I had a blast chatting with her about her work as head of community and advocacy for HubSpot and her course for SEMrush on social listening, one of my favourite research strategies in content marketing.

Ashley: Do you find that people don't use social media because they think, oh, it's just a broadcasting tool and they don't realize that you can use it for social listening. You have a course on SEMrush on social listening, and I'm just wondering who signs up for it, and why? 

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It's a Shortly reminds them about the program. It goes immediately. Once they hit that like it's triggered by their behavior and so it's a really great way to make sure that they feel seen and supported. But then that means that I like you said, previously it means I get the time that I would have spent creating that email sending it out manually. One by one. I can instead spend that time actually having like one-on-one conversations in VMS with these people and saying like, hey thank you so much for doing this. This and I really appreciate that. That finding out like, the priorities are doing the dance of what stays human at. What can be automated is incredibly important because you can't do it all on a human level. So you have to be very, very judicious about what is going to make people feel the most special. So I want them to feel recognized for the different tiers of their apart of and if they have an anniversary coming up, we have a hub fans challenge that automatically triggers within the community when they They've been a hub fan for over a year and so they get extra points for being a part of that. It pop-ups automatically I don't have to do anything because it's I've set it up in scheduled it and that's just one more thing that it would eat all of my time with these little things when I can instead take that time to be like, oh how was your how was your trip? I just saw the you got on vacation or hey wanted to let you know we're doing end of your guests and I just wanted to send you something like those things I'm able to prioritize what my human connection. Like while still making sure that I have other touch points and so I, that's what I think the beauty of workflows is you're able to do dish asleep. Prioritize what needs to feel human and what can still feel special even if it's automated. And so, that's, that's when I think that the work is done correctly, is you might know that it's an automated email, but you still feel special, it's still you still understand why you're getting it. It still helps you and provides value. So those are that's the kind of that's the kind of work that I really like doing. Doing is is having that, that dance, that dance between the human and the workflows. That's awesome. I think I think automations the still a bit of apprehension about using them because people think, oh well, I'm not being human, I'm not being personal, but when use automations correctly, when they're that when they're Dynamic, you know, they're based on someone's Behavior, someone's activity, that itself is personal and then, but you're also giving them an option to contact you personally. Ali. So it's not like you're saying I can do. I'm not going to talk to you ever. Don't. Don't email me because I'm busy and just go through this Auto word flowing. That's really why I love I love automations to like I our workflows in general I just think it opens up so many doors and that's really cool actually that your community can It's customized like that. Do you find? Sorry, I've just been like I say I really I know you're fine, you're fine. I was gonna say the other thing that I do like about that kind of work to is, I'm I talking Theory. I used to be a math teacher in a previous life and so I talked Game Theory and so I find that workflows or such like when I'm ever going to use this in my life workflows because you have to think about, especially if it's behavior-driven. Like, what are all the different? Ain't like past that this person could take and what would they expect to see and how would those things be different based on what Behavior they took our didn't take. And so if you like Game Theory, I think I think being able to really dive into that is really fascinating because you do, you do use the mechanics of Game Theory and you have to figure out like, what are the different Pathways based off of choice and understanding that it isn't necessarily going to go the way that you want it to go. But you have to have an allowance for those other Behavior opportunities. That's awesome. Do you? I bet that's really interesting on your side like from an analytics perspective like to see, you know how people go through that journey and yeah, that would be really interesting if I think it's I think it's always interesting to, it'll keep you honest. Because I think the Trap that a lot of marketers fall into is that we kind of, we kind of put our own kind of behavior traits on People that were trying to work with. And so we assume that the consumer or the audience is going to act the way that we would. So I always like to be able to have different Behavior points because it keeps you honest in a sense that you're going to