“I have this mantra around creating value, not noise.” That’s how Rhonda Hughes approaches content leadership. In this episode, she shares how she turned a scattered content operation into an award-winning, enterprise-scale engine. Her story proves that with the right systems, even the largest teams can create content that truly matters.
Rhonda Hughes challenges the old idea that enterprise content teams are just order-takers. She believes they should act as strategic business partners. Drawing from her experience leading large content operations, Rhonda shares a practical approach built on deep audience understanding, pod-based team structures, and a strong focus on real impact.
She emphasizes clear ownership, using data to guide decisions even when it's messy, and building a culture that encourages testing and learning. Rhonda also tackles the tough balance between meeting cross-team demands and saying no to low-value work. She urges leaders to focus on creating genuine value instead of just more content.
For content marketers in complex organizations, Rhonda’s practical advice like building internal content libraries and letting teams experiment offers a clear path to drive both creativity and business results.
Rhonda Hughes has spent nearly 20 years leading enterprise content. She’s built and led teams at Zoom, Mural, SurveyMonkey, Citrix GoTo, and Spiceworks.
At Zoom, she ran content operations during the company’s hyper-growth years, bringing teams together and turning their blog and social channels into award-winning, data-backed programs. At Spiceworks, she connected content, research, and community under one strategy, proving her ability to work across functions in high-pressure environments.
Rhonda stands out for her hands-on approach to the real challenges content leaders face. She’s led B2B TikTok campaigns, pushed for smarter AI use in content ops, and delivered content that’s both fun and strategic. If you want to know how the enterprise content engine actually works and how to make it run better, Rhonda’s perspective is essential.
Rhonda’s experience running content at the enterprise level offers a clear look at what it takes to build an effective content engine. Her insights cut through common myths and highlight the real challenges and opportunities facing large content teams.
Rhonda starts by questioning the value of surface-level metrics. She wants analytics that go beyond vanity numbers and actually show why content works. In enterprise settings, it’s easy to credit success to bigger promotion budgets. Rhonda pushes for insights that lead to real improvements, not just more noise.
Here, Rhonda admits that even the biggest companies struggle to link content performance to business results. She points out a common pain: enterprise teams often rely on rough data instead of exact attribution. This honesty matters. It encourages teams to use analytics as a tool for growth, not as a strict scorecard.
Rhonda challenges the idea that content teams are just order-takers. She argues that content strategists should work closely with product marketing and demand gen, acting as true business partners instead of a service desk. This change in mindset is key to raising the impact of content and making sure it supports company goals.
This honest comment points to a common habit in large companies: defaulting to familiar formats like case studies. Rhonda uses this to make a bigger point—content teams should first figure out the real business need before choosing a format. It’s a reminder to focus on the problem, not just the deliverable.
Rhonda supports building internal content libraries so teams can reuse their best assets. She warns that always chasing new content often means missing out on the value of what’s already there. In large organizations, this is a big missed opportunity. Reusing strong content helps teams work more efficiently and gives top assets a longer life.
Rhonda’s favorite way to drive change is to frame new ideas as pilots. By starting small, teams lower the risk, collect data, and build support before rolling out big changes. This “test and learn” approach works well in enterprises, where change can be slow and agreement is key.
Rhonda’s main rule is simple but powerful: every piece of content should deliver real value to the audience. With so much content out there, she believes anything that doesn’t help the audience just adds to the noise. It’s an important reminder for teams of any size.
This season on the Animalz Podcast, we’re pulling back the corporate curtain to show you how the largest, most complex B2B SaaS teams actually get content out the door. Our mission: demystify these hidden machines and reveal what it really takes to run content at scale.
Hear from content leaders of some of the biggest names in SaaS sharing the systems they've built, the battles they've fought, and the lessons they've learned along the way.
Check out other episodes in the season here
Zoom (07:51): Rhonda led social and content as daily active users jumped from 10 million to 300 million during the pandemic, driving huge brand and content growth.
TikTok (02:22): Platform for Zoom’s award-winning B2B campaign and a current source of creative ideas for Rhonda.
Mural (07:03): Visual-collaboration company where Rhonda built a team covering content, social, community, and advocacy.
Spiceworks (03:41): IT-pro community site that Rhonda revitalized, growing organic traffic by 20% year-over-year in just nine months.
Ziff Davis (04:21): Parent media network (owner of Mashable, PCMag, CNET, ZDNet) showing the publisher-style content model Rhonda managed at Spiceworks.
SurveyMonkey (03:12): SaaS brand where Rhonda also led content strategy and execution.
Citrix GoTo (03:12): Enterprise software company featured in Rhonda’s career story.
Brian Kitch (07:23): Leader of Mural’s SEO content program, mentioned for his contributions.
Follow Rhonda Hughes on LinkedIn.
Rhonda Hughes (00:00):
Traffic to the site. That was the goal. We're driving audience, right? But how do you get one click below? So yes, that's great that this was a top performing, but if I promoted it more, how do I get to that next level? How does that tell me something that is actionable and not just, Hey, I marketed that thing more, or maybe it was a little bit more interesting.
Ty Magnan (00:18):
Welcome to The Animalz Podcast. I'm Ty Magnum, the CEO at Animals
Tim Metz (00:23):
I'm Tim Metz, the Director of Marketing and Innovation.
