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ClickUp’s Mission to 200 Million Organic Impressions in a Month
34 Plays8 months ago
In this episode, Ashley Segura chats with Chris Cunningham, Co-Founder of ClickUp, to learn how the company is dominating social media.
Chris dishes out all of the juicy details on how ClickUp is turning the world of B2B marketing on its head with great organic social media content.
We're talking short-form content that's so entertaining, that it's making millions of people forget they're watching videos for project management software.
They have already hit over 75 million organic impressions a month. That's more views than cat videos!
Get those notepads ready because Chris reveals the secrets behind ClickUp's content creation magic, from their scrappy team of 4.5 to their ABCD formula for generating endless video ideas. He even shares insights on testing new platforms, tracking analytics, and staying motivated in the world of content marketing.
Get ready for some real talk about the rollercoaster of producing daily content. Chris shares how he keeps the creative juices flowing (no, it's not just caffeine) and why "building in public" is the new guerilla marketing.
Subscribe now for your bi-weekly dose of content marketing wisdom that's more addictive than your morning coffee and twice as likely to make you question everything you thought you knew about B2B content marketing!
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Transcript
The Rise of Short-Form Content
00:00:00
Speaker
Short form content is just, it's the future. So whether it be tick tock, even a tick tock gets banned. It already happened in India and all those views just shifted to YouTube shorts and Instagram real. So I think for me, it's really about building a a short form content machine.
Introduction to Content in the Kitchen Podcast
00:00:21
Speaker
Welcome back to Content in the Kitchen, where we gather around the kitchen table and chat about the latest in content marketing. Today we have a special guest, Chris Cunningham, the head of social marketing at
Meet Chris Cunningham of ClickUp
00:00:30
Speaker
ClickUp. Chris is on a mission to achieve an incredible milestone, 200 million organic impressions in a month.
00:00:37
Speaker
As a co-founder of ClickUp, Chris has been instrumental in growing the company into leading productivity and project management software platform. With a background that includes impressive roles at Cvent and Fast Followers, Chris brings a wealth of experience in innovative business and social media strategies. Join us as we dive into the strategies and insights that Chris has used to propel ClickUp to its current success.
00:00:59
Speaker
and how he plans to reach this very ambitious social media goal.
Chris's Personal Touch: Cooking and More
00:01:04
Speaker
So grab your favorite cup and let's dive in to the conversation with Chris.
00:01:11
Speaker
All right, let's get started. When you're not at your desk and you find yourself in the kitchen, what's your go-to dish to cook? Funny you ask, I am not the best cook. My my girlfriend helps a lot there, but my go-to dish is, I like ground turkey. um just think I think it's healthy, it's clean, it's very quick and very easy for um for me to make. So ground turkey is my go-to, um and then maybe I'll put it in with like tacos or or whatever else, but that's just my easiest. I just made it before for lunch earlier, so it's definitely my go-to.
00:01:42
Speaker
It's pretty safe too. Like you can't mess it up. it like that i'm really bad try it out You have to really try hard to overcoat. You got to be really bad. So I haven't done that yet. Thank goodness. Okay.
Chris's Entrepreneurial Journey
00:01:54
Speaker
Searching from ground Turkey to ClickUp. So tell me more about your journey and what led you to co-found ClickUp.
00:02:01
Speaker
Yeah, so straight out of college, you know, I knew I wanted to do something in business and tech and and fast moving in sales. And I joined a company called SEVENT. That was my first job. And SEVENT is like it like corporate events, right? all All the parts of corporate events from from planning to choosing your venues. And I had a blast doing that. I rose up really quickly. I became one of the youngest managers there. The company went public. A lot of success and I learned a lot. But during that time, I was always working with Zeb, the founder of ClickUp. and we had We were in college together. We were always doing something. We managed a wrapper. We had created a social social media business. And he really ran with that and dropped out of school as I went to go work at
The Birth of ClickUp: From Agency to Tool
00:02:40
Speaker
Cvent. But man even when I was off work, I was still helping him on that side with with the agency at the time that we had. And from there, we we saw a lot of success. And as I had gotten you know all my shares and and everything and really reached what I thought was my ceiling at Cvent, I wanted a new challenge. And even though I could have stayed there and probably became director and VP,
00:03:00
Speaker
I was just ready for something different, something fast paced. I felt like they were moving slower as they had gotten public and you know a lot of my ideas had to go through different meetings and people and I just wanted to run and do things. So I talked to Zeb and I was like, I want to move down to Charlotte and I want to join this agency with you full time.
