#ask tom and wireframe

[asktomandwireframe]

So far it's a beautiful day outside! Do like Tom and go sunbathing!

[switchbladedreamz]

Yes Ma'am (sneak peak)

Somethin about young Tom Cruise/Ethan Hunt in these thin wireframe glasses gives me innocent nerdy vibes. I just watched the first Mission Impossible and now I'm thirsty for 90s Tom.

Summary: Ethan Hunt was new to East Central University. He had been transferred from New York University on assignment. The freshest meat the IMF market had to offer, knowing he and other recruits would fit in with their youthful looks. A local drug dealer had recently gone global with the war on drugs, guess which side he was rooting for. Ethan had no idea who or what he would be getting into exactly.

Requested? Nah

Ship? Ethan Hunt x Fem!Goth Reader

Warnings? nah, just some background to the story

~~~~~~~~

"No, I told you already a hundred times, I'm a transfer student. From New York, ever heard of it?" a voice spoke harshly from the other side of the door. My colleague was clearly taking the transfer badly. I walk in and intervene, apologizing for my friend's short temper. "Just go sit down, I'll handle it from here Jake." I smile at the exhausted clerk sitting behind the desk, her shoulders relaxing in relief as she explains to me that a lot of the files from a lot of transfer students had been harder to find than usual. The issue is finally resolved thirty minutes later. Jake, myself and a couple others from IMF are gathered at the edge of the "Howdy Fair", watching the bustling crowds of freshmen. "Why do you think they call it that?" Samantha asked, "Well y'all're in the south now, people say 'howdy' as a greeting unironically here." I hadn't heard her coming up over the loud music and commotion. "Oh. Well, cool. Hi, I'm Samantha" she introduced herself to the stranger. What I saw when I turned around, I hadn't expected for the buckle of the Bible Belt state. An actual goth person. And she was beautiful in her darkness. "Do I got shit on my face or somethin'?" she asked at me, her voice was so sweet. "Oh God sorry, what a bad first impression. I'm Ethan, I just hadn't expected to see a goth here. Where are you from?" The look of bewilderment she gave me made my heart smile, people don't express human emotion like this where I'm from, it's like being surrounded and suffocated by suit wearing robots. It's very refreshing. "You're standing on it. Well, I've moved around a lot but I'm from Oklahoma- born and raised. I mean hey, goths gotta come from somewhere. Not all of us are born out of a summoning pentagram of Black Sabbath CDs." She jokes, then laughs at her own joke. Sam, Greg and I laugh with her, Jake stands by stoic and unenthused.

(Y/n) spent the rest of the day showing us the campus while sharing any tidbits about the locations. Jake and Sam are staying in a separate Residence Hall than Greg, (Y/n), and myself. "I swear if I even had to share the same building with Jake's grumpy ass I'd jump off the roof" Greg joked as the RA showed us to our shared dorm room and explained the suitemate situation. IMF had sent our whole fake lives to the dorms already and all that was left was to unpack. We had all gathered back at the cafeteria, half the food was tasteless. Apparently Jake didn't get a roommate so there's some good news for him, I swore he almost cracked a smile when telling us he was going to be without.

[sj-thefan]

VI

Going to England has always been a dream of mine, but I never thought that it would actually come true, especially after I left my family. After we had sent a letter confirming that we would come, reality sunk in and I realized they probably wouldn't need a stagehand or if they did, Buckingham palace would have someone and I don't have enough money to pay my own way. I told Lettie all of that and, like all good gossip, word got to P.T. who immediately came and talked to me.

"Y/n, I have heard a rumour," he said to me one night as we were sitting at his family’s dinner table. I was curious as to what he was talking about. I hadn't done anything wrong lately. Was someone spreading false stories about me? I knew it couldn't be too horrible though because Helen and Caroline were still at the table.

My curiosity must have been clearly visible as P.T. decided to answer it. "Nothing bad, I promise." He took a deep breath, "did you really think you wouldn't be coming with us?"

I smiled as I let out a breath of air. "Mr. Barnum, I'm not needed on this trip," I explained to him that everything I do could, and probably would, be done by one of the people who work for the palace. I also started mentioning that I didn't have enough money to get my own place let alone go to England but I was interrupted.

"-Nope. I won't hear any more excuses. You're coming with us. You're part of our family now, we need you," he said. "Besides, we're not paying for any of it. The Queen invited us, all expenses covered."