Ty Magnan (00:26):
This season on The Animals Podcast, we're pulling back the corporate curtain to show you how the largest, most complex B2B SaaS teams actually get content out the door, hear from content leaders of some of the biggest names in SaaS sharing, the systems they built, the battles they fought, and the lessons they've learned along the way. Today we're joined by Rhonda Hughes. She's an award-winning content marketing leader who has been breaking down the walls of enterprise content operations for nearly two decades. Rhonda has led content teams at Spiceworks along with audience. She's also led it at Zoom during the boom of the pandemic mural as well. She had a brand role that included content. She's been named at Top 50 Women in Content and won an award for the best TikTok campaign while she was leading that team at Zoom. Today we have an awesome conversation with Rhonda that covers all kinds of different assets or facets of a content operating program at an enterprise. I hope you stay tuned, take notes and learn a lot. If you're like most B2B content marketers, you want to lead the conversation in your industry. At Animals We help B2B software companies do exactly that by creating standout survey driven state of the industry type reports that help you grow your brand authority backlinks and pipeline. In just 12 weeks, we run a process that helps uncover narratives from a unique data set packaged into a beautifully designed flagship content asset that your whole team is going to be proud of. Book a consult now at animals.co/whitepapers and find out how to set the new benchmark for your industry. Rhonda, thank you so much for joining us today on The Animals Podcast. One thing that we ask all of our guests, this is the most critical question of all is what content have you been consuming lately? Ideally business, but we'll take whatever you're excited about.
Rhonda Hughes (02:22):
It depends on how you're defining content, right? I've been really into TikTok lately. I mean, I feel like there's so much that I'm admiring that small businesses are doing to stand out in a way that is so unique, but there's just so many ways that I think small businesses are showing up that are just unexpected and really thriving in a way that hasn't been in the world of social media a possibility when you're trying to build followers. This platform allows people to have such more visibility and connect with such a wider audience that yeah, that's where I've been consuming content these days.
Ty Magnan (02:56):
Totally. It's a different kind of algorithm. I mean, the content that gets seen and engaged with ranks higher and can kind of reach, I mean not infinite, but a huge audience of people on the platform, which is very cool. Can you also give us your intro for the audience?
Rhonda Hughes (03:12):
Sure, yeah. Hi, I'm Rhonda Hughes. I am a brand storyteller and content marketing leader with 18 years of experience helping brands like Zoom and Mural, SurveyMonkey, Citrix go-to and Spiceworks engage the audiences and grow. Early in my career, I came up and built deep expertise in social media and content strategy, brand storytelling, and have evolved since to lead areas at the intersection of these things.
Ty Magnan (03:37):
Awesome, thank you. What's the role of content in Spiceworks
Rhonda Hughes (03:41):
For those of you who aren't familiar with Spiceworks? Spiceworks is almost like a Reddit for IT people. It's really known for being kind of where it pros go to tackle technologies together, especially more of the small business side, and I was tasked with coming in and kind of reviving that heart of both the community and the website, and so a lot of looking at how do you integrate these different pieces that we had acquired during a period of time, how do they fit together to tell a bigger story and provide more value to your audience?
Ty Magnan (04:12):
And you guys use tons of different channels. I mean, there's a lot of video. I know you're using a lot of social. Can you tell us about the mix of content at Spiceworks?
Rhonda Hughes (04:21):
A big focus was in building up the editorial kind of arm. It is a publishing, it's part of Zif Davis ecosystem, which includes things like Mashable and PC Mag and now CNET and ZDNet, and so it really is one of the ways that you monetize is bringing people to your site and marketing to them. So really centralizing more of a helpful resource where you become this one-stop shop for it pros, where you've got both the community component, more of the education and resources related to how you grow your career, and then things like the tools kind of piece that they offer as well.
Ty Magnan (04:59):
Yeah, a lot there, and what I'm getting towards is how was that content model and strategy different than what you've done at other companies like Mural or Zoom or elsewhere?
Rhonda Hughes (05:13):
I mean, I think a lot of it with anybody that's in content that you have to start with your audience and you have to understand who they are, what are you doing in relation to them as a brand, whether it's like you're product offerings or if you're a publisher and what are you bringing to them, starting with understanding your audience and where do they hang out, what kind of distribution channels do you have? So all those things kind of have to go into play with what your content strategy is. Is it that you're focused on social content? Is it that you're focused on more like SEO kind of optimized content? It's probably a mix of a lot of things, and so the content strategy is really going to vary on who your audience is, what your go-to market motion is, what your brand is and all those pieces apart. So I know that's not an easy answer, but it depends.
Ty Magnan (05:57):
Yeah. Well, can you get specific and share what the elevator strategy was at some of the recent companies that you've been at?
Rhonda Hughes (06:07):
I think if I start with Spiceworks, as I mentioned before, a lot of it was bringing these things together and redefining who we were to our audience, and so it sat outside of content. Content was a piece of it, but a lot of it was rebuilding a foundation. To be honest. We did see a pretty significant increase in organic traffic of 20% year over year within nine months of being there based on some of those optimizations, but really trying to focus on who we are and who we're not. There was a lot of things that we were publishing content around that were legacy and there hadn't been a central kind of owner to say, we're really going to focus on this IT pro and what's going to help them in their day to day. We're not going to be a news tech news because so many people are doing that. We're going to instead really shift to be more of a resource that they can come to when they have questions. Mural was a very different story. I know you guys worked closely with Mural.