00:03:15
Speaker
And I did. And we grew that agency. And it was doing really well, making plenty of money. But then Zeb had a near-death experience. And he he was like, look, I don't want to be these guys who just grow social media. you know I want to be something much bigger than that. And that's when we decided to create a social media app.
Strategic Pivots in Social Media
00:03:31
Speaker
And this app was called Memory. And this is where the core team of really ClickUp first started. It wasn't ClickUp. It was our first mission. It was really this app called Memory.
00:03:39
Speaker
And what memory was, was a Snapchat competitor. At the time, Snapchat was the hottest app out, but it would erase your memories in seven seconds. They were all gone. And we saw that as a major flaw. The best thing you have in life is your memories. So we created this app. We really, really felt strongly about it. We thought we were going to be the next Zuckerberg and Tom from MySpace. We really felt that was our our calling and our journey until one day we woke up and saw the news that Snapchat had created Snapchat memories. and basically took our whole idea and just made it a section of Snapchat and we lost everything, you know, all the money, everything invested. And that hurt our pride a lot, you know, telling, you know, you're posting on social media, you're telling everyone that you're going to build this successful social media app and it fails, you know, in front of everyone. But I think that was really what we needed because then that's when we had the urgency and said, okay, we have one last shot at this. What are we going to do? And we had two options. One where we were going to create a Craigslist competitor. I forgot the name we were going to call it, but we had some name basically would offer up and
00:04:34
Speaker
um those Those tools came up to be, we were going to create our own version of that. I'm glad we didn't go that route. And the other ones we decided maybe to take on project management because we had built our own tool internally. Zeb really hated most project management tools. He hated the way they made you work a certain way. He hated that.
00:04:51
Speaker
you know most people would use different ones you have to log into this one to work with this person another one to work with another person and he just thought didn't make sense and they were customized one up so.
Goals and Strategies for 200 Million Impressions
00:05:00
Speaker
Even though the harder challenge was going in a project management because there's already so many companies who are very well off who had a lot of employees a lot of funding and we were just four people. ah We decided to still go after that mission and so in Palo Alto we had moved from Charlotte to Palo Alto we all lived in a house and we put everything we had and into this and that's where ClickUp kind of was born.
00:05:20
Speaker
That's such an incredible journey and so many different pivots in that. And I feel like that's very relatable for anyone who's in marketing. You're constantly pivoting and having to move, whether it's from branding to messaging. i ah Before we got on the show, you had mentioned something about achieving 200 million organic impressions in a month. I would assume there's a lot of pivots to kind of get to that, but can you break down what this goal is with 200 million organic impressions in a month?
00:05:51
Speaker
Yeah, so 200 million is my goal. I haven't hit it yet. um it's it's ah It's a major goal, but I have gotten, we just hit 75 million, which is still a ah pretty big stretch goal. So, the goal is to get 50 first, you know, and then as we as we kind of scale, then we'll readjust and You know either put more create more shows so we have fifteen and then we really even just past seventy five so this is hr videos are doing really really well and getting an insane amount of pressure and it's probably more than that if we count. you know Someone show me that the part three went viral in china on their version of youtube.
00:06:22
Speaker
So there's way more. I don't even know what number we're we're fully at. I'll catch up soon. But I think the the pivots we had was at at the beginning, you know, we really didn't focus so much on TikTok. TikTok wasn't our major app. It wasn't a major play. um And that no one in B2B really has that much. I mean, there's a little bit of Duolingo and right and but not really ah a B2B company has put a ton of focus into it, which I saw a wide open opportunity because it's the only app where you can start something new and just get so many views. And it's a great place to test. And to me, short form content is just, it's the future. So whether it be TikTok,
00:06:54
Speaker
Even if TikTok gets banned, it already happened in India, and all those views just shifted to YouTube shorts and Instagram reels. So I think for me, it's really about building a short form content machine. But yeah, we did have a lot of pivots. At one point, we were really focusing on Twitter, and that's where a lot of things were coming in for us and a lot of signups.
