Nik Conklin, Head of Content at :betr, on scaling content production as a small team

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Nik Conklin is the Head of Content at :betr, a media company with the mission to give people experiences that make them think, celebrate, embody and dream of a more positive world around them. Nik was previously the Senior Director of Creative Solutions at Clemson University. Brian Bosche and Nik go behind the scenes to talk about producing consistent content with a small team, creating content during a pandemic, building creative teams, and how to prioritize different types of content across channels.

Full Transcript:

Brian Bosche:
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the creativeBTS podcast. This is Brian Bosche, as always. Today, I am joined by Nik Conklin, Head of Content at :betr. Thank you so much for joining, Nik. What's up? How's it going?

Nik Conklin:
It's going well, man. Excited to be here.

Brian Bosche:
Starting off, we talked about this a little bit before the show, but you've had quite the journey to :betr as a media company going through athletics, and then, into actually producing content for athletics. Walk me through a little bit of your background.

Nik Conklin:
Absolutely. I'll take it way back. I'm originally from Northern Virginia. I took a soccer scholarship up to Long Island University in Brooklyn, New York. I got up there, and I said, "New York, the Wall Street. I want to get out. I want to make as much money as possible, as quickly as possible." I was like, "Let me do finite mathematics and economics." Worst classes I ever took.

Nik Conklin:
Then, I took a step back and I was like, "What do I really like to do? Well, I like to create." That one thing led to another. Finished up my playing career there, earned my Master of Arts in Video Production, and graduated in 2014, and got my first job out of college at Clemson. 10 days after I graduated, I was in the Upstate South Carolina, hitting the ground running and ready to go.

Brian Bosche:
I'm so glad to hear that you got those finance dreams out the door in college and not five to 10 years out. I went to Dartmouth. It seems like everyone goes into finance. Then, they're like, "It's been five years. What do I like to do now? I need to move on to something I'm passionate about."

Nik Conklin:
I've learned through my process and in speaking with a lot of students, actually, I taught a course at Clemson College of Business on filmmaking on video production, a lot of them don't have it figured out. A lot of students don't have it figured out. College is a pivotal time to work on that, obviously, to try things out, to take classes, to really learn what you love to do. I don't know now if students aren't doing that to the nth degree that they should be. Right now is a very incredible time to be a college student. Probably, a very nerve-wracking and, admittedly, [crosstalk 00:02:16] one.

Brian Bosche:
I'm glad I'm not anymore. This would [crosstalk 00:02:17] student.

Nik Conklin:
Exactly. No, 100%. I spoke to a class a few weeks ago. I told them that, like, "You have to try this stuff. You have got to figure out what it is that you like to do, what don't you like to do." Figuring out what you don't like to do is still a victory, by the way. I think college is such a pivotal time for that. But, yes, thank goodness, I got it out of the way. Wall Street was not for me. The creative avenue was definitely where I needed to be.

Brian Bosche:
Take us through your time at Clemson. We talked about this. You had quite the progression from, at least, the team's success. Then, as a position yourself.

Nik Conklin:
Yeah, 100%. I started out as the Coordinator of Digital Content, working within our communications team. Shout out to [Jonathan Gan 00:03:06] and [Jeff Cohen 00:03:07], who were kind of two of my bandmates my entire time there. They're very good friends. I miss them dearly, having since moved back to Richmond, Virginia. When I got down there in my first football season, we made it to the Russell Athletic Bowl. Then, the very next year, we're in Phoenix playing for a national championship against Alabama.

Nik Conklin:
It's crazy to think about how quickly the football program was obviously having the success that they were having. Also, as a creative team, internally, within communications, within the athletic department, we, too, had to develop very quickly. We had to adapt. It was really cool to be able to be at the National Championship, be very bright-eyed and bushy-tailed about that experience.

Nik Conklin:
We kind of started in athletic communications. Our role as the creative team, we kind of looked at ourselves as like the in-house advertising agency. If I'm drawing the diagram in my mind, we're at the center here, the creative team is at the center. Around us are the advertising account reps. Those are our communications contacts who are working with the different sports teams. They would have a story or they would have an idea from their team, the program that they worked with.

Nik Conklin:
They would, then, bring that back to us, bring that back to the creative team and say, "Hey, I need help executing on this thing." That's when we would have brainstorming sessions, ideation meetings. We meet with staffs and coaches and student athletes to help develop whatever the concept was to tell the story. Sometimes, it's videos. Sometimes, that's graphics. Sometimes, that's photoshoot. We would kind of execute that way.