Ty Magnan (07:02):
Sure did.
Rhonda Hughes (07:03):
I built and led the integrated team across content, social media, community comms and customer advocacy. It was a newly formed team, so a lot of, again, how do these things work together? You've got your content strategy. We had a really robust SEO content strategy that you guys worked with. Props to Brian Kitch who was leading that.
Ty Magnan (07:23):
Hi Brian.
Rhonda Hughes (07:24):
Hi Brian. I was really focused on helping shape that narrative and evolve that content strategy to be even more audience first thinking about use cases, how are we going to market and how is that changing at Zoom? Again, it was a little bit more on the operational. I joined Zoom about a month or two after the pandemic hit as daily active users jumped from, I think it was 10 million daily active users to around 300 million daily active
Ty Magnan (07:51):
Users. Oh my gosh,
Rhonda Hughes (07:52):
It was such an interesting time to be there. It was probably the most heartwarming experience because everyone at that point in time from life to work to everything in between education, everything shifted online, which was a testament to people's ingenuity. And so my team oversaw social media and content At the time when I started, we had one person in content, one person on social media officially, and we had other teams had jumped in to help things like the events team or the office managers or things like that, but it really was about trying to scale to support that explosion in audiences because it wasn't just like we scaled in our target audience. It pros, it was you're now communicating to all of these audiences in all these different ways. And so it really was trying to find the balance of how do you fix the fires short term and build the systems and the processes and the teams that are going to allow you to scale with this kind of new world. And so really looking at what we defined the content strategy for Zoom, the brand voice fueling kind of a global multi-product, multi persona region, specific marketing throughout their customer journey, but it was like a lot of fight and fires in the beginning and trying to just get our arms around that massive growth and expand from there. So we went from something that was pretty haphazard to award-winning, even winning recognition for our social strategy and our B2B campaign on TikTok as best B2B campaign on TikTok that year.
Ty Magnan (09:25):
That's awesome.
Rhonda Hughes (09:26):
Yes,
Ty Magnan (09:27):
Congrats.
Tim Metz (09:28):
I also even wonder where do you begin in that growth? There's so much growth. What is important at that point to focus on?
Rhonda Hughes (09:36):
It varies day to day, right? I mean, I think a lot of it was at the time for content strategy. We had blog and we had case study, and those were really kind of the focus, how do you scale what you're communicating and being mindful of how you shift the voice to not just talk to people that really understand technology and trying to figure those kind of pieces out all while laying the foundation to be able to support this varied business going forward. And so it was one part hiring really great people and bringing people in to help divide and conquer and then one part being creative and coming together and saying, okay, divide and conquer who's going to do what. It was such a fun time. I got to work with just incredibly talented people that really made such a difference across the world and most people in tech, you're kind like, oh, okay, yeah, I do something that impacts people, but there was nothing more fulfilling than hearing the heartwarming stories that every single person had when they were like, oh, you work at Zoom. This is how it helped me. I went to a wedding. I had all these different experiences from life and work and everything in between. So
Ty Magnan (10:47):
Really fascinating and I think Tim, yeah, I want to dig in here too to this era of Rhonda's legacy. I'm curious about how you scaled the team so quickly and how you thought about that during that time. Were there iterations of the team structure? What did it look like? Can you take us inside that?
Rhonda Hughes (11:08):
Yeah, well, huge credit to, so I had really fantastic leaders under each of the functions. So when I first came in, I owned content and social media and within a few months was asked to also take on customer advocacy, which was a new function, but really thinking about what is the business need? Luckily at that point, it wasn't a problem with trying to get resources. It was really just about trying to be thoughtful about what do we need in the short term, but also how do we build growth paths for these individuals and areas of ownership? Being mindful of other teams, like content doesn't live in a silo and it can't really good content. You have to be thoughtful about where the distribution is as part of the planning. And so being mindful of how you create things in terms of pods like this trifecta of PMM, integrated marketer and content strategist that could work together, that area of ownership thing I think is one of the pieces that is really critical when you're building a content team it gives people the ability to test and learn and feel really proud about what they're driving and kind of shifts the accountability I see for an individual. And it's not just for content roles, I would say it's any role really, whether you're early in your career, mid-career, whatever, being really clear about this is your area, what do you think? And you're driving these metrics and this is your responsibility allows people to have more fluidity and more creativity with how they tackle problems and how they evolve the area that they own going forward. And so I think that was one of the ways that we were able to scale and get more done is being, building that trust with the team, giving them escalation paths. If something was getting in their way, I'm going to come, I will come and block and tackle for you and that sort of thing, but giving people that kind of area of ownership so they could move quickly together.
Ty Magnan (12:58):
Ownership is the word and accountability that came to mind when you think about maybe the phrasing isn't right here, we're like K ping people giving them something to run after. Can you help us understand specifically what were the KPIs of individuals in the team? And I am really curious because from my experience in the enterprise, it's kind of hard to own a number anywhere because there's so many other people, as you mentioned, other stakeholders, PMM, integrated campaigns, demand, whoever else. So yeah, if you can get specific there, I think it'd be really helpful to the audience.