00:07:10
Speaker
another time we were focusing on, um you know, Instagram and and parts there. So I think now it's it's really TikTok first, and we're still doing a lot of things on Twitter and LinkedIn, but it's where the majority of our views come in. And that we can still repurpose something that does really well on TikTok to Instagram reels, to Facebook reels, to LinkedIn, ah to YouTube shorts. So it
The Importance of Impressions Over Conversions
00:07:30
Speaker
works really well for us to put a lot of our time into that content.
00:07:33
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, short form content. It's it's funny how before in the very beginning of like the whole online world, everything was long form content and you actually wanted to read it and you wanted us to digest and get all the information. And then slowly things got shorter and shorter and shorter and then video took over and then it was long video, then short video. And now even 60 seconds is like debatably long for some people to be able to watch a ah minute of the video. So short form is for sure the future but why impressions out of all the metrics why impressions impressions is these one for track for now it's not like we're it's like we don't care about sign-ups and things like that but the way we see it is if you just start off your content if you just ended this is a ah ah big
00:08:17
Speaker
Common i've gotten a receipt from people as we've had the
Content Creation Process at ClickUp
00:08:20
Speaker
success is all will you know how much what is the driving for sign up since like. If you just create content just tracking signs from the getting you'll never get these kind of views that i'm getting now and you'll never get people talking about the brand like they are now yeah so i think you you start with that and i was still working to. To figure out the best strategy to do that but i'm not gonna hinder all the hard work we've done by all the sudden in my ah HR videos that are getting millions of millions of using.
00:08:43
Speaker
Showing so many people every day what click a biz who didn't know who we are i'm not gonna start ruining it just by shoving click up you know in the content as much as some people. Could like i think that's the smartest play but what i will do is i'll find cool ways to bring you back or this is top of funnel you know i'll catch you middle of fun i'll catch you bottom of fun all as long as you know about us.
00:09:01
Speaker
When you're making a decision, our goal is just to make sure that you're that we're in the playing field when you're making a decision for project management. And so by having great content and by being out there, that'll help. But I still need to create great middle of funnel and great bottom of funnel content. But right now, it's I'm trying to take this top of funnel as big as I can get. And as we're doing that, I'll work with the amazing members on my team to find better ways to incorporate the brand and incorporate proper call to actions, but without hindering the growth. Because right now, we're on a path that you know no one's really accomplished in B2B, and I want to see that through.
00:09:30
Speaker
Definitely. So let's break down strategy. How many videos are you producing? How much effort are you putting towards video versus content on the site? Where are all of your content efforts right now?
00:09:44
Speaker
For me, it's it's mostly the short form video. i mean We have an entire team. We have a producer. um It's very scrappy though. We have like a producer who can also films and edits. We have ah the main talent, Luke, who mostly will is is acting and and scripting, but also will edit as well. Then we have Adam, who's the other guy you've seen. Luke is the guy in the blue book hello blue polo. And Adam's the the other bald.
00:10:07
Speaker
handsome looking gentleman who's dancing along in those videos, but he's also like an associate producer. He's editing. He's coming up. He came up with the idea itself in the beginning. So, and then we have Stormy who kind of posts everything and is also in the writer's room. So it was five. We'll meet on Monday mornings and we'll kind of go through for an hour and a half, two hours. We all bring ideas to the room.
00:10:27
Speaker
We all have thought about these ideas better than before. We bring our best ideas and then we all present them to everyone and we kind of riff on them as we're in the call. Oh, what if we did this and this? And at the end we choose, we all vote and you can't vote on your own. No, it doesn't matter if you get no votes at all, we all vote. And then the ones who get the most votes, we put into production and then we shoot that week. And then we analyze at the end of the week. So we're, that don't answer that question. That's like the process. And then for, as for how many we're creating on the ClickUp page, I'd say we're posting like one a day.
00:10:55
Speaker
One a day is kind of our sweet spot. We try doing two and three, and I haven't seen that much advantage. I'd rather have a really good video and and post once a day and just keep it consistent. But now we also have more channels, right? So we have ClickUp. We have ClickUp Comedy, where I'm testing new creators for for funny stuff. We have ClickUp Memes, which is a meme page that's
Experimentation and Creative Freedom in Content
00:11:15
Speaker
growing really well and you know hit almost 20 million impressions last month.