"Really!?"

"Of course."

I looked around at the table Charity was smiling at me like she knew this conversation was going to happen before it did. I returned the smile. The girls each had a bowl of ice cream in front of them that was abandoned once they heard I was going to England with the circus.

"I want to go too, daddy," Helen whined.

"Me too!" Caroline added.

I saw P.T. and Charity share a look.

"You two have school," Charity explained. "Besides, Y/n works for daddy. The Queen is only going to pay to have Circus members come to her palace."

I nodded my head, "I'll bring you back some souvenirs."

The boat ride wasn't very special. Besides Fedor getting boat sick, the most eventful thing was our first dinner. Of course, arriving in England was a different story. As soon as we stepped off the boat we were escorted into carriages that took us to the hotel.

The next day, the carriages were to return at noon. I spent the morning getting everyone ready. We didn't exactly know what to expect, so P.T. instructed everyone to wear their costumes, except himself, Phillip, and I who were to be dressed in the best clothes we had.

After I had finished doing Lettie’s hair, I returned to my room to put on my dress.

Being that I left home unexpectedly, I didn't want to bring a lot of suitcases, which led to me only packing the necessities, meaning most of my fancy dresses were left behind. On our trip to England, I brought the fanciest dress that remained in my possession. It was light brown and had a wide neck. The sleeves began at the edge of my shoulders and travelled down to the crook of my elbow. Dark brown lace covered the edges of them as well as making a nice belt around my waist. The skirt flared out naturally without the wireframing underneath. Overall it was a beautiful dress and I almost preferred it to the elaborate colourful gowns that I had left behind.

Once I had finished getting ready, I returned to the rest of our group to offer assistance to anyone needing help with adjustments.

By one o'clock, we were all walking through the halls of Buckingham Palace. I stood next to Lettie slightly behind P.T.

"Why aren't we in tails?" Lettie asked referring to herself and the rest of the circus cast.

"We are the entertainment," Mr. Barnum stated.

"I don't see you in a costume!" Lettie whisper-shouted.

We turned a corner as two men opened the doors to a room filled with people. A sudden silence covered everyone as they noticed our group, but that wasn't the first thing I noticed. It was the fact that there was no stage.

"Your Majesty," a man from the palace staff announced. "Mr. Phineas T. Barnum and his... Oddities from America."

We followed P.T. and Phillip as they led the group to the front of the room. Everyone seemed uncomfortable in their costumes and the comments from the crowd didn't help.

"Oh my!"

"Is that real?"

Once we reached the front of the room, Phillip stepped forward to introduce us, "Your Majesty, may I present Mr. Barnum."

"The honour is mine, Mr. Barnum" she smiled as P.T. bowed his head. "And I've heard all about your little colonel from my friends in America."

At the incorrect title to his name, Tom spoke up to correct her, "General, ma'am."

"You are even smaller than I imagined," the Queen said in shock.

"Well, you are not exactly reaching the top shelf yourself, sweetheart."

A loud gasp was heard throughout the room. My eyes were wide as I looked to the Queen for her reaction.

When she started laughing we all joined in awkwardly with her.

"My, my," she said as her laughter faded. "You really are the funniest General in the world, aren't you? Enjoy the party." With that everyone resumed their chatter although I could see some send a few nasty glances our way.

I joined all the cast in one of the corners of the room. W.D. was trying to help cover Anne as her costume didn't have any legs or sleeves.

"How did he get it this wrong?" she asked me referring to Mr. Barnum's mistake in having them dress for a performance.

"I'm not sure," I replied. "But at least we got to meet the queen."

She gave me a sarcastic smile before everyone's attention was placed on the same man who had introduced our group. He was speaking again.

"Your Majesty, Miss Jenny Lind."

After the majority of people had returned their attention back to their previous conversations I watched as Mr. Barnum pushed Phillip in front of him as they walked towards the Opera singer.

"What do you think they're doing?" I asked Anne and W.D.

"Don't know," W.D. replied.

"By the look on Phillip's face, I don't think it's anything good," Anne said.

"I hope you're wrong."

