Whenever the topic of impostor syndrome comes up, every marketer seems to have a story to share. 

A friend of mine, Tiffany DaSilva, likes to say that if a marketer hasn’t experienced impostor syndrome, they will eventually. And Tiffany knows what she’s talking about, given that she is constantly speaking at conferences on this exact topic.

Why is our profession so prone to self-doubt?

I think it’s a combination of three factors:

1. The professional world as a whole encourages “faking it” and hiding our failures.

2. Marketers are, by the nature of our work, more attuned to how we present ourselves and the organizations that we’re promoting.

3. Marketing seems to attract a certain personality type: many of us are hyper-aware of other people’s perceptions, prone to overanalyzing every interaction, and deeply care about pleasing others.

It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that so many of us have experienced some type of bullying or intense rejection earlier in our lives. After all, marketing is not all too different from theater or fiction writing.

When we present a particular company or product, we need to take on the character of that brand. We are no longer ourselves, and our work often appears without our names attached to it, bylines attributed only to “Company” or “Team”. 

Compliments Can Become a Burden

This is a message that a mutual friend sent to my husband the other day, while talking about me:

Reading that message hurt. I don’t want the people I love to see that when they compliment me, I question their judgment. But that friend is right. I do, in fact, doubt people when they compliment me.

Just yesterday, I was on a call with someone that I deeply respect and admire. And yet, any time they said anything even remotely nice about me, my thoughts would immediately gloss over the compliment. Instead, I’d fixate on the next topic of conversation. Nice things simply did not compute. 

I should have been treasuring every single word said, trying to burn it into my memory because there are very few people in this world whose opinion I treasure as much as that person’s. But even out of their mouth, any compliment towards me had to be flattery, fake politeness, or a mistake. 

I deeply, sincerely believe that I do not deserve nice things. In my heart, I think that whenever someone is kind to me, they either want something or they are simply mistaken. Just give it enough time, and they will realize that they were wrong about me. Because sooner or later, I will disappoint everyone I meet.

Fear of Kindness

Being snarky, contrarian, or sarcastic is easy. 

Coating all of your interactions in a layer of detached aloofness serves as an armor for your soul. If the only emotions you publicly display are anger, frustration, and annoyance - nobody will see how afraid you truly feel.

Why do we still hold on to this expectation of toxic masculinity in our professional lives, even as so many of us have shed other aspects of patriarchal oppression? 

The snarky marketer roasting other people’s campaigns or criticizing somebody else’s approach to building out their campaigns is operating under the same framework as a “Mad Men” era boss.

Your life might be terrible, but you can only show emotion from the pedestal of your own power and authority. Sure, everyone in your office might know that you and your wife no longer sleep in the same bed. But nobody will mention it, and if they do – you can shut them up by yelling about their terrible performance. 

We’ve gotten much better in eradicating workplace harassment or toxic expectations in romantic relationships. After all, as a woman in the 60s I wouldn’t have been able to casually start a business, put myself out there on social media, and get to do most of the work that I now love. 

But we need to eradicate the toxic expectations that we have for ourselves. We are human. We are weak. We are afraid. And we have the capacity to love and care so deeply about our work, our interests, and the people around us.

I want to see more posts like SparkToro’s hiring announcement for Amanda Natividad, with the company’s CEO Rand Fishkin sharing one of the most vulnerable pieces of writing that I’ve ever come across:

I want to hear about people’s anxieties and pain. I want to know when somebody is feeling uncertain or afraid. I want to share when somebody’s made a mark on me or inspired me to do something new. I want to tell people that I love them. I want to ask for help without fearing that my weakness will be perceived as a disappointment.

I want to be a human because my humanity is what makes me a good marketer in the first place. And I hope that you want the same for yourself too.

Breaking the Cycle: Show People That You Care

I implore you to break the cycle. 

Stop being so afraid of showing your emotions in your work. If you care about something, say it. If you are feeling down, don’t hide it. And if somebody has made you smile or feel better about yourself… tell them. 

I don’t want to keep hiding my appreciation for people anymore.

From now on, I want to tell people when I care about them. I want to show that their actions or words have made a difference.

And I am starting that right now, in the most public, anxiety-inducing way possible.

