Showing Up

The year was 1999.

That fall, Binghamton University distributed t-shirts to seniors like me saying, “Class of 2000: Leaders of the New Millennium.”

Given that the new millennium wouldn’t start until the year after we graduated, this specious claim should have been rephrased as “Class of 2000: Death Knell of the Millennium That Brought You the Plague, two world wars, and Nickelback.”

I had spent the previous three years on campus in the Hinman College dorms, the final year as co-president where our campaign slogan, which I penned myself, was “There Will Always Be an Oatmeal Crème Pie for You.”

I kept that promise, offering them to anyone who asked. We ran unopposed though, so it’s hard to say how well the Little Debbie bribes worked. It’s also unclear whether that was against the dorm bylaws. I still got invited back as a commencement speaker, so I don’t think I can be prosecuted. Also, I pardoned myself.

(Too soon?)

My senior year, I stayed on as a Hinman Fellow, continuing my involvement with the residence community while living off campus. I got to know the new crop of student leaders well, as I returned to my dorm, Cleveland Hall, for their meetings every single week.

Regardless of tests that I was intending to study for, or dates that I was imagining going on, or episodes of Law & Order that I could have been watching at any hour of the day even before the age of streaming television, I showed up.

I never missed a meeting.

The relationships forged and knowledge transferred taught me something so important in the process: the value of showing up.

I didn’t have to add anything to the meetings. I didn’t have to have any brilliant insights. I’d spend some of my beer money at their fundraisers, and I’d cheer on my dorm during their versions of Color War, but the main value was simply being present and showing them that presence mattered.

I learned how being consistent is often more important than being great.

Those lessons from more than 20 years ago keep coming to mind as I advise clients on content marketing best practices.

Social networks’ algorithms tend to weigh a mix of two factors when deciding which posts to promote more.

One factor is which posts get the most engagement. A lot, but hardly most, of those posts are brilliant. They’re by the content creators who seem preternaturally prolific with some mélange of wit and wisdom in every sound bite.

There’s another factor though, and that’s consistency. You know those friends of yours who get two likes on their posts but you seem to see their posts every single time? Maybe you liked one of their posts six months ago? The consistency from those peers is what keeps them in front of you.

Showing up is a way to stay relevant.

That’s it.

Don’t always worry about how great your post is. Most of the time I think I have something brilliant to say on Twitter or LinkedIn, barely anyone likes it. When I’m not sure how good it is but post it anyway, that’s when I’ll get good engagement.

It’s eerie how well that correlation works.

Various cultures have versions of this wisdom.

The tribe of startup bros from Hackistan likes to say, “Done is better than perfect.”

A species known to include the Jedi masters Yoda and Grogu is partial to the expression, “Do. Or do not. There is not try.” It is unclear if Grogu will say that, but maybe some other Jedi will come back in a surprise appearance and teach it to him one day. Just a guess.

Even as we celebrate the theoretically peaceful transfer of power that we’re known for in the American democracy, we welcome a new leader known for showing up so consistently for so long that he outlasted dozens of contenders. What did most voters want this year? A steady hand.

I didn’t learn enough from pretending to study for tests at Binghamton. I didn’t learn much about dating, beyond what not to do (over, and over, and over again). (And over.)

I did learn about the power of a consistent presence though. What was true at Cleveland Hall is true for content marketers.

David

PS: Want another way to show up? Join me at the Serial Marketers SpeedUp on Thursday at 12pm EST and meet four amazing marketers in 30 minutes. 

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BROUGHT TO YOU BY… THOMPSON & PRINCE
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Thompson & Prince (www.thompsonandprince.com) solves creative problems and business brand foundations for early-stage startups and growing small businesses. They offer the following services:

-Naming / Nomenclature (Company & Product/Service)
-Logo Design / Visual Identity / Brand Guidelines
-Brand Strategy / Positioning / Messaging
-Marketing Collateral 
-Website Design & Development 
-Connections to a curated network of agencies & consultants 

To support the startup and small business community, their project minimums remain at a much-reduced $1,000. Email chris@thompsonandprince.com if you’d like to learn more!