Rhonda Hughes (13:30):
Yeah, I mean I think again, it depends on the goal of the content and how you're doing it and how you're structuring the team. Some people are, they're managing everything for a specific audience or a number of audiences and from blogs to key studies to customer stories to research reports, everything is owned. That's how I like to structure it. I think you get to know that audience better and you get to be thoughtful about how do we test new formats, but there's also ways where you're doing it more by what's the goal of that content piece? So SEO content kind of specialty or case study kind of specialty. And so there's pros and cons to any of these types of things, but obviously the way that you shake that is going to drive what those metrics and KPIs are. Oftentimes when I join teams, I find that content folks aren't always thoughtful about that because they're disconnected from it.
(14:17):
It's more of this engine of please give me content to fill my thing, and you never get that closed loop. You never get the like, Hey, this was top person because of X, Y, and Z. And so that's where again, I kind of do think it's got to be working in that integrated team. Oftentimes with website traffic, kind of you as a content leader or content strategist will be in the weeds with that and be able to test and learn, but I think across marketing, you have to really be more integrated on, okay, what are we doing together? And well, you might not own it outright, you're always going to work with other people. There has to be that closed loop, and I think there's always the focus on what are you doing and not necessarily, I mean you think about quarters, right? The end of quarter you're fast trying to get some sort of recap report to say what we did, but then you're onto the next so quickly and so have to build space as a leader to take a breath and encourage people to really reflect on what worked, how did it work, how do we make it better?
Ty Magnan (15:18):
It's hard to do when there's so many shiny objects to go chase next or just the next quarter quarters number to hit. I want to ask about how you measured yourselves and set those KPIs. Who is involved? Did you all build your own dashboarding? I actually think the taxes that are pretty interesting at the enterprise
Tim Metz (15:40):
And also I would add from across these different companies you've been, where did it work really well? And maybe the comparison would also be grace.
Rhonda Hughes (15:50):
Nobody does analytics as well as they could be. Everybody's got a broken somewhere that you're like, oh, I'm using this spreadsheet or this reporting is a little question questionable, so let's just use it as a directional. Hey, I get the vibe that this is going up into the right, that's great, but I don't really trust the specifics. And so I think it's that dirty little secret. I mean, I feel like early days that I trusted the data a little bit more in the marketing orgs that I was in. That doesn't mean I don't trust the data, but I said that I said it in this recorded, so it's true, but I think
Tim Metz (16:25):
Five reporting,
Rhonda Hughes (16:27):
Hopefully you have a strong data team that can be your counterpart, but the reality of the situation is sometimes it's a bit messy and you kind of have to try to make the decisions that you can while rebuilding that foundation. So that was one of the big things that we were doing at Spiceworks and they continue that work today is there was a lot of legacy issues underneath the hood of the website and of the reporting structure. And so a lot of it was really based on traffic to the site. That was the goal. We're drive an audience, but how do you get one click below? So yes, that's great that this was a top performing, but if I promoted it more, how do I get to that next level? How does that tell me something that is actionable and not just, Hey, I marketed that thing more or maybe it was a little bit more interesting.
(17:13):
And I think that's where you get the struggle is that we've got a lot of top line kind of metrics. If I look at more of the social content side, you get metrics around, I like to call it total social actions. It's like you created this content and what did it do? And it was somebody stop swiping or thrumming or whatever it was, and they took some sort of action where it was a swipe, a comment to share or a view, whatever that piece is. It just indicates that there was something of interest to the content they created, do more of those things. But I do think that a lot of content teams struggle with more in depth kind of metrics that help them to understand really what's resonating with their audience on the kind of more demand gen content side. Some organizations have it set up a little bit where you can see better. I have been in some places where they're rebuilding this as well. Probably the last couple ones, it's been more of a rebuild. In an ideal world, you're able to see, oh, it generated this many leads and then that directly related to this amount of one opportunity.
(18:14):
And how did that ripple effect with the account itself? So maybe I filled out the lead form, but ultimately this was the purchaser over here. And so obviously that's a marketing ops type of struggle, challenge, continuous challenge and struggle. But yeah, I think as a content leader you're always struggling and marketers as a whole with what you can actually measure and what does that really say?
Ty Magnan (18:40):
Well, and then also how do you take that forward to iterate on the program? Especially if you have, and I'm curious your experience here, if you have stakeholders that are driving the roadmap to some degree and they're saying, we want more white papers, but in your data you're like, actually maybe they're not performing as much as some other kind of program, so maybe you can hit on the role of the content team in ideation, I guess, and also determining format and the roadmap. If it differed at different companies, I'd be interested in that, but just generally,
Rhonda Hughes (19:17):
Yeah, I mean of course it differs in different companies. I like to see content strategists as true strategists. Let's come to the table, let's have the different, again, I kind of go back to the leg pod model. You've got somebody who's owning integrated marketing kind like the distribution and whether that's a demand gen partner or whatever title you give it product marketing that understands the market itself and the competitive advantage of how we're enabling the sales team and those different pieces and these people come together to say, I'm going to tell you what content is going to work and how should we be putting this together and being thoughtful about how we're sequencing these types of things. Everybody should be bringing that expertise to build the plan together. I have walked into organizations that were more of a service org of let me fill out the form. I want a case study and I want this, but I always go back, I'm always shifting that more to be a strategic partner for the business. It's better for people than their roles. Nobody wants to be told, Hey, create these things in a vacuum, right?
