Career

Why You Should Encourage Your Best Employees to Moonlight

December 5, 2017 by Erika Heald Leave a Comment

Do you encourage your employees to moonlight? Or do you prohibit them from pursuing work outside of their job with your company?

Personally, throughout my career, I’ve always had some sort of a second job or side hustle.

My first job out of school was managing an office for a small magazine, and I moonlighted freelance writing for them, and with a 10-hour-per-week position at my local free weekly newspaper.

Even when I was a full-time employee at Charles Schwab I always had a side hustle or two. The only difference there was that they had a process in place to ask for permission to pursue my outside of work job—to make sure it didn’t conflict with my day job or trade on non-public information I had access to as part of my job.

That said, I did eventually have a boss tell me my outside of work gig was giving others the impression I wasn’t fully committed to my job. As she requested, I wound down my extracurricular activities… and found a new job elsewhere that didn’t ask the same of me. [Read more…] about Why You Should Encourage Your Best Employees to Moonlight

The Importance of Downtime to Keep Your Content Marketing Skills Sharp

September 21, 2017 by Erika Heald Leave a Comment

When I tell other marketers I’m an avid gamer and a long-time World of Warcraft player, I get one of two responses.

The first—and best—response is from fellow gamers. They are typically psyched to have met a fellow gaming content marketer. Often, they are recovering “warcrack” addicts. We reminisce about the golden days of WoW (as we refer to the game) and promise to add each other on Battle.net.

But then there are the non-gamers.

They furrow their brows and narrow their eyes at my sharing my favorite hobby. “Shouldn’t you be spending that time on something…more productive” is a comment I’ve heard so many times.

Why yes, I DO have a number of professional projects I’m working on right now, including a book. Thank you very much.

Hello Content Marketing World 2017!

September 4, 2017 by Erika Heald Leave a Comment

As I write this post, I’m sitting on a plane from San Francisco to Cleveland for the 2017 Content Marketing World conference a.k.a. CMworld.

Believe it or not, this is my fifth consecutive year making the trek from the City by the Bay to Cleveland for this event. No other conference I’ve attended even comes close to that!

So what keeps me coming back to #CMworld, year-after-year? It’s the people and the unrivaled opportunity to hear from the smartest minds in my profession all under one roof.

I’ve met so many amazing colleagues and friends thanks to this event. At this point, even as a shy introvert, I can easily count on a hundred or so people I am personally excited to see and give a hug to over the next few days.

And that’s saying something!

This year, I’m privileged to be speaking on a panel with a group of awesome content marketers I met through the #CMworld weekly Twitter chat and bonded with during last year’s in-person event. We’re going to be sharing our perspective on the intersection of content and community, and we’re leaving plenty of time to answer YOUR questions. I hope I see some of you there on Thursday!

If you’ve been considering attending CMworld in the past but haven’t gotten around to it, I can’t encourage you to do so enough. I’ve paid for this conference and the travel out of pocket. I’ve used precious vacation days to attend. And it’s always been worth it.

Isn’t it time you invested in yourself?

Kicking off Q4 2016 with a Bang!

October 4, 2016 by Erika Heald Leave a Comment

I’ve been quieter than usual on social media for the past three weeks, but with good reason!

As you may have guessed from the Jack Skellington-bedecked Haunted Mansion photo at the top of this post, I’ve been on a much-needed vacation.

Thanks to #ContentChat regular—and my friend—Wayne Hendry my absence hardly made a blip in your Monday afternoon routine. Thank you so much for stepping in for me, Wayne! I appreciated knowing everything was in good hands while I enjoyed the SoCal sunshine.

The other reason I’ve been quiet is I’ve been keeping something under wraps that I’m incredibly excited about.

But now that Gini has spilled the beans I can also share the news: I’m now the Chief Content Officer for Arment Dietrich and Spin Sucks!

Gini and I share a passion for professional development and the belief that communicators need better training and tools to adapt to the world of modern PR, and that’s where Spin Sucks comes in. I’m looking forward to helping the team grow the amazing Spin Sucks community.

And never fear—my hosting of #ContentChat isn’t going anywhere. I’ll still be there and ready to chat every Monday at 12 noon pacific, 3 p.m. Eastern. But now I’ll have the Spin Sucks team behind me as well.

I can’t wait to see where this adventure takes us.

Sharing My Passion for Baking Through Erika’s Gluten-free Kitchen

July 12, 2016 by Erika Heald Leave a Comment

A few months ago, I ran into the ever-inspiring Joe Pulizzi at a conference. After our conversation, I reflected on the fact that I’d spent the past two years incredibly focused on creating awesome content for my in-house and external clients at the expense of writing for myself.

Both agency life and start-up life can be all-consuming. And if I’m spending the bulk of my work hours creating content, especially if it’s highly involved, B2B content, which it often is, I don’t have the time or creative juices leftover at the end of the day to spend time on my personal writing projects. Hence this blog being woefully neglected, as was my World of Warcraft blog. Heck, I didn’t even get around to chronicling our holiday Rhine River cruise!

But talking to Joe, and later, reading this article on the benefits of passion projects, made me prioritize getting back on track with my own writing, starting with this blog.

I also decided to put some time into a more personal passion project, Erika’s Gluten-free Kitchen. This new blog is a place where I can capture what I’ve learned and how I’m progressing in my pursuit of creating tasty yet low-FODMAP food for our family, and learning how to bake without gluten (which is a challenge, even as an experienced and enthusiastic home baker!)

The final part of that pursuing my passion puzzle is raising my hand to host the weekly #ContentChat, Mondays at 12 noon Pacific/ 3:00 p.m. Eastern. It’s been so much fun combining my passions for twitter, content marketing, and professional development into one fun project. I hope you stop by and take part in a future Content Chat.

So that’s my mid-year update. What are YOU doing to follow your passion? I want to hear about it!

Invest in Yourself or Become Obsolete: Schedule Time for Your Professional Development

September 18, 2015 by Erika Heald Leave a Comment

Several years ago, in a marketing team meeting, as we discussed our professional development plans for the upcoming quarter, one of my colleagues blurted out “I don’t have time to for professional development. I’m too busy. I can’t take a day to go to a conference or a workshop.”

Neither our boss nor the rest of the team let her off easy on that comment. The marketing landscape is changing every day, with new tools and tactics to be aware of coming at you all the time. If you simply throw up your hands and say “I’m too busy!”, where do you see your career heading?

My friend Gini Dietrich brought this up over on the Spin Sucks blog recently. And since professional development for content marketers was the topic of my recent #CMworld chat, this seems like a great time to share some of my favorite tips and resources for professional development. [Read more…] about Invest in Yourself or Become Obsolete: Schedule Time for Your Professional Development

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