Previous Part | Next Part

[benwilliamsdeco1800-blog]

DECO1800 Week 9

Reflection of presentation: 

Everyone in the group spoke well and expressed their points effectively. Ellen discussed the progression of our idea, Tom explained the changes to our wireframes and storyboards etc, I detailed the new features of the website and Tobi addressed the audience with our three questions: 

The first question asked for advice on the clarity of navigational features on the website. Our feedback was that we should abandon the use of a navigation bar as the audience agreed that all areas of the website could be accessed without one. Furthermore it made the website look neater.

Secondly, we addressed our websites use of the SLQ dataset. Currently the website uses information about mining accidents from the SLQ dataset as an accompanying historic example to each question about modern mining safety procedure. The audience (including tutor) agreed that this was a useful way to utilise the dataset. However it would have been good if the the tutor gave some more feedback during the presentation.

The final question detailed the websites complexity and if it was necessary to add additional features as a means of adding more depth. The response to this was that this would be unnecessary as the goal of the website could be achieved without additional features.

Part C:

My job for part C is to finish coding the website. There is still a lot to do but it is definitely achievable in the time left and with the help of other team members. The main features left to complete are the quiz questions, map features and certificate of achievement.

To complete the quiz, the questions need to written and accompanying data from the dataset identified (Tobi’s job). Subsequently I’ll need to code each question into the website. Furthermore, using python we’ll need to write a program to randomise the questions.

The map needs to have a system whereby the course has a clear course and progression through the mines of each state. Thus I’ll need to customise the map to look like a course.

Regarding work from other team members, it’s really only Ellen and I that have done much work. I have coded the whole website so far and will probably end up doing all of it, while Ellen has basically written most of the reports. Tom has done parts of the report but needs to put some more effort in, while Tobi really hasn’t done much at all - I don’t think he did anything on Part B. As team leader it is partly my responsibility to ensure they do work but ultimately they need to take the initiative to do the work I have assigned to them. For part C I will need to be more pressing as a means of ensuring that they contribute more. 

[mariemary1]

How to Become a T-Shaped Marketer: What Marketing Career Growth Looks Like at Buffer

Before becoming a marketer, Brian sold insurance.

Alfred was in the army.

Arielle was a health coach.

I was a sports reporter.

And now look at us! We’re a team of eight Buffer marketers, with vastly distinct backgrounds and educations, who collectively bring in 20,000 Buffer signups each week. Many of us fell into marketing, accidentally or on purpose. We’ve been learning as we go.

And where exactly are we headed?

Good question! We benefit a lot from free marketing courses and great educational content. However, it’s not often the case that we have a specific vision for the skills we gain or the path we’re on.

Does this resonate with your marketing experience? Do you have an easy way to answer, “What does it mean when we’re asked to become ‘T-shaped’ marketers?”

Since I’ve stepped into a leadership role on the marketing team, I’ve become the one posing the T-shaped question to others, so it seemed time to figure out what T-shaped means for us at Buffer and what it might mean for digital marketers beyond Buffer. Here’s what I came up with. I’d love your thoughts!

(Caveat: This is all verrrry much specific to the way we do marketing at Buffer. YMMV, though hopefully it’s a good starting point for you and your team. Feel free to copy and edit!)

The Diagram of a T-Shaped Marketer at Buffer

This is how we view a T-shaped marketer at Buffer. Feel free to grab a download of the Sketch file or Canva template we used to build this, if you’d like to customize it for your company.

Generally-speaking, everyone on the Buffer marketing team will have all the base knowledge and marketing foundation skills listed in the diagram; plus, each teammate will have chosen at least one main channel in which they are an expert.

Much more on this below, but first, I’d love to explain more about the idea of T-shaped people in general.

The concept of a T-shaped person comes from the world of hiring, and it describes the abilities that someone brings to a job — their depth and breadth of ability. The vertical, up-and-down stem of the “T” represents one’s depth in one or more areas, and the horizontal, side-to-side stem of the “T” represents one’s breadth.

The vertical bar on the T represents the depth of related skills and expertise in a single field, whereas the horizontal bar is the ability to collaborate across disciplines with experts in other areas and to apply knowledge in areas of expertise other than one’s own.

Often times the word “generalist” is used to apply to a T-shaped person; though in our case at Buffer, a generalist would be someone with a relatively short vertical T stem and a very broad horizontal T stem.

Our T-shaped marketer diagram relies heavily on the foundation that Brian Balfour laid with his T-shaped description back in 2014. In his post on becoming a customer acquisition expert, Brian laid out a blueprint for how someone could grow their marketing skills. Brian based his research on an article from Distilled. Both Brian’s and Distilled’s articles are great places to start if you’re keen to learn more about T-shaped marketers.