see. Like all they did not behave the way that I thought they were going to. They went in a completely different direction or I thought they were going great. And then it got to this part of the path and then they completely stopped reacting things like that. I think are really interesting and I think someone who's I love behavioral psychology, See I'm hyper observant on that person in the airport that people watches It's just, it's just kind of always a part of that. And so it's always, it's always interesting to look into the results to see, like, did people behave the way that I thought they were going to or do I need to tweak the workflow because it's not going the correct way where there's clearly a bottleneck that I've created because the my behavior does not or what I have set up is not indicative of what they were expecting based on their behavior. That would be interesting, I think That's like, I think Community should always be iterated based on everything you just said and I think a lot of people are tempted to set it and forget it. Oh, we did it. We had this, you know, Community thing or whatever and you know, it showed that we care and that's all we need to do. Yeah, that's fascinating. I love, I love, I haven't set up my own Community just because I don't really have the bandwidth for that. But yeah, I think that I would probably want to be have some sort of analytics and personalization, instead of just being like, a static Forum or something. Yeah. Yeah I'd be interested to see if that would affect. I guess he could ABT esta to write like that. You know 14mm this you know personalized not you don't really have any workflows or analytics for it and then another one that does and just to see you know have the same kind of question. I think you can see if it affects it. Well I think you can kind of see that in web three with the web three communities that set up a Discord and then they'll have Bots. Do like half the work and introduce them and do all the onboarding most those Cords don't work. Yeah. Did you get in there? And you immediately understand that you're just being fed into this hyper community and there's the bot. It's going to tell you how to behave is going to tell you where to do things. But then the community has to survive past the bought if the bot the only one talking to you. There's and this clearly a bot. That's that's a major issue because the whole sense of community is a human experiment. So if I go in there and I'm never talking to any other humans, Is it really a community or am? I just collectively in the same room with a lot of bots? And so I think they're I think that balance I think that balance is even more fragile and webserie especially as more people are focus on Tech stack. I think that's what's really interesting as I saw an article in the Atlantic and I shared on Twitter earlier today, but it was talking about Taylor Swift and her fandom. And how She's actually the closest person to creating like an actual metaverse because she has the community and the community is cross-platform and so a lot of people who are building the metaverse, the conversation is more Tech focused. It's more how does the tech make this work? Instead of the tech is useless if the community can't Thrive there if the community and I find that, that's what a lot of Community, Builders can get kind of stuck in. It's a really sexy trap fall into as As oh, what's our Tech stack going to be? But that's irrelevant if the community doesn't want to be there or the community is not prepared for or they don't have a reason to even be there together or they're already taking care of somewhere else. And so I loved the like one of the quotes that it's that from the article was talking about is that met. The metaverse problem is not a tech problem, it's a community and culture problem and I was like, that is brilliant. That is fought on wish I had a And that's why the metaverse is struggling, but the but that's why the metaphorce is struggling. That's why a lot of companies are struggling to kind of get to the thing, because they're seeing it from that technique that technological POV instead of we actually need like how do we get culture and Community to work. And that's also why the metaverse is really working where it is working at all, is in gaming, because gaming is hyper community-driven like hyper community-driven. Like Fortnight doesn't exist. If communities, not a thing. It doesn't exist. Roblox doesn't exist if communities not a thing and so the metaverse options that are translating quite well and have the least friction. It's not the technology, it's that they're more Community focused. And so when you have people who are saying like we're going to build the metal version, you're going to do Zoom calls in there. Like you don't get it, that's not why people want to go there. Yeah, so it's I highly recommend the Atlantic article. It said that if you search like Atlantic, Or Swift metaverse will see it but it's okay. It's excellent and it comes It has really valid points and that's you have that shift from like what's going to actually be able to provide the most thriving community and if you have one already established, then that's just a matter of like holding their hand into a 3. Instead of trying to build something completely new over there and hoping that a community will spring up out of nowhere. Yeah, I think Taylor Swift would be an amazing guest on my podcast. She's just fat 

