Insight into how people interact with content is valuable: Mechelle from TrackVia

Mechelle’s career journey is nothing short of a rollercoaster. She went from journalism to working in films, to getting a master’s degree in public communications, to working with non-profits, and now she’s driving the corporate communications wing at TrackVia.

Transcript (auto-generated)

0:18 I think I was always into communications. Honestly, I loved languages. I love stories. I was a big reader when I was a kid. So to me, I think it was just a natural draw into communications in general. I actually started out as a journalism major. I’ve worked for quite a few different media entities. Working for television, newspapers, magazines, that type of media. But within that, I just always knew, you know, there’s always a story to tell, and that’s kind of that journalism background as well. But ended up getting out of that, I went out to California for a stint and tried my hand at doing some film and then ended up getting my master’s degree instead. So, I have a master’s degree in public communications and technology, and worked for a couple of different nonprofits and then ended up running a program for the school district, and then ended up in tech. So it’s kind of been weird, I would say hills and mountains of different ideas. But I think the leading idea has always been that idea of communications. So for me, it’s always, what’s the best story we can tell, what’s the best way to get that story out. How can we engage people? How can we entertain people? How can we make it valuable for them? And, and so that’s really always been my driving force. This recent stint actually into TrackVia is a little bit new— going into the technology end of things and being more of a technical writer, learning the technical content. But again, it’s still about what’s that story, what’s that thing that’s going to make someone click–maybe hasn’t heard of. So that’s where I’m at.

Understanding data

2.16: My experience with data has actually been different at different points in time. Literally, when I was working in media– like we worked with like Nielsen rating data and things like that so I understood the need for monitoring your reach, monitoring your impact, things of that nature. It’s a little bit different in media than it is maybe working in communications and marketing for a company. But then as I move forward, I’ve used data in different realms. And then as I got more into communications and looking at the data that we use here, it has been frustration at times with different companies because you don’t always have access to the data you need. It’s hard to measure your impact. It’s hard to measure your reach. I think we’re better at it now than we’ve ever been, but it’s still a matter of who has access to that data. How are you interpreting that data? And so right now, I’m working with my team looking at how do we track the social media that we’re doing and how do we track this content that we’re producing and then how is that being tracked for our salespeople, how is that being tracked for even our products people–sometimes they want to know to with different ideas that we’re putting out with, like trials and things like that too. So that’s the interesting part of it is, there is so much data out there and learning at this point, and I feel like I’m a little bit late in the game because I probably should have been working with a lot of the software that people do today. But I never had maybe full access to it. Like I worked with Salesforce, but just a little bit, or I worked with this, you know, platform, but just a little bit, and I’ve never had full access to anything. So this is the first time in my career that I’m like, no, I need that access, I want that access and I need to know what my content is doing. I can’t produce better content if I don’t know how the current content is working. So I think that’s kind of where we’re at, at trackVia. I think every company is different too. We’re a smaller company. and even though we’ve been around for a while, it has been very much a startup feel. Part of the challenges, you know, learning to grow as a company and learning to what I say, ‘grow up’ and be more cognizant of how to structure your teams, how to structure your data, how to really understand how everything is interconnected.

Integrating data into stories

5:07 I’m looking at the data that I can get about how my story impacts. But I’m also looking at data points that I can use within my content. So, a lot of times I’m working with customers trying to push them to think about how they’re getting an ROI and what they can bring to the table as far as you know— people want to see numbers. I was like how did this affect you. We had X amount of ,you know, sales or we had X amount off of productivity. Sometimes it’s hard to pull that information out because people again aren’t tracking it very well or they’re not cognizant of how they’re tracking it. It’s harder for them to bring a solid number to the table. So, that’s a challenge. I definitely have to put the people that I’m interviewing in that mindset of, here’s the data, here are the points that we’re looking for, and kind of give them pre set of questions so that they know what we’re gonna be looking for when we come to the interview. But like I said within the data points that I’m looking for, I’m looking for actionable data– like is this one piece of content more engaging than another. What particularly was different about this piece of content —and we’re evaluating that. Like I said, if this piece of content isn’t working, why are we producing more of that? You know, we don’t want to repeat something that’s not having an impact. And so part of that is understanding, you know, even within our website, even within, you know, our pdf pieces or you know, white papers, that kind of thing. Where are people stopping? Where are people, you know, finding a hiccup or a challenge point or where are they finding something interesting that they’re making an action point on? We want to know and understand that so that we can repeat it. The biggest thing in communications is if we don’t understand how people are engaging with our content, we’re doomed to fail. Because we’ll continuously produce content or at least something that people aren’t listening to. So, why would we do that? I think that’s the important part about data and communications—is we have that insight now into how people are interacting and how people are utilizing our content— if they’re sharing it, if they’re just looking at it, if there is, you know, click and drop. We have insights into that now and we can create better content, more engaging content if we just pay attention to what that data is telling us.