00:11:18
Speaker
We have a DIY page we're creating next month. We have a man on the street page. And Luke, the same talent, is also working on the man on the street. So they have like, in reality, they're creating like ah enough for two or three videos a day. But we're doing them a different batch. So we'll go shoot on like a Wednesday at the office. And then maybe on like a Thursday, they'll go do man on the street. And then that'll give us enough content for the week. And in some, Luke can just shoot a home really quickly. and and things like that. are but it's It's very fast. It's a lot going on that really comes down to the writer's room and then analyzing at the end of the week and really riffing on things in the middle. So how are all of you coming up with your own topic ideas?
00:11:58
Speaker
You know, we all kind of just, we all have our own styles, our own things we like. Now, obviously I'm coming in more with, with ideas to come on. Like right now I want to ride this HR thing. I want to do it as long as people love it. And I'm not, you know, so arrogant or, you know, so to think that it won't last forever. I know that, you know, this, this, this could get extinct. So we're always testing new ideas. So whereas we're, we're always running.
00:12:21
Speaker
As far as we can with things that are working really well i'm always still testing new things like we have a corporate jargon series is doing really well behind is not getting fifteen million of video but it's still getting a million or two so it's it's a solid one and maybe we can make it better and get it there. I'm but we're all kind of looking at our own so we'll look at a few that are successful the formula we kinda do is we have a's.
00:12:40
Speaker
we We call it the ABCD formula. A's are ah really good videos. One has already been successful. Something we've done that's hit at 600K or 700K plus, we'll find new versions of that. B's, B's are kind of just like um something maybe we've seen elsewhere, but we think we can do it in our own way. That's like a little different. Like maybe something cool that's happening or or just an idea that we've seen in content. C is um riding a trend. So you know, like, oh, we're project managers. Of course we,
00:13:07
Speaker
That trend will jump on those, but not too much. I don't want to be that brand that just depends on trends. And then D is my favorite. D's are just coming up with something completely random that might even not even make sense. You know, like just something that no one else has done. And you'd be surprised how many of those turn into our A's because I'm, I'm learning that the more kind of random and ridiculous you can be on social media, like just so, so eye grabbing and different that, that will grab you more attention. So then.
00:13:34
Speaker
What is the, what's the idea behind creating these different platforms or excuse me, different profiles with different themes? Is it all to get more brand awareness to the brand name? And then of course, eventually in goal is conversions and signups and whatnot. But why you you guys are scrappy, you're four, four or five people? Yes, ah ish, which 4.5. Yeah.
00:13:59
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that that's small team, a lot of of resources being put to this. Why spread it out across different profiles? Yeah, because we think that you can only post with so many times on ClickUp a day. And it's not that, now this this main team is working on the ClickUp, on the ClickUp channel. So just to, I guess, clear up any confusion. The writer's room is for the ClickUp channel. Now sometimes we'll bring in the other creators for their channels, but I have, it's ah it's a different team. So I have like some meme experts who are working on the meme page. Nice. It's nice. I'm usually working with all of them along with the producer with each other page. But for ClickUp, which is where we think that'll get the most views, which is getting the most views, we put the most attention there. and Let's say we have a down month on ClickUp. It's nice to have other pages that are slowly trending up. So these are all testing. We could, we could decide to scrap them all and just focus on ClickUp. But right now,
00:14:49
Speaker
Click up has like a growth like this and then maybe it'll come down and i'd like this. The memes have like a steady growth and then we're going to to keep taking bets. So we'll see if if we can continue growing other pages. It's worth our investment because we're not spending that much overall when you look at how many impressions we're getting. So it works out really well and the more we can get, the better. The more you know attention I can take over, the more different spaces I can
Risk-Taking and Testing in Marketing
00:15:10
Speaker
get on social. Why why not go after it?
00:15:12
Speaker
I think this is something that like you're you're just fully nailing it right now on how there is an idea, test it, put resources behind it, test it, especially if it's not a costly thing, especially if you have people who have expertise in it, why not test it? So what would you tell a brand owner or a head of marketer who is like, you know I want to test this new outlet, but I don't know if we're going to have budget for it, or I don't know if I'm going to get approval for it. like You guys are clearly ready to go at all times to test things out and have the mentality, but most brands and departments are not like that. So do you have any advice for people who want to test many different outlets, but have that kind of halt of, I don't know if it's going to work.