Ty Magnan (20:19):
Like a vending machine, like a six,
Rhonda Hughes (20:22):
One of these and one of these and one of these. And oftentimes that is what you kind of walk into is like, okay, let's level set. And it is usually just me trying to understand or one of my content strategists trying to understand who's your audience and what are you trying to do? Okay, great. Let me tell you a little bit on how I would recommend doing that and why and how can we do that in a shorter form format. You've mentioned case studies, that's an example. Everybody wants a case study for everything all the time.
(20:49):
And what I find when I talk to sales teams, I mean yes, you need case studies. I think of customer stories on a spectrum and you can't see my hands going like this all the way. And there's a lot of different kinds of ways that you can tell stories. Case studies is like this kind over here and it has its place, but when you actually talk to the audience, the internal audience asking for those case studies, sales typically what they really want may be a good quote in a logo or a small video or those sorts of things. I do try to do a little bit of discovery around what are you actually trying to solve for? What's your goal? And then what are the distribution channels and all those kinds of pieces to then make those recommendations up. Here's what we could do and what I have found oftentimes is people welcome that kind of partnership. The thing they get nervous about is I need a thing, I need a thing, and I know this thing and this is what I'm going to ask for. But if you create that kind of partnership with them, then they usually get really excited about it too is like, oh, I have this, I have these options. And so it is really in building the trust and working together as a team.
Ty Magnan (21:56):
Well, that takes so much work. It's so much easier to just do the case study, then go sit with them and help them think through the strategy and the larger it is a better outcome. I agree, but there's definitely pressure to just comply, right? Yeah, it's not easy. It's easier said than done. Tim, what were you going to add?
Tim Metz (22:14):
No, I'm also curious, how do you then practice support that new process or put that in place? You don't have regular meetings with them or is there still a form or how do you actually make that happen?
Rhonda Hughes (22:25):
Yeah, I mean it varies depending on how sophisticated, how many audiences you're creating content for, but if I use the Zoom model, an example that helps. We had different content strategists that we're supporting different personas or different products and they'd work together with their core counterparts. I think it does take a lot of laying the groundwork in the beginning and it's hard because the engine is running, give me my things now because I keep
Tim Metz (22:51):
In the habits.
Rhonda Hughes (22:51):
And so it's a little bit of, okay, yes, we'll get these things. I also honestly feel like too many people are focused on the new things and you got to make sure they're fully leveraging the stuff that you have. And so in a lot of organizations I've built internal content libraries so that it's super easy for people to see what they have and what they can use. And so it becomes less about the, Hey, I need this thing then churning and more about let's do fewer things, but let's be smarter about them.
Ty Magnan (23:21):
A lot of enterprises, I'm kind of making this up, but from vibes, a lot of enterprises are service oriented in the way the content team is positioned, the model is the content team is in service of the rest of the organization and there's a lot less strategic work that is done. It sounds like you believe that's not the ideal setup. I would tend to agree. And so what would your advice be to someone coming into an organization like that aspires to do a more strategic approach? What would be some practical steps they could take in order to help shift the role of content within the organization?
Rhonda Hughes (23:57):
Yeah, that's a really good question. If I thought about it as a new person coming in, I mean there's probably two pieces. One, digging into the data to understand what's working. I think people are a lot more willing to change what has happened in the past. If you can show how you can evolve it in a way that's going to be valuable, it's going to do better if we do this. And oftentimes it's grounding things in that data. Did you know that case studies are only your case studies while you're asking for these? Were only read 20 times in the last. So I use that kind of data to make the case. Case study is actually one of the most difficult pieces of content to create because of all of the approval approvals wire. It's not a small one and
Ty Magnan (24:37):
They don't always get published.
Rhonda Hughes (24:39):
If you shift that instead and do more of a customer learning, I want to talk about the strategy that you have and yeah, I want you to talk about where you can, how you've used our product solution, whatever. But if you shift it to be more knowledge share, it changes one the way you can use it, people are much more likely to find that to be interesting, less about, I love this product because of this. That kind of stuff is really important, but knowledge share. And so I think going back to your more specific question around how do you make those shifts, I think using the data and then also doing a roadshow with all of your stakeholders and just be curious, understand what are the things pushing on them? What are the things that they're feeling like I got to do this thing. How do you partner with 'em? How do you help them solve what they're trying to solve for? Understand it from their perspective. What's driving their, what are they waking up every day worried about? And how do you take that whatever is related to content off their plate because they know that you're thinking about that too. And then test and learn. People are way more accepting of pilot programs. That's a little hack for you.