How To Become A Customer Acquisition Expert by Brian Balfour

Building a T-Shaped Web Marketing Skill Set by Distilled

The 3 Components of a T-Shaped Marketer

As you can see in the diagram, the abilities of a T-shaped marketer fit into three different components:

Base Knowledge

Marketing Foundation

Channel Expertise

Base knowledge is the non-marketing-specific areas that will suit you well no matter your job.

In theory, anyone who applies for a marketing role at Buffer would have competence with these abilities, and anyone on the current marketing team would focus on leveling up in these areas first and foremost. These basic abilities really do trickle down and inform the other skills you need.

Everyone on the marketing team should feel comfortable with all base knowledge boxes.

Marketing foundation is the marketing-specific subjects that are useful across most all marketing channels.

Our list is an incomplete one. For instance, Brian Balfour’s 2014 model includes conversion rate optimization (CRO) as a foundational skill. We don’t expect everyone on the team to have foundational skills in CRO (in fact, we view it as its own channel in which you can become an expert). Also, Brian mentions database querying. That’s not as important to us. The marketing foundation at your company is likely to entail some unique skills of its own.

Everyone on the marketing team should feel comfortable with all marketing foundation boxes.

Channel expertise refers to audience and acquisition channels.

There are soooo many of these, and we’re constantly finding new ones. For instance, product marketing wasn’t a channel for us a couple years ago. Now, it would serve us well. And on the flip side, there are areas, like sales, that we don’t do at Buffer.

The idea with channel expertise is that someone will have one or more channels for which they have great depth of knowledge.

When a T looks like an M: Variety within channel expertise

As you might experience for yourself, it’s not always the case that your skills fit a neat and tidy T shape, especially as you keep evolving as a marketer.

The T shape is definitely just a framework. On our team, we have a variety of people with a variety of skills, all at different depth and breadth.

In some cases, the T might have three vertical stems of different lengths. (An “M.”)

For others, it might have one really, really deep stem.

If it helps, here’s a quick view of how our current team looks within the T-shaped marketer model.

Alfred, Content Crafter

Arielle, Community Strategist

Ash, Managing Editor

Bonnie, Loyalty Marketer

Brian, Digital Marketing Strategist

Hailley, PR and Communications Strategist

Mike, Product Marketer

Spencer, Growth Marketer

How to level up your T-shaped marketer skills

Of course, once you know where to head with your growth as a marketer, one of the next questions to ask would be how to get there. Fortunately, there are a ton of resources on most any marketing skill you could hope to achieve. Here’re a few of the resources we’ve found helpful as we’ve leveled up in all the different areas of a Buffer T-shaped marketer.

Base knowledge

Behavior Psychology

Knowledge in this area helps you better understand why people do what they do —  a handy skill in most any job, particularly so when you’re eager to understand why people click, like, share, and buy.

Blog: Cognitive Lode

Book: Decisive by Dan and Chip Heath

Book: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini

Blog post: Putting Behavioral Psychology to Work to Improve the Customer Experience by McKinsey

Blog post: 15 Psychological Studies That Will Boost Your Social Media Marketing by Buffer

E-book: Hubspot’s Marketing Psychology Guide

Storytelling

We see storytelling and copywriting as different things. Storytelling is about knowing how to put together a narrative. Copywriting is about knowing the right words to use to express that narrative.

Blog post: 11 Storytelling Formulas to Supercharge Your Marketing by Buffer

Blog post: Master This Storytelling Technique to Create an Irresistible Content Series by Copyblogger

Video: Pixar’s approach to storytelling (embedded above)

Content series: Pixar in a Box from Khan Academy

Blog post: The 6 Main Arcs in Storytelling by the Atlantic

Data and Analytics

Before you get into the weeds of Excel, Looker, SQL, etc., it’s essential to have a foundation in the general concept of data and analytics so that you know what’s possible to learn data and what makes for good data analysis.

Video: Data-Driven Product Changes by Heavybit

Book: Winning with Data by Tom Tunguz and Frank Bien

Book: Naked Statistics by Charles Wheelan

Research

We were lucky to get in early with customer development at Buffer, which helped us cultivate a research culture. In specific marketing terms, research means checking with your audience to learn their experience, their problems, and their wishes. In more general terms, research is about putting a process to one’s curiosity.