00:15:54
Speaker
The key is you never know if it's gonna work, right? Like everything I'm working on today could be off tomorrow, social changes. But the advice I would give to anyone and and kind of what I did is I just said, hey, look, I'm gonna take a tiny bit of budget and work with this. I started, it didn't it didn't just start like all like this. I brought it up in pieces. I was like, let me just go for the creator.
00:16:11
Speaker
Not full time. Let me just contact a creator and show you how much better he can do than what we've done historically on TikTok. And then I showed them some success. And we had a video that hit maybe 5 million and 2 million. They're like, OK, this is really cool. OK, now let me you know let's let's bring him in more serious, and maybe let's bring in someone to help with him. you know And then we had a little more success. So I i think you take steps and show success. Because like everything good in marketing, whether it be an ad,
00:16:36
Speaker
whether it be a new social channel, whether it be a blog, you know, a podcast,
Consistent Analytics and Reporting
00:16:40
Speaker
whatever, you need to show some success. No one, no one's got success right out of the gate. And anyone thinking differently is just, you know, really hurting themselves and and the chances on taking risks. But when you look at everything good in life, everything good and that that we talk about in here at B2B, ClickUp as a whole was a risk, right? Like, so I think luckily we're very forgiving and in taking risks. As long as you take calculated risk, you do it scrappily.
00:17:01
Speaker
just like we did at the beginning of ClickUp. You do as scrappy as you can. You spend as as least as possible, but still putting enough time and effort to to get the outcome. And even if you know that, hey, I need to spend more to get the real outcome, and if I can show steps and things coming towards that success, then, of course, any good marketing leader is going to say, OK, I'll give you more budget. Like, you're you're going up. This is trending in the right way. let's Let's keep it going. And of course, you have numbers in mind. You have CPMs in mind. And you think, OK, this is still this is a great cost for what we're getting. Let's keep it going. Let's get more.
00:17:30
Speaker
And I think that's kind of how how I went about it and and how every team should do it. Yeah, definitely. and And kind of have a bit of an open mind, but also reporting. Reporting's everything. So how often are you looking at analytics? Is it on a weekly basis? And then also, how long are you tracking a piece of content to determine if it's actually going to be successful?
00:17:52
Speaker
So I've tried almost every software out there and and honestly none of them have worked properly for me because they'll track the numbers but then it won't have the proper integration with one of the platforms and then they won't track the old growth and maybe they'll miss if Instagram also shares it to Facebook. So what I do is I just do it the old school way and we have a team and they will sit and and look at this. So I'm tracking every Friday, I do a weekly report, I write it to our COO and our CEO and the whole team and you know I tell them how well we're doing, whether it be good or bad.
00:18:18
Speaker
But I'm coming in and I have a tracker where they can come look at it, and but I also break it down for them. TLDR and to say, Hey, this is what's really working. Well, doing great here. This is, this is the bet that I'm making for next week. I showed them that I'm taking bets. I show them how I'm thinking and I show them what's working and and if the bet didn't work or if it didn't, but I show them the logic behind it and how much financial I'm putting into it, what, what success is coming out of it. But yeah, to answer your question, I'm tracking everything all the time, including like, you know, when you have a video that hits 17 million views, of course your other videos go up and that's still, yeah That still counts, so we'll go back and count those two. So it's a little bit annoying to have to manually go back and say, okay, the video is here Monday, now it's here Friday, but it's well worth it because I really want to understand the residuals of of an amazing video. So then how ah how are you tracking the path to conversion from that? Are you just mainly collecting impression data and seeing
Focus on Brand Loyalty Over Conversions
00:19:10
Speaker
what the most successful videos are? Or are you able to track all the way to the conversion path and see where the signups are coming from?
00:19:17
Speaker
I'm not even trying to track conversion at this moment. like i have I do have a a landing page. It'll track if someone comes to TikTok and you know goes into our bio. And and that's that's tracking. So that's doing really well. But but we're really not so concerned. like That's not what we're that's not our our main our main thing right now. We will find ways to do it in there. But we feel like if we start pushing too much, it'll take away. So right now, we're we're going after impressions. We're going after eyeballs.