(25:46):
If you say to someone, Hey, I want to pilot this or I want to test this, what it tells you is like, okay, there's a small thing that we're going to validate and it's going to be like an MVP, and then you're going to have some data and then you're going to know, Hey, do we stop doing this? Do we evolve it, do we not? And so I think that's another way that you can start to make the case for evolving these types of things. As a leader coming in, I think it's also just resetting what expectations are. If they've only worked with content teams that were more of like a, I need one case study, I need one blog, I need these things, then that's all they really understand. When in doubt, I have found much success with bringing in external speakers. So if you are trying to sell something and people are just
Ty Magnan (26:29):
Bring in Rhonda. Yeah,
Rhonda Hughes (26:30):
Well, I mean you could do that too. More just, I mean I used to get friendlies of mine. I would be saying something and I'd be trying to get traction, and this was early in my career, obviously social content, all these things have evolved a lot, but you hire somebody to come in or you have a friend come in and kind of talk about their experience as well and somehow hearing it from someone external, it comes across differently. So
Ty Magnan (26:55):
I like it. You gave us four right there, four things they can do. One was bring data, two is do the roadshow. So with your stakeholders, ask what's keeping them up at night. Three, if you're trying to push new things in, pilot it. Four, the reset conversation and education, especially bringing in someone extra. And then I'm going to add a fifth because you had mentioned, and it's what triggered the question, which was like kind of like one-to-one judo, someone fills in the form, they ask for a case study, you kind of help them think through the strategy and the ask and then come out the other side with a slightly different, more optimized idea.
Rhonda Hughes (27:34):
Yeah, I mean it's the fun part. I think most people welcome having a partner. I've actually not had pushback ever when we approach,
Ty Magnan (27:43):
No, it just takes work.
Rhonda Hughes (27:45):
It does from a growth path standpoint for anybody in their career, whether you're coming in as a leader or you're an individual contributor, that's the part that you can grow. And it's the far, that's a little bit fun too. You get to co-create something, both understanding better internally, but also looking externally. I love talking to customers. I love talking to audience members and understanding did that land how I thought it was going to land?
Tim Metz (28:09):
When I hear her talk, I almost feel like it's also about showing that content is really an expertise and a craft. I wonder if there's something going on where, well, at least until before this year, if people would need something for programming and they go to an engineer, they're like, well, I don't know anything about engineering. Should you tell me how to do it? Whereas with content, maybe there are also more people who feel they kind of know what they want and what it is. And it sounds from what you described, that it's also about showing what's possible and you knowing what is best and demonstrating that so that people also get a sense of, oh wow, there are other things possible and it's not just something anyone can do essentially.
Rhonda Hughes (28:46):
And two of the things that just sparks too is sometimes it's understanding who people admire. What's the brand they admire? Is it Salesforce, is it Google? And then showing their example and it's like cool thing they're doing.
Ty Magnan (29:01):
That's a hack. I like it too. Totally. Well, I want to ask about hiring. Hiring and the enterprise. How have you made the case for additional headcount successfully in the past?
Rhonda Hughes (29:15):
I'm trying to think of the last couple years. It's been a little bit different in the tech world, less about hiring.
Ty Magnan (29:21):
We just saw the Shopify member from Toby, their CEO of don't ask me to hire unless you've tried to figure this out with AI first. So it is going to change even more, but take us back to different errors and maybe how you've made the case successfully.
Rhonda Hughes (29:37):
Yeah, I mean I think a lot of the times it's understanding, it's looking at the data again and looking at the different areas of the business you want to support. So the two examples I would think, again, kind of going back to Zoom, if you had another product, they have a whole suite of products. They're known for meetings, but they got all this stuff underneath the hood. It's kind of looking at what do you need to support and thinking with your partners too. If you're going to add a new product, if you're going to add a new persona, if you're going to lean into another region, this is what we need from a marketing standpoint to support. We need one of these, one of these kind of thing. Or you can have more of a hybrid role that does multiple, especially when you're looking at regional, but it's kind of approaching it that way and making sure that your leader understands in order to do this well, we've got to, or it's a trade off.
(30:25):
So that's always what comes down to here's what we're supporting. Now you're asking us to add these, we need these resources, or we're going to have to cut some things over here and here's what I would cut first. And so I understand it from both sides. As a leader who's having to tell people, no, you can't have a headcount, but we need these things. It's their job. It's our job to help you prioritize. So I think it's making the case in that way. There have been times in my life where I've been offered headcount. I'm like, no, I don't want anymore. It's Zoom. We were growing so fast that it was like, I don't want more. I think we need to take a beat and figure out the growth pass again. And is this the right structure for us? Because we are changing and growing so fast and so are other teams. And we didn't always have line of sight, oh, they're going to hire this person and oh my goodness, that means this is more of a need for over here.
Ty Magnan (31:15):
Right
Rhonda Hughes (31:15):
That was just a very unique growing pain that I don't know that any other organization has ever had. But I mean there's probably some similarity for those hypergrowth kind of companies that are going.
Ty Magnan (31:25):
I think so. Yeah, totally. There's a whole new initiative we did not account for, or my favorite is you acquired a company and now it's like, Hey, Rhonda, here's a website. I need you to migrate into ours, right? It's like, okay, great. I had that planned for the year.
Rhonda Hughes (31:40):
Add it to the list. It's like, okay, well these are my three priorities. Where does this fit? Which one should it take? And really being clear about what is possible. And sometimes it does take saying no and not obviously saying no to your boss because that's not going to work, but it's saying no to something. There's only so much time and there's only so many, I mean applying it to content too, making the decision. This was a very common one. Many people want to start internal people want to start their own podcast or video series on LinkedIn.
Ty Magnan (32:09):
Totally.