Book: Lean Customer Development by Cindy Alvarez

Blog: Cindy Alvarez

Design and UX

We don’t expect Buffer marketers to be design pros (we’ve written several articles admitting we’re far from professionals). What we look for instead is a cultivated design eye: Do you have good taste? Can you identify the elements of design that lead to high quality?

Blog: Canva’s Design School

Email course: Making a Product Designer by Invision

Branding and positioning

This one could possibly also fit in “marketing foundation,” but I see branding as a bigger concept. We all have personal brands (whether we actively cultivate it or not). We position ourselves for new jobs and opportunities. There’s a basic knowledge here that transcends marketing.

Resource: Skype’s brand book

Blog post: Gist’s guide to branding

Resource: Ubuntu’s brand guidelines

Blog: Brand New (example above)

Blog post: Building Your Brand by Aaron Beashel

Marketing foundation

Copywriting

As I mentioned above, copywriting is about knowing the best words to use in order to get a message across.

Blog: Copyhackers

Blog: Copyblogger

Book: Ogilvy on Advertising

Blog post: If Don Draper Tweeted: The 27 Copywriting Formulas That Will Drive Clicks and Engagement on Social Media by Buffer

Sketch, Canva, and Wireframing

This is a step up from the base knowledge of “Design and UX.” Once you know the principles of design, how far can you get with creating something yourself? Sketch and Canva just so happen to be our tools of choice. Photoshop or another software might make sense for your marketing team.

Content series: Getting Started with Sketch by Megumi Tanaka

Email course: Design Workflow with Sketch

My Canva profile (if you want to grab any templates)

Blog post: A Beginner’s Guide to Wireframing by Envato

A/B testing

A/B testing can somewhat share a line with Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), but we split it out on its own because we want all our marketing team to understand the basic principles behind A/B testing. First, do you have a testing mindset? (Which, put another way, could be “do you have a data and growth mindset?) Then second, if you think about testing, do you have the ability to bring basic scientific tests into your area of expertise? A/B testing is like our default setting for scientific tests.

Blog post: 50 A/B Split Tests to Optimize Your Site by Sujan Patel

Resource: The Complete Guide to A/B Testing by VWO

Resource: A Beginner’s Guide to A/B Testing by KISSmetrics

Blog post: How we lost (and found) millions by not A/B testing by Basecamp

Video

For many companies, video is a channel all its own. For us, video is such a big part of the social media marketing we do that it just makes sense for us all to be well-versed with what it takes to create a compelling video and be confident on camera.

The Down and Dirty DIY Lighting Kit | Wistia Learning Center

Blog: Animoto

Resource: The Wistia Library

Statistics and Excel

This is the next step beyond data and analytics. We’d love for everyone on the team to be able to put together a solid spreadsheet to track numbers and goals.

Blog post: 10 Useful Google Spreadsheet Formulas You Must Know by Woorkup

Blog post: Take Back Your Time With These 10 Ready-Made Spreadsheet Templates (And Our Top Tips and Time-Savers) by Buffer

Blog post: 9 Free Microsoft Excel Templates to Make Marketing Easier by HubSpot

Website: Stack Overflow’s “Excel” tag

Funnel marketing

How does a customer become a customer? This feels like something it’d be great for all on the marketing team to know, even if they only have a particular impact on one portion of the funnel.

Video: Building a Growth Machine by Brian Balfour

Blog post: The consumer decision journey by McKinsey (see image above)

Blog post: The Steps You Need to Define the Stages of Your Sales & Marketing Funnel by HubSpot

HTML and CSS

This level of code knowledge can come in handy in so many places: blog posts, landing pages, email design, just to name a few.

Community: Stack Overflow

Website: Treehouse

Tip: Right-click and choose “View Source” or “Inspect Element” to see how any website is built

Customer experience (CX)

CX is a big part of Buffer as a company, which is why we emphasize it for our marketing team. This can look a number of different ways: for instance, hopping into the inbox to answer support tickets or thinking through the potential customer impact on launches, content, etc.

Podcast: Support Ops

Blog: HelpScout

Channel expertise

Biz Dev

Business development is the strategic relationship-building of key people and companies. For instance, at Buffer, if you were in Biz Dev you’d probably network with folks at Twitter, Facebook, Apple’s iOS store, etc.