00:19:40
Speaker
We believe very strongly and in our middle of funnel and and bottom and and our main goal is just to be known in the space and compete where people forget that click up is been around a lot less time than most all the major competitors in the space so for us is more just we do we want to be in there and battle we know we have a better product.
00:19:55
Speaker
you know We're very confident in in our pricing and and and what we're building and how fast we innovate and how fast we've been able to come into this space. so Our goal is more to be seen. that That's not to be said that we won't track. I still i so have data teams coming to me um and showing where we can see rises and kind of timing with with the videos, which is great. But I'm not being held to anything like that, which is kind of the beauty of why I think I'm winning. I think if I was being held to, did we get 20 signups? Did we get 100 signups? I think I would have to change the content to get the signups higher. But then the long run, who's to say would actually be higher if I was just tracking on that? Because we don't know how many people are finding it and going to Google and coming in. So I think rather than har harping over that and and being like every other brand who's losing on B2B, I think we'd rather win and then figure out other ways to come back in and track.
00:20:41
Speaker
perfectly and and properly. Like I could do a giveaway tomorrow and do a cheesy thing and see exactly how many comes from that. But I think it's really just not our style. I think I'll i'll i'll build custom landing pages. I'll lean on the team to come with me always. But I think they're saying you keep building your thing and then we'll figure out how we want to perfectly track that coming in. But the board is also, you know, I think they're also in value of seeing what 200 million impressions is versus just signups. Now, of course, obviously always care about signups. It's ah it's a huge part. of clickup but There's other piece of content I'm creating for that.
00:21:11
Speaker
Okay, so then that that's a ah completely different kind of department and and mindset then? Not physically. I mean, it's not a different mindset. Like I care about it, but there's there's teams who whose focus are going and and tracking the signups and I'm not going to spend my time doing it. My time is, I think what ClickUp does really well is I will spend doing time with what I'm doing best rather than me trying to do this and spend this plate of making amazing content that gets tons of views and also going and doing something I'm not good at. I'm not a pro at at tracking content, but there is teams who are. um So we'll leave that we'll leave that to them. Know what you're good at and lean into that, basically.
00:21:45
Speaker
well Yeah, it doesn't i mean it really does make sense for me to to go to an amazing thing. I didn't go spend hours and hours. I'm an expert. I'm studying every week content and how to get better content. There's other teams who are studying every week how to be the best at data and yeah everything else. I'll let them ah let them focus on that, but they're having a lot of fun you know seeing these come in. There's always the beauty of like the sales teams coming to me and saying, oh my God, these get brought up on everything. Gartner brought up our videos last week on the call with them. um you know HR said they're getting so many inbound applicants, they don't know what's going on because people want to work for the company to make these videos. So there's always cool residuals like that. There's also the cool brand set a bit of seeing more people hop on and defend ClickUp and talk about ClickUp and the re-shares. So I think that's a lot that you can't track, ah that that we're also very very stoked on because we want to be a cool brand. We know we have a good product. Being cool was ah is a whole thing. You can't really put a a financial number on.
00:22:36
Speaker
No. And the the brand loyalty that comes from that is something that's going to last for a really long time. And it's only going to grow as you continue to do this, especially experimenting with like the different channels and different profiles and different themes of content. A lot of brands are so focused on just that in conversion goal that they completely miss out on this opportunity to build a brand loyalty. And you guys are doing it for a B2B company. This is something that's like, you know this isn't a new car. This isn't something that's like,
00:23:06
Speaker
Yeah, water bottle. Yeah, it's a project management tool. And you're able to actually have people sticking up for the brand. like that's That's very impressive and something that a lot of
Staying Motivated and Enjoying Content Creation
00:23:20
Speaker
marketers forget about when they're identifying a new strategy or working on new campaigns. like Brand loyalty can exceed conversions in the long run.
00:23:28
Speaker
You know, I think, I think also too much that people don't realize that you have to take a bet on something. Like you look at the podcast, like we're doing here today, five, like five, six years ago, if B2B companies would have went hard on creating a podcast, you know, like who knows what it would have been if they would sort of stuck with it and got there. So I think I'm taking that same similar bet on social media. I'm going to stick with it no matter, uh, no matter what. Cause I really do feel like things are are going there. We spend so much time there. Uh, and I, I think B2B is, is behind there. So I would love, you know, I love being ahead of it and going to win, even though I still have a long way to go.