Nik Conklin:
As the programs around us started to build, our team started to grow. Consistency really took hold. It wasn't just about this one team. It was, well, the brand that we were working with at Clemson. If we're creating a dynamic piece of content for Clemson football, you better believe that that's going to resonate with the soccer player out west, the baseball player in the southeast. That stuff matters.

Nik Conklin:
We continue to grow until, I think, was the summer of 2018, where we officially branched off. Thanks to buy-in from our senior administration, Tim Match, Graham Neff, Dan Radakovich, to be creative solutions, which was awesome. I'm forever grateful for my time there at Clemson, what I was able to experience. I left as the Senior Director of Creative Solutions. Over that five-year period, not only did our department grow, I certainly grew professionally, creatively as well. It was incredible.

Brian Bosche:
What does creative solutions mean, specifically? There's Creative Services. There's Marketing Shared Services. There's all these different department names. What is creative solutions, specifically?

Nik Conklin:
It's a great question. That was kind of part of the original discussions. Jonathan would kind of tell us that we obviously tried to help, "help" is a very strong word, we tried to aid in approaches to solve situations. We wanted to be creative solutions because the solution could be any number of things. If somebody came to us with an idea, we weren't necessarily just going to be a straight service to that approach.

Nik Conklin:
It's very much like you bring it to us. We take time to look at this mathematical creative equation and say, "Here's what you need to do." It's more of a solution and less of kind of a transactional black-and-white kind of-

Brian Bosche:
We need this graphic. Here's the graphic. Okay, thanks.

Nik Conklin:
Exactly, exactly. Somebody could come to us and say, "Hey, I need this graphic." Then, we take the request. We look at it, and we're like, "You know what? You really don't need is this graphic. You need X, Y, and Z."

Brian Bosche:
Wow. That's-

Nik Conklin:
Go on.

Brian Bosche:
I was going to say that's an incredible step that I have not heard before, where it's the next evolution of creative services, is solutions, where you're not just executing on what random people are asking you through briefs and requests. You're actually strategizing with them and taking a step back and telling them what to do, which is a lot different than most creative services teams I work with.

Nik Conklin:
100%, and a lot of the priority. If I'll boil it down to anything, it's relationships. We couldn't do that from the jump. You can't tell people what they're telling us they think they want.

Brian Bosche:
Just give me the graphics. Don't argue with me.

Nik Conklin:
Exactly. Don't get me wrong. There were times where we kind of executed with that approach. But, we spent time developing relationships, building relationships with our staff, with our coaches, with our administrators and student athletes. They really relied on the relationship that we have with them. They relied on our expertise. We would be able to go back to them.

Nik Conklin:
It wasn't so like, "I know this is what you asked for, but this is really what you need. It's approach. I hear you 100%. We're internalizing that. Well, here's the plan. Here's how we're going to execute. If you wanted a graphic, we're not necessarily going to deliver on this particular graphic. We're going to deliver it with a photoshoot. Maybe, do some video components." It was like a full-on approach to what is going to be the best solution for this program and for this team, for the department. It was a massive evolution that took a lot of time.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. You're also kind of the brainstem for the rest of the departments. A lot of them don't know what each of the other teams or departments are doing, so if you see some areas where, corporate speak, you find synergies between different campaigns or requests that are coming out and say, "Hey, maybe we can attach that on here," you have a little bit higher level view of everything going on in the organization.

Nik Conklin:
100%. It seems like such a basic concept. Communication is absolutely imperative. We would work very closely with our marketing department. We would work very closely with our communications department. We wanted to have a seat at the table if there were pregame hurdles, or preseason meetings. We wanted to ensure that the coach knew who we were. We wanted to ensure that these different department heads knew how we operated, what we were there to do.

Nik Conklin:
Again, it all it goes back to communication. It was building relationships. It was ensuring that, not only were we delivering a product, but we were delivering a good, solid, comprehensive product. Again, there were times where something might be a little bit more straightforward. We took the time and gave a certain thing the attention that it needed to ensure that we were putting our best foot forward, which, in turn, was that program or the department's best foot forward.

Brian Bosche:
That makes a lot of sense. Really unique, I think that, if you're listening, and you're on a marketing or creative team, or working in an agency in-house media, that's a huge next step for in-house teams that I haven't really heard before, where you gain that trust and do that. That's a great tip already.

Brian Bosche:
To transition, you have your Director of Creative Solutions and you see this opportunity come up at :betr, a media company. First, can you give us the quick pitch on :betr. Then, what kind of prompted you to actually move to the organization?