Biz Dev 101 – An Interactive Workshop on How Deals Get Done from Scott Pollack

Book: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Blog post: Corporate Development 101: What Every Startup Should Know by OnStartups

Slidedeck: Biz Dev 101: An Interactive Workshop on How to Get Deals Done

Community

Community is the process of connecting people with people, with the common denominator being Buffer.

Blog: CMX Hub

Book: Buzzing Communities by Richard Millington

CRO

This can also be classified as bottom-of-the-funnel marketing. The goal here is to improve conversion rates by lots of different avenues: landing pages, CTAs, ads, content, and more.

Blog: ConversionXL

Blog post: Conversion: The Most Important Internet Metric of All (Revisited) by Above the Crowd

Email

Email marketing may include one-off campaigns, daily newsletters, lifecycle campaigns, and a lot more. In addition to being good at the content and conversion of emails, an email expert also knows the ins and outs of deliverability, ESPs, and a lot of other technical bits that are unique to email.

Blog and podcast: Litmus

Ebooks: Mailchimp library (seen above)

Events

An events expert can do everything from a meetup to a conference and tie back the event efforts to business impact.

Ebook: 9 Simple Steps to Master Social Media for Events by Eventbrite

Blog post: The Disneyland Effect: How to Plan a Successful Conference by Marketing Insider Group

Podcast episode: Top Strategies for Taking Your Online Community Offline with Marketing Events – w/ Stefanie Grieser of Unbounce

Content marketing

Content marketing is primarily about blogging, though the true definition of content extends to anything you might create. More and more, the “anything” seems to fit on the blog as well: video, audio, slideshows, etc.

Why Content Marketing Fails from Rand Fishkin

Blog: Grow and Convert

Blog post: The All-in-One Content Marketing Playbook for Startups by Copyhackers

Slidedeck: Content Marketing Lessons from 10 Years and 41 Million Visits

Slidedeck: Why Content Marketing Fails

Blog post: The 51 Best Writing Articles I’ve Ever Read by Buffer

SEO

This is anything to do with search engine optimization, both the content/strategy side and the technical side.

Blog: Moz

Videos: Whiteboard Friday

Blog post: This SEO Checklist = 48.7% More Organic Traffic [Case Study] by Backlinko

Blog post: Rand Fishkin’s 5 Simple Experiments for Improving SEO Health by Unbounce

Multimedia

For us, a multimedia channel expert shows a deep skill with podcasting and video production. They can create both types of media as well as put together a multimedia strategy based on business goals and existing content.

Blog post: How I Built a #1-Ranked Podcast With 60M+ Downloads by Tim Ferriss

Blog post: Podcasting for the Creative-Minded: How to Avoid Yet Another Talking Head Show by Jay Acunzo

Blog post: Podcast is the New Blog by 500 Startups

Inspiration: Gary Vaynerchuk’s Facebook page

Paid ads

Most often when we talk about paid ads, we refer to social media advertising — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. However, a paid ads expert may also be adept at search engine marketing (SEM), media sponsorships, and banner and display ads.

Resources: Adspresso Guide

Blog post: 7 Advanced Tactics Pro Facebook Marketers Use to Boost Conversions by Copyhackers

Podcast: Perpetual Traffic

Partnerships

For partnerships, we define this as someone who builds mutually beneficial relationships with peer companies, in order to drive a marketing objective. It’s a different flavor of biz dev: Biz dev is more focused on necessary networking for business growth, whereas partnership marketing is more focused on ad hoc collaborations for marketing objectives.

Blog post: Co-Marketing: How to Reach New Customers With Strategic Partnerships by Shopify

Blog post: What Is Co-Marketing? A Guide to Co-Branding Marketing Campaigns by HubSpot

Podcast episode: Marketing Partnerships: How to Expand Your Reach with Content Collaboration by Social Media Examiner

PR

PR is accountable for driving interest and mentions for the brand. At Buffer, this includes press outreach, inbound PR, syndication, and communications.

Blog post: 22 PR Tools and Resources by Brandwatch

Social media

I like the way Gary Vaynerchuk describes his work as the clouds and the dirt. He wants to be comfortable both at the highest strategic level and at the most tactical, on-the-ground level. This is true of someone who shows social media expertise.