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Do you remember? Years ago. I don't remember what it was but she was like launching an album and she had. I think she has like three houses or something and she like as a pre-launch would have her like her fan base. Like her, most her most loyal fans are super fans. I call them would be like each each of her houses, or whatever and then she'd surprise him and they would listen to the album together with her there and and it would like it was all the reasons it was so successful because she was, she was like, providing a platform for her biggest fans. It's to spread that into the universe and that, you know, there are there is another Instagram, fan pages of Taylor, whatever it is, she's really, really fascinating. And I'm not, I'm not at all surprised that she's leading the way in this. Yeah, that's really cool, too. But what's her name to Taylor Swift? Come on my podcast. That's awesome. That's awesome. Do you Do you find that a certain type of person is more likely to join Hub fans? Like do like, do they have certain characteristics of like using your platform or they are they super users or they just need a community and want to learn more or is it like a mixed bag? It's a bit of a mixed bag. So we have, we have like the macro community of HubSpot community in general, and there's micro communities inside of those. Within Hub fans, we have 

Where anyone who wants to who loves have spot and wants to talk and connect with others is welcome to join. There's no there's no gate there. If you want to learn more and you want to connect, you are more than welcome. We'd love to have you, but we do want to be able to offer opportunities for those top-level, Advocates of superfans that you would call them. And so we have Huck, Finn's Council, which is our top Advocates and they are and I would say all of them collectively have a deep love of how spot and they want to connect beyond that are Top Advocates are positively brilliant. Like no, the product like the back of their hand are super users but go beyond that. They have this humility where they don't just necessarily want to gate keep and act like the smartest person in the room. They collectively want to help people. So we have customers and we have partners and they want to help others understand how HubSpot can help them. So they want to do demos. They want to write blogs about like a new feature. They want to go to inbound and share what they thought was the most importance of people who didn't get a chance to go. Go still get to reap the rewards of the knowledge that was shared while they were there. And so there's this really humble helpful spirit, that a lot of the have fans, have they they are very generous of spirit. They are kind. I mean, they're the smartest and kind of people, you'll meet they and they were just other one. Second story, I have to tell my dogs, stop barking. Bouncy bouncy, I'll be out in a minute. Okay, I'm busy, I'll see you later. Okay, sorry. I could hear them outside my door crying. I feel bad? That's that's really cool. That's really cool and I love that. It's not gated, there's no barriers to entry. I love all those posts. I keep seeing on like Den about about the value and not getting something, you know? Yes, you don't have the attribution, but you get more people and you get more intelligence. People are are more More likely to join because they don't feel like they're going to be hustled. Yeah, the on gating movement I find is why I found it really, really interesting. My only my only challenge. I be interested in how you would deal with this. I know how I know your community is different from Facebook groups and things like that, but I find group Facebook groups that are private and And have like conditions for joining, you know, you have to fill out a form and then some like I didn't mean has to manually approve, you, I find those places are much the conversations law better. I don't know if it's just because, you know, people who don't meet the criteria are filtered voice filtered out and don't even get a chance to come in or if people just feel more comfortable because it's private Yeah, I don't know, what do you, what do you find it out? Like, what's, what's the fine line between, you know, making it comfortable and safe for people? And also, you know, not stifling, you know, not making people apathetic or were reluctant to join? What are you would? How do you have to do with that? You need guidelines regardless whether it's open or closed because For whatever, for Worth worth, we're all adults, but most of us don't act like it. So you need to create safe space and an expectation of what is good for havior. Look, like, what is bad behavior? Look like I'm lucky, I haven't had to really do any of that. We have guidelines for have fans, but they're all lovely. So I've been very blessed. I haven't had to really do anything, but I've had two other communities. I've