Rhonda Hughes (32:10):
And I actually had a form, and I'm not a huge fan of the form, but I had a form in terms of, okay, just getting people to try to think about the strategy behind things. How are you different? How are you going to produce this thing? How are you going to all the pieces in part that have to come in because the reality is you've got this amount of time and this amount of resources choosing to do this thing means you're not doing these other things. And so often stepping back and saying, this is all the stuff we're doing right now, what could we be doing? What will we cut so that we could do that? And I do think that that's the role of the leader is to really make sure that give people permission to say, we're going to cut these things. We're going to stop doing these things. And I think it's even more critical in the last couple of years where you have constant kind of evolution of companies, reductions of teams. People are owning so much more than they used to, and you can't do it all and you can't do it all well. And so it's really about working with your leadership team and making sure that everybody's clear on, okay, these are the things we're going to prioritize because of these things.
Ty Magnan (33:12):
Yeah, it's a little painful. It's going to ask about content's role in brand narrative storytelling. How do you see that? Does a unique leader, you get the chance to actually have a hand in setting the narrative, or is content more an amplifier of a brand narrative? I see you as a storyteller at these building teams to do so at larger companies. So I'm just trying to grasp it. How do you see brand narrative and story and content's role within that?
Rhonda Hughes (33:47):
One of the best compliments somebody ever gave me, and I use it in my bio and stuff, is that I'm a connector people and ideas. And so I think naturally I have always looked at whether I was the one owning this piece or I had a part in it, I also looked at who else should be involved in this, not to make something too big and unwieldy, but at the same time, especially at the kind of ideation, you would be remiss to not have the right people in the room and also have the smartest and most creative minds in the room. And so I think, I dunno if that answered your question, but I kind of went on a tangent at least related to the topic.
Ty Magnan (34:25):
Yeah, no, it's good. I like it.
Tim Metz (34:27):
I think another way to look at it's if there is an existing narrative and story, how do you maintain that at these companies and at that skill?
Rhonda Hughes (34:37):
Yeah, I think it depends on, I'm going to say that again, it depends on how you're defining narrative. But if I want to try to apply this, oftentimes I like to try to synthesize what are you trying to communicate down to one line point of view kind of things. And so what is the one struggle that you as a brand are navigating against right now? I want people, I mentioned before Zoom was known as only meetings. Zoom is more than meetings. How do we communicate that During Zoom's evolution, there were different kind of message points that we were trying to get across based on that evolution During the pandemic. We were just trying to get our arms around all the really amazing heartwarming things that customers and users were doing that were never intended with this product and being a part of that public conversation.
(35:27):
And so a lot of it was really just scale and how do we get arms around these things and how do we build the right listening points and that sort of stuff and leverage these moments that are happening in real time. But as the pandemic was kind of winding down, there was this narrative that Zoom was going to go away once everything's going back in person. And so if I look at it from a very specific kind of content strategy standpoint, we worked with an outside agency to do a massive survey to really understand what consumers expected about the future, how virtual did they want it across? I think it was 10 different countries, 11 different use cases from healthcare to government to education to work to celebrations and everything in between. And it really aligned to the way our use cases were and our personas and that sort of stuff.
(36:17):
And the goal was to get data that helped to validate that our customers could use to understand what their customers or their constituents or what their employees wanted the future to look like so that they would continue to invest in tools like virtual, virtual meetings and that sort of stuff. And so that's all to say that you as a content can evolve what your narrative is, it will create content to support whatever narrative you're trying to push. And so I do think it's a compliment. It's one of the ways when you think about brand strategy or brand narrative, it has to be, there's an action behind that. It can't just sit on a shelf. And so really thinking about how you connect those things,
Ty Magnan (36:56):
I love it. Can you tell us a little bit more about the award-winning TikTok campaign that you did?
Rhonda Hughes (37:04):
That's a good segue actually, because one of the things, this all came about, so we actually were late to the game and getting on TikTok when we joined there. Obviously the world was still on Zoom, so a lot of the conversations, so I'm saying this for any social media professional out there that was like, me and I can never do that. It's like, yeah, we kind of had all the right things to make it something that was bigger, but it was the idea came about because there was a lot of misinformation going on about Zoom and things like security or hey, the host can turn off your mute. Those kinds of things that were kind of all going around and they were going pretty viral on TikTok and on social media. And at the time we had already started really defining the social content strategy related to how do we connect, how do we educate and how do we inspire and really leaning into those sorts of buckets around the education piece.
(37:58):
How do we communicate that this is misinformation, but do it in a way that's like TikTok oriented. So we really were focused on trying to make something that was fun and interesting, engaging and not super boring. The team there did such a fantastic job, so I have to give them credit. Melissa Francois, Alison Coleman, Alison McCarthy, she just got married and Julie Brute, they used to do this kind of newsroom planning where they would work together to come up with these separate ideas and so massive props to them on the award. There was a broader social team involved, but those were three really the leaders of that team. And so the campaign itself came out of this misinformation and trying to myth bust it and address it head on in a really fun kind of way. And so it was a content series where we combated things about, I think the top performing one, which had over 8 million views, organic views was related to a security misinformation. And when they created it, they picked the most amazing song. Sometimes it's about finding and it runs in my head sometimes it was like, I don't want to sing, but it was like stop spreading the rumor around and it was like, I don't know, something super catchy about it. And it just took off and it was this whole series that was really just in response to the questions people were asking, the features people were asking for and trying to be helpful in the moment when everybody was using Zoom.