The List of People I Want to Thank

In the past year, I’ve been surrounded by incredible people who showed me kindness, empathy, and support when I needed it. This list is by no means exhaustive, but at least it’s a start. 

I would like to thank:

• Liam McMahon, for helping me find the courage to hire help and dream of better clients.

• Lindsay Wolf, for validating my idea to start a business and for approving my business loan.

• Rand Fishkin, for serving as my role model and main inspiration over the past year. I appreciate that you always take the time to answer my questions, promote my work, and encourage me.

• Amanda Natividad, for being the first marketer whose writing made me laugh out loud. I still tell people that I want to be like you “when I grow up” as a marketer.

• Jonathan Gandolf, for laughing at my silly SEO pentagram joke and deciding that I would make a good podcast guest.

• Sarah Stockdale, for creating Gather and giving me a community of marketers who encourage me to take chances and stop being so afraid.

• David Wahl, for wonderful Mastodon conversations about marketing, passion, and James Joyce’s weird books.

• Elizabeth Tai, for supporting my marketing rants and wishing that you were the first subscriber to this newsletter.

• Ewen Bell, for sending me a message so sweet it made me cry.

• John Mueller, for supporting my thoughts on content and encouraging me to keep putting myself out there.

• Devin Bramhall, for being my first marketing friend and making me look forward to the day I finally move to Brooklyn full-time.

• Matthew Mullins, for asking me about Ukraine and my family while on our first discovery call.

• Baxter Lanius, for being my first independent client and never questioning my lack of experience.

• Lauren Weisheit, for supporting me every step of the way, even though we no longer work together or even in the same industry.

• Mohammed Aziz, for getting me into marketing by believing that I had a talent for it that I didn’t know myself. 

• David Riggs, for convincing me that I was more than “just a writer”.

• Nathan Smith, for keeping me sane when dealing with unreasonable client expectations and for making me cry with your goodbye message.

• Hannah Permell, for never accepting my impostor syndrome and for allowing me break down on calls.

• Danielle Messler, for laughing with me about corgis and encouraging me to speak about topics that I care about the most.

• Aparna Allam, for entertaining my constant requests for quotes and actually being interested in my SparkToro fangirling.

• Justin Reed, for jumping in to help me even though you had no idea who I was.

• Jason Bradwell and Marc Thomas, for creating Karaoke and setting up an entire mastermind session just to help me get out of a creative rut.

• Jason Westgeest, for checking in about a question I casually asked and wondering about my favorite Ukrainian recipes.

• Natalie Marcotullio, for telling me that our chat inspired one of your recent posts, and for subscribing to my newsletter twice. 

• Ginny Holden, for helping me define what I’m good at and encouraging me to finally turn my website into something that I could be proud of.

• Carina Rampelt, for helping me prepare my workshop and geeking out with me about good content.

• Tiffany DaSilva, for caring so much that you worried about me while celebrating Christmas. You are one of the kindest humans I have met in my entire life.

• Amanda Scheldt, for spending our entire first call ranting about all the fears and frustrations that we felt as January was off to a rougher start than we hoped.

• Tem, for geeking out about Notion with me and inviting me to see their brand new Manhattan office.

• Thomas Frank, for being the first hero of mine that I met in real life and not making it awkward when I launched into a “I’ve been watching your videos since high school” speech.

• My team (Kate Collins, Jen Phillips April, Jeffrey Lupo, Kaashif Hajee, Yeva Stepanova, and A.H.) for being incredible writers, supportive coworkers, and the loveliest bunch of people I’ve ever met.

Top 3 Reading Recommendations

1. DevEx Principles: Minimize switching contexts - great explainer on how to build products & market to developers.

2. When should your brand go dark on social media? - the world is messy, and sometimes it’s best for us to not post about our campaigns.

3. Macroeconomic Changes Have Made It Impossible for Me to Want to Pay You - a funny, satirical take on recent layoffs in tech.

Audience Research Corner

CMOs these days seem to be more concerned about cybersecurity than they were during the holidays. 

I wonder how they were protecting their data between New Year’s and January 19 :)

Musical Minute

I cried like a baby when “Wish I Knew You” by The Revivalists came on the other night. This song reminded me of college and awakened emotions that I hadn’t felt in years.