had to, with the marketing Twitter community group. There's been people who've had to be kicked out because they were doing all sorts of things that they shouldn't be doing in there that were against the rules, I think? It really depends as to why your gating if you're gating for information, people know that we have been in this age for quite some time for decades. Now, I know why I'm giving you my email address, I know what's going to happen because I give you my email address in order to access something whether it's a pay wall, whether it's gated content, whether it's Community, there is an exchange and so that's great. Assuming that what's going to be on the other side of that access. It's Worth me giving my email address. It also does remove people from that. So what you're getting is you're getting a smaller selection of people who are willing to go through whatever that hope is in order to get to the other side. And it can be monetary. It can be data-driven, it could be whatever. But what you're going to get is you're going to get the people who are willing to make that sacrifice. I find that like for Facebook groups that's more needed than anything else because that is the wild west. It shouldn't be, but it is the wild west over there. People love like there's a group for everything from like hate to baking products, like you'll find a group for absolutely everything. And so, you need to be more careful about those groups because they can get quite Rowdy quite easily. Especially if it's open when you have millions and millions of people who are Facebook users and anyone could find your group, be a part of it, it's you have, like, I would cheat if it was a Facebook group, which I wouldn't create. But if I did create a Facebook group, it would have to be a private group, because there has to be some sense of control, because their behavior, the behavior Norms of LinkedIn, say versus the behavioral Norms of Facebook or quite different just like the behavior in terms of Twitter are quite different. So the way you would act, if you were angry on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin will look very different, your goal might be the same, but the way that you exhibit and symptom eyes, that behavior is very different and so, It really depends on if you're going to be doing community on social channels, you have to be very, very keenly, aware of what behavioral Norms are there and be ready to essentially prepare for worst-case scenario and have those guidelines so that you like all right. Do we allow cussing in this group? Do we allow negative feedback to? We allow like what? What is good? Disagreements look like. I think that's the other thing that we have to think about from a community lens, no matter where it is. Is that we collectively as a society have forgotten, how to disagree. We love to argue, we don't know how to disagree, we want to immediately attack people who disagree with us and go on the offensive. And so that's not necessarily appropriate for every single disagreement. You can disagree with people politely and say, like, okay, well we don't see eye-to-eye here or I'm going to continue to give my my side of how I would see this argument, but I'm not going to be disrespectful. I'm not going to Be argumentative and tone. I'm just going to State how I feel about things and so I think that's something to keep in mind for Community, whether it lives on Facebook, whether it lives in a forum where no matter where that lives is, there is this this kind of lost art of disagreeing that we need to intubate that we need to hopefully, get back to nice. Yeah. It's um, I found an all sorts of groups that the the quality of the group also depends on the moderation because When you have rules for something, I think sometimes people like assume that you'll be really great group because, you know, it's been filtered quite thoroughly. But I find not necessarily because sometimes the moderator there, moderation just isn't there, or where there's, there's no, there are no people in charge of, like, breathing life back into it. If the conversation is dead for a week, you know what what's the protocol for bringing it? Back to life again. Yeah, that's partly why I haven't done my own kind of community. Even as like a client kind of thing is like it's that's a big, that's a big responsibility because I think what I will need to take moderation more seriously, because it is, as you say, like, things can get out of hand. People don't necessarily have like a personal decorum, for how to behave about whatever they disagree with or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a really good thing to remember for people, I think. I think you're saying that too, because there's an influx of people who are creating communities because they want to build a community. They may not be thinking about what it needs and what it works for. And then you also have growth hackers who are coming out here who will, who can't wait to tell you that they have 100,000 people in their Community. But that doesn't mean it's a healthy Community. It doesn't mean that those people are taking care of. It doesn't mean that those people are engaged or that people there. 