Blog: Buffer

Blog: Social Media Examiner

Book: Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk

Viral marketing

The outcome of viral marketing is that customers are selling your brand for you. There are a lot of different levers that can make this happen, not the least of which is a referral or loyalty program, as well as a deep understanding of virality, psychology, and network effects.

Book: Contagious: Why Things Catch On

Other: International marketing, product marketing, mobile marketing.

The list of channels could go on and on. A couple others that come to mind include international marketing (strategically reaching an audience beyond your primary audience) and mobile marketing (iOS, Android, apps, etc.).

Advice on building your skills and choosing an expertise

For anyone new to marketing or excited to grow as a marketer, I feel there’s a lot of potential in a framework like this, no matter the specific boxes or stems.

Here’s how I tend to think about career growth.

1. Career planning for digital marketers is really hard.

Things change. Needs arise. Channels come and go. The most valuable skill to have is probably not anything like writing or video or networking but rather plain ol’ flexibility!

2. Balance what you enjoy, what you’re good at, and what your team needs.

We use this Venn diagram to speak about how Buffer teammates move between roles on the team. Often, we’ve found there to be a varying combination of these three factors pulling someone to do a job. I’d suggest factoring in each of these when choosing a channel to grow into.

3. Go deep on two or more channels. 

A single skill at a very deep level can be really valuable to have. The tricky thing I’ve observed is that depth is more highly valued at larger companies. A five-person marketing team likely won’t have the need for an SEO expert whose primary contribution is SEO. A five-person marketing team will need someone who can do two or more channels well (and can do lots more well enough).

Figure out the size of team you want to be part of, then build your skills accordingly.

4. Aim for rare and unusual combinations.

Capitalism rewards things that are both rare and valuable. You make yourself rare by combining two or more “pretty goods” until no one else has your mix…

This is a Marc Andreessen quote I love (there’s a bunch more in his book of blog posts, which you can download for free).

Have you ever met someone who’s great at paid ads and events? What about content and business development? Those are rare combos. Combining these somewhat disparate skills can make for a really attractive resume as you search out jobs in the future.

5. Choose an emerging channel.

From Brian Balfour:

If you are just starting your digital marketing career and have many years ahead of you, I highly suggest leaning towards emerging channels. Four years ago the emerging channels would have been Facebook and content marketing.

Emerging channels today would likely be data, artificial intelligence, customer experience, and engineering-as-marketing. If you can get in on the ground floor of these, you’ll be well positioned when they become more widely recognized.

Over to you

I hope this overview of T-shaped marketers can help you find your next skill to learn or direction to grow. It’d be fantastic to hear your thoughts!

What do you see your marketing career path looking like?

Anything you’d add to our T-shaped list?

Image sources: Unsplash

Thank How to Become a T-Shaped Marketer: What Marketing Career Growth Looks Like at Buffer for first publishing this post.

[enginnerbabu-blog]

“A man and his tools make a man and his trade” – Vita Sackville-West

The saying goes without a doubt. Today we live in a world of complexities and to simplify, breakdown and ease the problems we require tools. Be it the physical or the virtual world, tools are irreplaceable.

Being a freelancer, you need to have the right set of tools. With the right tools, a freelancer can have super ease at working and can scale to newer heights. So, what all TOOLS you need to have an as a freelancer to get it easy and precise? Let us have a look.

1. Google Keep

– It is an online tool which enables us to make notes and lists and even images and audios. What all can be done on Google Keeps: a. Formats – Not only notes and lists can be added but also audio, and video files can be uploaded. b. Labels – Putting a label on a list makes it easy to search. Also, you can categorize lists into different labels. There are default categories of labels to choose from, or you can create your own category. c. Color options – There is a wide variety of choice of colors available for list templates. You can also categorize the lists based on color. d. Reminder – Just like setting your alarm; you can set a reminder for a list which would remind you just on time. e. Filters – You can search a file by putting filters like- ‘audio,’ ‘images,’ ‘reminders’ and even ‘shared.’ f. Sharing -Just like Docs you can share a list or audio file or an image file with people.

2. SlideShare

Slideshare is a presentation sharing tool by Linkedin. It empowers to you share your presentations over the internet with people sitting anywhere around the world. PDF files and PowerPoint presentations can be uploaded to it. Presentations can be more interactive by integrating audio and video files. Social media like Twitter and Facebook can also be fused with slide share.