00:23:57
Speaker
to be where I would like to be. I just feel good to to take this bet and I feel strongly on early. How do you stay motivated though? Because you guys are producing so much content and like I'm recording videos every single day and some days I'm like, yeah, I'm loving this. like This is where I'm supposed to be. This is awesome. And then other days it is a chore. like How do you personally stay motivated to keep creating new content?
00:24:21
Speaker
You know, maybe it'll change, but right now we're having so much fun. I mean, we're having so much fun in the writers room. We're laughing. we Look what we're doing. It's kind of ridiculous, right? We're bringing in like top songs from 90s, 2000s or whatever, then bringing it back into HR and making it fun. yeah Honestly, we're having too much fun to think about it yet. I'm sure like with everything, it can get boring. if'm I'm sure if I was doing a podcast like you and interviewing every day, it would be tough. I think the The key that I foresee maybe doing that is always always changing, um always finding you know new new new things to dive into. It's very easy to get stuck on one type of content, having one win. I think that...
00:24:58
Speaker
Creating like you know healthy healthy,
Future Plans: Podcasts and New Formats
00:25:00
Speaker
fun rewards for our team is really good too. you know Having something to work towards. like Right now, like we're we're celebrating. We have 50 million. We're celebrating at 75. We're celebrating when what we crossed 150,000 followers on TikTok. you know We're celebrating as we're beating these insane goals that that seem so so far away just three or four months ago. But at the same time, we're also like not happy because we the way we've set these goals up are that we they need to be consistent. right so like My COO is very intelligent. He didn't give me a goal. Just hit this number once. Hit it for three minutes. We make this a machine. And if you hit it once, you had some good runs. But make this something that you hit consistently. And then as you do that, then then um I know what they'll do. They'll challenge me to go do it with long form. They'll challenge me to do it with written. and and i And I welcome the challenge for for all of it. Because I do want to be, you know I really want to win in this space. I really want to be known and as someone who's really taking some risk and and succeeded. But there is a lot more work to do that. I'm definitely not doing as good as I could be on long form.
00:25:53
Speaker
um And I think also tying the product back in in a cool way is is another big challenge. So you know my work is far from done. I've accomplished something cool. I'm enjoying the run. I'm enjoying talking you know on these these podcasts like this today. But I'm definitely still had heads down and very, very focused on you know what what can come.
00:26:11
Speaker
Are you finding any other types of content like like being on the show today that's helping get new eyes on the brand or is most of your time investment really focused on creating new content organically through the profiles? like Have you found any other unique sources that have really been great to help hit that organic impression goal?
00:26:35
Speaker
I think the building in public, I just started creating that, but like speaking this goal out loud, and I think that got me a lot of podcasts. I've done a done a lot this week, a couple today. um I think that has really helped get some attention because i'm I'm being very open and showing the behind the scenes.
00:26:52
Speaker
ah So I will continue to do that and see it's very new, so I can't you know promise you there. i think um I think we're adding some humor into our releases. We haven't launched it yet, but you know every week we do like a release video where it's like, hey, this is ClickUp 7.3. We released X, Y, and Z features this week, and now we're adding in some of our comedy into it. So I can get back to you on on how that works. So I think we're we we're definitely still testing to see how far this can go. I think there's more guerrilla marketing we can do with this that we haven't done yet.
00:27:19
Speaker
I just got off a meeting right before you and I jumped on speaking about ideas. Like how else can we take this further to like some live events and things like that. So I'm seeing a lot more. I want to start my, i' I'm going to start my own podcast as well. Like I think this is fun. Like yeah even with, uh, with you, I spoke to Eric from hatch earlier, did a podcast with him. And I think
Embracing AI and New Tools
00:27:40
Speaker
I learned so much from the questions being asked that, uh, that really opened my eyes as well. So I'm enjoying not only that.