Ty Magnan (39:23):
That's awesome. Really cool. You'll have to drop some links in the articles that we published in Bed Center. Looking back at your stints Zoom mural, Spiceworks, what's one lesson you wish you learned earlier about enterprise content marketing?
Rhonda Hughes (39:38):
You get to a place where it's kind of just like it's shaped your approach to things so fully that you're like, when did I learn that? When did I shift to be that way? I have always had this approach and this kind of mantra around creating value not noise. And it's like my teams will laugh if they're listening to this right now. I probably said it so much that it should be on a mug or
Ty Magnan (39:56):
There she goes again.
Rhonda Hughes (39:57):
There she goes.
Tim Metz (39:58):
It's on your LinkedIn cover. I saw it. Yeah,
Rhonda Hughes (40:00):
Obviously what does that mean? Well, you have to know who the audience is and you got to be able to ground your decisions in this kind of data driven approach and be mindful of where this content is going to be and how's it going to show up and what's the sequence and all of those sorts of things. So like you say it and it's short and it's pithy, but there's a lot underneath the hood there. And I do think that for content folks, for marketing as a whole, you have to know who your audience is. You have to understand what you're trying to do, and you have to be empathetic to what they actually want to hear. And so that human language, that's another one of those compliments that somebody gave me. One of my bosses once used to send things to me to human it up, and I was like, what's weird?
(40:44):
I can speak a human. Wow. But somehow when you put on your marketing hat, you forget that that's the thing that resonates. And so at the end of the day, all the B2B and enterprise marketers are trying to do is help somebody solve a problem. They want to help them solve the problem with the product or service, but if you can tell the broader story and help with the connecting and the knowledge share, it's a product plus all the practical stuff around that. Totally. That's the best content that you can create. Totally. The best thing you can do is then surface the people who are doing that really well and help them to knowledge share, and then you can repackage or repurpose and use that in a lot of different ways. So I know that was not actually the answer to your question, but hopefully it was somewhat valuable.
Ty Magnan (41:27):
Oh yeah. That's an enormous goal. I'll get right there. Yeah, that's a great place to end. So Rhonda, thank you so much for participating. Where can people find and connect with you?
Rhonda Hughes (41:39):
Oh yeah, LinkedIn is a good one. I am pretty active there. Lookie Lou, active commenting, I don't necessarily post as much, but that's a good one to connect with me related to that too.
Ty Magnan (41:52):
Awesome. Well, thanks again.
Rhonda Hughes (41:53):
Awesome. Well, thanks. It's been fun.
Ty Magnan (41:56):
Well, Tim, what'd you learn in takeaway from Rhonda just now?
Tim Metz (42:00):
The first thing is this practical. I love the idea of building a library and focusing more on things you already have. I thought it's just a really, really good practical idea, even something we should do at animals Also, we have a lot of cool stuff and we don't have a good library of things to pick from, and I think that's, yeah. I also noted from my own role, and I was at a larger still startup, but pretty big. It's like, yeah, people looking for stuff that don't know what there is already, so they ask for new things, but actually you might already have it. So I thought that's a really good tip,
Ty Magnan (42:30):
Especially if you are a sales led SaaS company
Tim Metz (42:36):
Yeah
Ty Magnan (42:37):
The sales team's always going to be asking for new things and keeping inventory and getting more mileage out of the things you already have is certainly a way to drive some efficiency and get the monkey off your back.
Tim Metz (42:48):
The other thing it kind of talks about in the interview, but I have not had that realization, but as she was talking, I was thinking about that that content is not always seen maybe as a specialistic craft or skill as engineering is, for example, and that it's also why people sometimes think they know what you want, what they want, and she was not literally saying that, but kind of what she's describing is like, yeah, you need to show your expertise and you need to show what's possible and you need to also show that you are actually the one who can come up with the best strategy and the best solution.
Ty Magnan (43:20):
Yes, I imagine there are other, I bet the product team gets a lot of ideas that are kind of half baked and from people that think they know. So I don't think this problem is totally unique to content, although I do think marketing generally is public facing and you get a lot of feedback. I experienced the same thing often at UiPath. Someone fills out the form or pings you on Slack and they're like, Hey, I need this thing. And there's two ways to take it, right? One, it's like, I'm just going to turn my brain off and go do this thing. Other times it does mean you have to spend some time with that person with the idea and help them figure, okay, what are you really trying to achieve? What is the goal? What's the measurable outcome? Something like this? And then help them rethink how they can actually achieve that in a slightly different way, or maybe it is with existing content.
(44:06):
Yeah, my big takeaway, I guess, one content should be more strategic than service oriented within an organization. And then some ideas for how to help shift the role of content within an enterprise from service oriented. Again, order taking to strategic, it was again, bring data. So data helps solve arguments to doing a road show, basically talking to stakeholders about what their needs are and making sure that you have some alignment and they hear you out on your ideas, you hear them out. Alongside of that, I think is basically educating folks around the role of content at this organization, how you want to take things, what's working, bringing in outsiders to help do that. Also using, Hey, everybody at this company seems to love Salesforce's content. Let's use them as an example. Another one is using pilots, right? Like, Hey, let's let MVP this, as opposed to it is an easy way to sell things in. And then the last one is that one-to-one kind of Judah that we were just talking about. Nice. Well look forward to seeing you all on the next episode of The Animals Podcast. We'll continue exploring enterprise content programs with yet another excellent guest.