3. Hootsuite

“It’s omnipresent, and it has seeped into the ground”. – Tom Piazza. Is it possible to be omnipresent? Probably not yet but what about being omnipresent on social media? Yes, you can be omnipresent on social media. Hootsuite is a platform for managing social media. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+ and much more can be integrated with Hootsuite. From just one place you can control everything that’s going on, on your various social media platforms.

4. Mailchimp

Email never was late to be identified as a great tool for marketing. Today email marketing is widely used across all industries. Mailchimp facilitates sending bulk mails of a campaign across all your email database. A few features:

Receiver’s behavior – Mailchimp helps you in gauging the precise behavior of the recipient by providing you with the analysis of – how many people read your campaign, how many people clicked on the link or the call to action button in the campaign, time of opening the mail, frequency of opening the mail in case the same mail is opened several times. Built-in templates – It also provides with built-in templates which can be used for your campaigns. You can upload your own templates too. Schedules campaigns – Mailchimp helps in scheduling the campaigns too. If you are unavailable yet the campaign needs to shoot, you just need to schedule it to shoot it off. Auto responses and Welcome messages – It also facilitates you with auto responses and welcome messages to be sent to your contacts in case you are unavailable, or your clients are based overseas.

5. Basecamp

Basecamp is a project management tool which helps teams work together. There are various tools in Basecamp – Campfire, Message Board, To-dos, Schedule, Automatic Check-ins and Docs & Files.

Campfire -It is a group messenger facilitating communication within a team and sharing links and files. Message Board-It is for more permanent conversations. To-dos – This helps in keeping track of the tasks which are needed to be done. Schedule -Schedule helps in marking important dates, events, meetings, appointments, etc Check-ins -This is a tool which asks short questions t o the teams on a regular basis. All the answers and feedbacks are collected and stored on check-ins. Docs & Files -Docs & Files helps in keeping longer documents and upload files.

6. Google G Suite

G Suite is a collaborative software which was developed by Google. It helps in easing the tasks where some people are involved. It has Gmail (email), hangouts (IM), calender G+ (social media). Apart from the communication tools, it provides docs, sheets, forms and slides also. Today G Suits is extensively used across businesses.

7. Zoho

Today every business needs a stronger customer relationship, even more than a stronger customer base. Zoho is a subscription-based CRM software which helps you out with all the hassles of CRM.

8. Skype

Skype is the alternative to all the expensive voice calls and video conferencing. It is a free tool to communicate long distances. To use Skype the caller and receiver both need to have Skype at both ends. Much of the services are free on Skype, although it charges if calls are made on a mobile or a landline. Initially, it was restricted to desktops and laptops, but today you can get Skype on your mobile phones too by downloading the mobile app.

9. Sanebox

Now we have a tool which can manage our MAILS too. We get tons and tons of emails daily and it is very distracting to see so many mails also prioritizing them becomes difficult too. How about a tool which tells you what should be addressed first and so on? Sanebox helps in identifying the important mails and keeping them in the inbox. The other unimportant mails are kept aside in another folder for future references.

10. Bidsketch

Bidsketch is an online proposal tool which helps in creating proposals. Every business today require making proposals and doing that is a time-consuming affair. Now you can make and send proposals in no time. Bidsketch helps in making precise and uniform proposals making them look more professional. These are some amazing tools which can be used by freelancers. No buying expensive licensed software, no long download durations, no installations, just get the internet on and there you are. GET STARTED!

We have Startups and Entrepreneurs to help you build wireframe by visualizing your need. You may get in touch with us at EngineerBabu.

Original Article Published By EngineerBabu

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Cuteness overload!

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A couple experimentations of Tom. If you want me to draw your OC just message me!

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Chillax

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Today's drawings!

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Pony love. How cute is that?

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Tom has the hots for Framey

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A sad Tom to fit my mood these days... Send him hugs to feel better.

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Pegasus courtship ritual.

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Let's swap! Tom is now a pegasus and Wireframe an unicorn! Which one looks the best?

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I can't help myself. Whenever I saw a cute pony that liked one of my post,I need to hug it. And I have a weakness for batponies... THEY'RE JUST SO DAMN AWESOME AND CUTE! So here's Tom hugging Lukida, from @moemneop blog.