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Moderating. Very growth heavy Society. Where everything is about well how quickly did you grow it? And when you're so focused on growth, you kind of lose sight of all the weeds that you need to take care of and so that I completely agree. Moderation is incredibly helpful, but people lose sight of it because the Matic the that's the unsexy side. That's the that's the stuff that you just got to do. And a lot of people don't like to think about that they'd much rather be like see how big the community is be like, but is it healthy? Are you taking care of it? Are you? You taking care of those weeds and moderating it making sure people have what they need and giving them reasons to return. Or are you just counting the head? So that you can go on Twitter and Linkedin and do like a humble brag and do your post? I think that's also a big thing that we're seeing. I tend to turn off people who you want to tell me how quickly they grew something like they drew, their lease in following in like three months and I'm just like, I'm good. I'm out. I know, I don't care because your reason to be there in my reason to Be there or clearly very different because I don't collect people. That's not my job. That's not what I want to do. These are these are humans and I want to be there for them and give them something special but I'm not collecting them, they're not just a number to me so that I can do a post for engagement. And so I find that we need less of that mindset. Less of that. Let me show you how I growth hacked, this like less of that, please. Yeah. I feel like to get less of that to. A lot of people will need Better literacy on. What what is this? What what what signals quality? Well, see what signals that something is scalable or has already scaled. It's like the people who, you know, the companies that brag about how many people they on-boarded in a week or how many ebooks subscribers they got or whatever, is that doesn't mean those people are qualified, you know, prospects it doesn't really doesn't mean Anything and it's, it's very misleading to suggest like that, a vanity metrics suggests quality. I think that people really understand data. They'll see through that and good for them because like, you, they'll know that it's just not for me and move on, but I do think there's there's this. There's this tendency of a lot of companies to rely on people's ignorance about, you know, it's like, I think that's a huge problem in the influencer community. It's like, you should know, absolutely is Influencer because I have 30,000 followers at that, me doesn't mean anything. It really doesn't mean anything. It's like my example is always that, you know, you can probably make more money long term from someone who has like 20 followers on Twitter but like they're really well connected to their Community because they are real stake in that Community succeeding or the a real stake in the product. So they want to support you because it's just inherent to, you know, their business. Whatever the community is and people are shocked by that. That that, you know, the following doesn't doesn't really mean what I think it means I'm kind of Shifting that I'm the only education in my business. Like the education side of my business is like helping become people become more literate and understand understand what those signals are about. Ski about scaling about quality. Yeah, it kind of breaks my heart when I see or hear a horror story for 'Well, I don't know if you've seen on Twitter but there's a lot of SEO or stories of people share on Twitter. I keep hearing I keep hearing about like SEO drama over there. Yeah, I know like there's a lot there's examples of, you know, I hired this company because they said they get like 100 backlinks or something or they get a lot of traffic and then it turns out like, none of that traffic is qualified. It's just like Bots or yep. They don't under they don't know. How to read a scope of work to tell. If it's like a legitimate, you know. So you got people who are basically taking an automated SEO report and charging people like 10 grand for it. And I mean, like really basic, like what what, you know, images are slowing down your site and stuff like that that I could pull up now like 30 seconds and I wouldn't cost me a dollar and yeah it's like there's there's there's this really poor literacy. I think people have when they hire anyone for especially as And marketing, it's like the, the There are different from how things actually work and I see that too. In, you know, sales people are even companies that hire like a social media person. I actually just stop looking for jobs and social media because I found that everyone who is hiring, especially in sector said I was looking in and I even had interviews for they. There's this idea that you know, if you tweet about something, people will open the link and I buy something and that's it. And that's the expectation, a lot of people have. And so when they're building Thing for the wrong, expectations and charging for my expectations, you can't possibly make money for that and then be the social media person gets the blame for it and I just I'm not I'm not dealing with that but I think a lot of it just goes back to like what I was saying before a really really locking digital literacy. Just makes you a prime for scams and makes you prime for losing your time. If you're joining groups, like like, you're saying that are important are not screened. Properly are not moderate and properly. Yeah, it's like you don't have a literacy or don't waste your money at all that stuff, and then you're just gonna