The go-to metric

07.57: Data metrics that we are now just starting to track– like I said, I’ve always had pretty much access to the social media. But, we’re looking more now, and as we’re doing a website redesign and looking at how we’re we’re structuring things, my key point and especially as a content person, I really want to know what’s going on with the content. If we’re producing use cases or we’re producing ebooks or white papers or products sheets–what has the most impact. Because you can clutter up a website with a ton of content, but if it’s not going anywhere, if it’s not doing anything, then all you have is a very messy site. And so for me, I think my favorite metrics are exactly that of, you know, how many downloads are you getting or how many clicks are you getting on a particular web page or I just really want to see like where the engagement points are because if I can’t see what’s going on in those, then I can’t tailor what I’m doing to make it work better. I think that’s the challenge, I think for most communications people is you know how do we improve if we don’t know what’s going on. I mean I could produce content piece after content piece after content piece but if nobody’s reading it then what is the point. Where would my time be better spent? I think my favorite part is just once you really get into it and you can see it and you’re amazed that like it may be the one piece that you thought that’s never gonna work and all of a sudden everybody’s picking up. So, I think that’s interesting just to see the dynamics of how people are engaging with content. And I want to see the website data of who’s going where and what are they clicking on and what are they downloading?

Tools for data insights

10:07 We have a couple of different pieces of software. We do tracking like URL tracking and the like with product in Salesforce. And then we also have recently implemented and I think we’re gonna plan on—we’ve done it on the back end of our software so that’s interesting too. We have this software platform called Heap that does the metrics within our platform and I think we’re gonna transfer that over into the new website as well so we can have better tracking of how people are interacting. So, those are our key data centers or the way we’re tracking data in particular. Beyond that, like we have social media –I think currently we’re using buffer, but I’ve used other things like Hubspot and some others as well to manage what’s going on with the social metrics. I think the key data that we want to work with, and I know there’s plenty of platforms out there that just happen to be the one we’re using currently, but heap has a really great data set and an idea of like dashboards of how we can look at our data and that that’s helpful to me.  I’m a visual person too. So if you can throw stuff up in graphs and show me what’s kinda going on that way it’s easier for me, to wrap my head around, okay, this is working, this isn’t. But those are the key tools. Honestly, for anyone in communications, you definitely want to know your social media metrics, you want to know your voice and how that’s getting out. For me, I think the buffer analytics is great. I sometimes have to go directly into the social media platform itself and start digging around and seeing what I can get directly. Just things like that helped me to gauge where we’re at and how we’re managing things.

My 2 Cents

12:10: The best thing I can tell you is to keep at it. It’s easy to get disheartened. It’s easy to give up, it’s easy to say, oh, I don’t want to do this anymore. But, if you have a passion for communications, if you have a passion for content, you really just have to keep your faith and keep your focus, there’s plenty. And I think people are realizing too that there’s a need for it. There’s definitely a need for professionals that can tell stories in a multitude of ways. So, you know, find either your niche or find your key strength, build that up and make sure that you’re confident in yourself. I mean, that’s maybe the biggest challenge is communication, people need to have confidence in themselves that they can make a difference. I think we are making a difference. I think within businesses, within nonprofits within society and the communities, it’s the communications people that make people aware–that bring people to action and so we are doing something. But, you have to believe in yourself and you have to understand that we are doing that and you’ll have success.