00:27:46
Speaker
you know your audience will see this and hopefully add value because I can tell by the questions you're asking, you know you care for your audience to learn and I care too. I want everyone to start having fun and B2B content. So i think I think this stuff really leads to some beautiful things because at any time if you're you really giving value to the people that are that are listening or going to listen to your podcast, it wins. So I want to create more value-based content on top of just making people laugh.
00:28:11
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, getting people to laugh is like that first touch point and kind of warms them up. And then to really keep them kind of connected is that educational aspect. And in B2B, educational content is something that we're all used to. That's a familiar space. But lots of times brands just see it as another blog post.
00:28:28
Speaker
Let's just do another blog post and keep going through that. So really stoked to hear that you guys are coming with this innovative approach, testing lots of different things and honestly just running with it. That's such a unique angle that we're not seeing from a lot of B2B brands these days.
00:28:42
Speaker
You know, I feel blessed, like I love that ah Zeb and Guar of our founder and then COO, I think it's I am very blessed to allow me to to take these risks. Because I am very you know cognizant that not everyone is is able to do this. But i do I do challenge people to start trying someone on your own. you know like There's a few things that I did rogue that you know before I got approval, I just started testing it. And I asked for forgiveness later. but I was like, look, I did this. I took back what we usually spend on an influencer, and I did this. And here's my success. And I really believe in it. I think if you come in with passion,
00:29:10
Speaker
If you come in with testing something, no one's ever going to be that mad at you for trying something new, especially in a space where everyone's already doing the same thing. So yeah yeah I do challenge everyone to to try something new. and And don't be afraid, but you really do need to put your time into it. You can't just you can't just really um halfway do anything and expect to see something. You can do it with a halfway budget, but you can't with halfway energy. You've got to put all that in there. 100%. I love that. You can do it with that i a halfway budget. I want to quote that. Yes, you should. I don't know where that came from.
00:29:39
Speaker
That was fantastic because it's so true. I mean, if you start a project and you're like, okay, I'm being pulled in a thousand different directions. Sure. That's normal. That's every marketer right now. But if you finish something through and fully execute on it, even if you only have half the budget, that's where you're going to be able to see the most success. And even if it doesn't happen, you're going to learn so quickly what didn't work and how to pivot from there.
00:30:02
Speaker
And there's a lot of there's a lot of beauty in that too. There's a lot of beauty in learning and in moving on and saying no, right? It's like the essentialist. I'm like, as long as you learn what not to work on, you're still getting closer to what you should. 100%. Well, as we wrap up, I would love to hear what your secret sauce is at the moment. What's your current strategy? Maybe a tool that you just discovered or a book that you just read that's like just changing things for you. What's your current secret sauce?
00:30:25
Speaker
My secret sauce is a friend of mine that I found earlier that used to work at ClickUp, but he's so successful now he's doing his own thing. Devin McPaul has found a way to really use AI to not create content. I'm i'm actually kind of more against, not against, but like if you use AI too much to create your content, it's going to sound like everyone else. But Devin has found a way to use AI to kind of like pull the data points of what people are talking about and what's hot and what's doing well right now. And I'm just really plugging him in because he's doing it for me as we speak. And I haven't even fully seen all the results, but just from the early things he showed me, I'm like, wow, this saves a lot of research time. um So I think that's that's like kind of the secret sauce that I've seen right now. I think there are tools that I'm really
00:31:04
Speaker
I think Vista Social has been really good for us in posting and pulling data. It's a much cheaper alternative to Sproul Social that we were using. yeah um Sometimes we still use that for like the the responding inside, but there's dash shots and all these really expensive tools, whereas I think Vista Social has been a really good one that for $40 a month does most of the things. so i'm very Impressed with what they've done and i'm i'm definitely anytime someone is really good i'll speak speak their praises and then always check out app sumo I think uh noah kangen does a great job of finding tools like You know some using cowan lee. Um, I can use tidy cow and just pay one time and be done for life and they really innovate so those are the three The three things I think are really working and look out for more. I think I want to
00:31:46
Speaker
I'm trying to work with some other big creators to start a community where we talk about this and social more. Because I think a lot of people need to be seeing trends change so fast, as you know. So look out for that as well. But that's my main hacks. Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing. Definitely keep me posted when you create that community. Happy to add it into the show notes. But once again, thank you so much for everything that you shared. This has been really helpful. Yeah, I actually had a lot of fun. Thank you.