#ContentChat is now on video! To celebrate our new format—and work through a few technical hurdles*—Erika hosts a content marketing ask me anything (AMA) in this chat recap.
Watch the full conversation or read through the highlights below, or check out the recording on LinkedIn.
*Skip to 3:30 in the recording for the start of the conversation.
6/26/23 #ContentChat: Content Marketing AMA with Erika Heald https://t.co/MIStZdjmKy
— Erika Heald | Content Marketer | Writer (@SFerika) June 26, 2023
What was your path to becoming a content marketer?
Erika wanted to be a magazine journalist, but she faced a difficult job market and high costs of living in San Francisco. She pursued freelance writing jobs instead and eventually started working at Charles Schwab. For years, Erika struggled to explain the work she does, until Joe Pulizzi coined the phrase content marketing (thank you, Joe!).
Erika also shares this PSA:
“There are people who say ‘we shouldn’t call it content marketing, we should just call it marketing.’ Please, let’s not backslide! Not all marketing is content marketing, it’s just not. There’s a lot of other things in marketing that I don’t do, because they’re not content marketing. So, please, don’t make my life hard.” – Erika Heald
How did you get involved with #ContentChat?
#ContentChat is one of the first Twitter Chats that Erika participated in. She wanted to network with other people that were doing the same kind of work and talk about content marketing with all sorts of people.
The chat was started by Jenise Stout Fryatt and was still run by her when Erika joined. Later, Lucy Render-Kaplan became the host. In 2016—after several years of joining the chat weekly—Erika began managing the community. Shout-out to Martin Lieberman for encouraging Erika to take on the hosting duties!
Erika reveals how her transition to self-employment made it easier to take on leading #ContentChat:
“I was finally 100% in control of my own schedule, so I could block off Mondays at noon Pacific every week and make it happen—and not have to be sneaking #ContentChat while in a meeting. And yes, I’m a terrible person—I have done that! I would sometimes sneak some tweets in while sitting in a meeting that could have been an email. We’ve all been in those meetings, and you do have the time to do stuff like that.”- Erika Heald