be so jaded that you're not, you're not, you're going to throw your hands up about it, do it. Do find people get really frustrated with technology and you know like for HubSpot for example and you know it helps that didn't exist, they would just you know, change sectors because it's just there's too much drama. They don't know they're being scammed or not and so much drama. Can I pause you for a second? My my laptop's about to die. Needed. I need to charge it wrong. Sorry we have must look like flipped it over. So I was at 4% and I didn't want it to die like time second. Yeah, exactly. I feel like all of us have had like, animal issues, especially since covid. I think I was recording with someone, or like, a meet up with someone or something. That was always one of those group things now, like they was like all these virtual events during covid and I think my dog like kept interrupting, oh no, I remember what it was. I did, I did I did a podcast video podcast for a company or someone or something and, like, through half of it, it's like, you can hear. It's like my dog whining, because he doesn't like it when I shut the doors animal drama. But to get back to your question. Yes, I definitely see that. I think that's why I have Spot Academy is so important because it does provide a free opportunity to have that kind of digital literacy. So you can learn about SEO or you learned about inbound marketing or sales and you can kind of see what the red flags are. So I find that that's very helpful and so that's been a really great opportunity for HubSpot to kind of come in from that educational lens to provide those supports. So people can spot scams and they're they're able to kind of flex that muscle so that They don't waste their time. That being said, I think that we also have to set a good example, we talk a lot about Community, but if you go in that spot community and you're not being taken care of, or you don't see any good value or you don't feel represented in there then we're not doing our job. And we need to be, we need to be doing that better. So I think it's very much like providing resources for people, so that they can have the literacy that they need in order to know what's working and what's not working and what's going to give value to them. But then additionally, we have to be a leader and And not just a thought leader who says things in a tweet, but we have to actually embody the, the content that were that were sharing that we, that we not only talk, the talk about, we walk the walk. And so, I think that that's, that's a Mainstay and what we do, nice I took the in, I think us the hot spots inbound. Marketing course, under four years ago, it is such a good course for anyone who's interested. I'm not just saying that because Christina is my house. Hi dog. We were literally shit. Okay, I think I think his ears burning you. I was talking about it. Yeah. It's a really, really, really great course. I can see how a course could help alleviate some of the risk of, you know, driving into something without fully understanding, you know, how not to get scammed or how to get value out of something. Or yeah, that's really exciting. And I think I think it's an, I think it's also an opportunity for not only for Business owners but also emerging I want to be able to find ways to be able to be into the sector because there are so many Brilliant Minds out there, but maybe they don't have the resources to go to college for marketing. And so, it's a really great way to kind of give them that entry into the space to learn. And see, is this really what I want to do without spending money on a course that I don't necessarily have and so it really removes those barriers which I think is highly important a lot of us think about like small business owners taking those courses and that's definitely it. Fantastic opportunity for them to learn especially if they don't have the capacity and their bootstrapping, so they don't have, they don't have the option to hire somebody. So, they're doing that work themselves. But there's also just a lot of great future Talent, who they're figuring out. If marketing or sales is right for them because they're taking classes at HubSpot Academy, and seeing does this click. Does this make sense to me, is something that I could become passionate about 

You're muted. 

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I'm not there should be like a little bubble or something that says when you're muted will pop up. Anyway. Yeah, I followed every like the conference, on the NBN conference on Twitter. Lots of companies were writing blog posts about like their their seminars in the conference or what they learn from other people or whatever. And he has all these Great Courses. And, you know, the whole reason I did this content and Community podcast is Because I love it basically, just way you described that, the people can figure out if something is right for them, they can they can vet it for themselves by seeing what's happening in a community. You know, dipping their feet in without making a full commitment without buying age together without, you know, throwing money at a course, if you're not even sure if it's the right fit for you, or I love the community and content can do that. It's really helpful, too. Help you figure out where you belong. Like, remember, was it you that I don't think it's you, someone else? I I use the analogy of, you know, that Blind Melon video with the Bumblebee. Yes, to me, I think that's like the perfect metaphor. It's like you need to be able to see a community in action and see them you know see how things really work before you really dive in spot.