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Thanks to Michael Browne, Michael Marzano, Claudia Strauss, E.B. Moss, Candice Grobler, Keren Unrad, Jaimee Kniffen, and Chris Gorges for spreading the word about the newsletter recently.

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EVENTS
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Please send over any events you’re hosting or attending, and I’ll add them to the list. All events below are virtual, and all times are EDT.

• Advisable: Get instant access to top marketing freelancers
• AMA Job Board: Listings from the American Marketing Association (maybe you can also ask them anything)
• Beeler.Tech: Job listings for ad operations, programmatic account management, sales operations, and more.
• Built in NYC: Jobs at a range of levels and functions, as long as you’re okay working in this quaint, backwater hamlet.
• CareerList: Here’s a form for companies hiring and a form for job seekers; here’s the public list with tabs for both 
• Content Writing Jobs: Content marketers, enjoy
• Creative Women of Color: List yourself in the database and find talent, via Women Who Create
• ExecThread: Senior roles spanning a range of verticals and cities; membership is free but fully vetted (this uses my referral ID to get you in faster)
• GLG: Get paid to share your topical expertise; it can lead to some interesting conversations at a potentially decent hourly rate
• Grace Blue Transitions: A portal for hirers and seekers with resources from this exec recruiting firm
• The Hired Guns: An array of jobs in marketing and related fields at brands, agencies, and media companies
• Hue: Amplifying voices of people in color working in marketing
• Hunterz: A way for connectors to get paid to introduce startups to large enterprises
• Lead5: A paid service for executive roles, plus intel on changes with companies and PE investments; you can try a risk-free weeklong trial to see if it’s any good for your needs
• Lunch Club: Match 1:1 around predetermined goals with accomplished professionals (free)
• NYC Ad Jobs & Networking: A popular Facebook group
• One Club for Creativity: COVID-19 jobs Board
• #OpenToWork: There’s a channel in Serial Marketers where you can share what you’re looking for
• Pangea: Where you can hire college freelancers (and college students can get gigs)
• Pocit: A platform connecting people of color with jobs in the tech industry
• Remotists: Remote startup jobs, chronicled weekly
• Sales Hustle Stack: Find platform-based gigs and other creative ways to earn some extra cash
• Startup.Jobs: There’s a section for marketing jobs
• Teal Job Tracker: A free Chrome extension to manage and enhance your job search
• TechNY Daily: While more technical, there are also some sales and marketing jobs at NY startups.
• VC Job Boards: Aleph, Eniac Ventures, Pear, Sequoia, Union Square Ventures
• VentureLoop: Free startup job listings; their paid option is $15/month and might surface more leads (but it might not).
• Wanted: Wanted helps top talent in tech and marketing find a job at your desired pay. Plug in your salary, stay anonymous at first, and connect with companies that want to recruit you.

Do you run or enjoy other job listing sites? Let me know, and I’ll share them.

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OFFERS (NEW SECTION)
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Below are offers extended to the Serial Marketers community. To share your own or access the Premium member discounts, review membership options here.

Northarc Media
Marc Lefton is offering brands a free one-hour consultation on your media mix to show how you can integrate programmatic. For agencies, you can get a free one-hour consultation on how to add programmatic to your service offerings. To redeem, contact Marc by email.

Secret
Sign up and use the promo code SERIALMARKETERS to get 20% off on any membership plan. Membership enables you to access all deals with unlimited usage. One deal should more than pay for itself.

Marpipe
Create an account and start a 7-day free trial for $125 in ad spend credit toward your first experiment with this multivariate testing platform. Redeem here. (Premium members get $175 in credit with a custom code)

Copysmith
Following a 7-day trial of this AI-powered marketing tool to generate ads, product descriptions, and more, use code SERIALMARKETERS for 35% off any plan for 3 months (premium subscribers get 50% off for 4 months).

Dokkio
Get lifetime access to this file management tech with three seats, all free. (Premium members get five seats; see the Slack channel for details and a custom link.)