Nik Conklin:
I'll kind of read verbatim our mission statement. It's to give people experiences that make them think, celebrate, embody, and dream of a more positive world around them. I'll get back to that in a minute. I think, speaking personally and very openly, my life had kind of gone in a specific direction, where my wife was pregnant with our second child, our daughter Ruby. We had our son, Reese.

Nik Conklin:
I know, I'm kind of speaking to the audience that probably knows exactly where I'm going. Obviously, athletics is a very, very time-intensive, calendar and schedule. I, personally, not my wife, had gone back to Virginia, which is where we're originally from a handful of times more than a handful of times, and then, taking my son up for holidays and stuff. I wasn't able to make those trips. I wasn't able to commit.

Nik Conklin:
I, by no means, want this to sound like I'm ungrateful for the opportunities that I had at Clemson. That is not the case at all. I wouldn't take any of it back. I wouldn't change any of it. I think my wife and I had kind of reached a point where it was like, "Hey, let's kind of look at what the next opportunity is." This one kind of came about a former colleague, or, maybe, Twitter acquaintance. I know a lot of people are Twitter acquaintances.

Brian Bosche:
Yes, we are. We're Twitter acquaintances.

Nik Conklin:
[crosstalk 00:12:25]. He reached out and kind of pitched me on this company, :betr. Really, it started for me in a freelance capacity. I was going to do some freelance work for them. We kind of continued the discussion. I really gravitated towards the mission. I gravitated towards what they were about. Things just kind of manifested over time and really developed, where they wanted me to move to the northeast. I said, "I can't do that. If I'm going to commit to this company, I'm going to dive in and I'm going to be there, but I need to move back to Virginia to be closer to family." They said, "You can do that."

Brian Bosche:
Let's do it.

Nik Conklin:
Yeah. "But, you have to commit to traveling. You have to commit to coming to the northeast pretty frequently." I was like, "I can do that. I can do that." Then, go figure, I start in January.

Brian Bosche:
Before the pandemic.

Nik Conklin:
I'm thinking of myself. I think all the time. Could you imagine if I moved up to New York or Boston and then the pandemic hits?

Brian Bosche:
You still can't work in the office? There's no reason?

Nik Conklin:
[crosstalk 00:13:45] I might do. Here I am, thanking my lucky stars that :betr was as accommodating as they were. I'm able to live and be around family back home in Virginia. It's a beautiful thing.

Brian Bosche:
I don't think there's a better time in the world right now for the type of content :betr produces. Looking through the different stories you're telling, dealing with anxiety, dealing with Zoom burnout, dealing with all of these different things that have just been, I don't know, 100x during the pandemic, with everyone locked down and a lot of people losing their jobs and struggling. As you're producing this content, tell us about some of the stories you're telling and kind of where you see your sweet spot at :betr right now, in terms of what type of content you're producing.

Nik Conklin:
Man, it's been such an evolution. Like I told you pretty early on, I think there's a commonality across startups that, whether the content or the mission is the exact same doesn't necessarily matter. The fact that you're building a very small company with a very small number of people to try and build it and grow it into something special. There's something to be said about like a throughline between all these different companies. They're working very hard to kind of, not necessarily keep their head above water to kind of rise to the top, to say, "Hey, we're somebody that needs to be taken seriously."

Nik Conklin:
I very much and wholeheartedly believe that that's us at :betr. That's what we're working towards building, is to stand out for people to be an outlet, so to speak. The content that we create, we really want to talk with people. I think, we're living in a situation right now where people are probably bogged down, saying, "It's information overload. It's resource overload." People don't know which place to look, which angle to look at. We really just kind of want to be an outlet. I don't want to talk down to you. I don't necessarily want to talk to you. I want to talk with you. That's kind of what we're building a little bit at :betr.

Nik Conklin:
As I think back to a pretty awesome story that we told early on, a lot has changed. A lot has kind of ebbed and flowed over the last, I think, what, seven, eight months for the company. Pretty early on in the pandemic, we were able to link up with Jeremy Cohen, who is a photographer out of Brooklyn. Jeremy, he was already a very successful concert and lifestyle portrait photographer. He had gone viral for his series on TikTok called, Quarantine Cutie.

Brian Bosche:
I remember those.

Nik Conklin:
Shout out to Jeremy if he's listening. I don't know if you and Tori have fallen in love, officially, but it sure seemed like it through the videos that he was making. We reached out to him. Jeremy had had a lot of success, basically, from his virality. He kind of had been struggling with it and feeling kind of uncomfortable about, "A lot of people are struggling during this pandemic. Here I am experiencing a level of success. What do I do with it?"

Nik Conklin:
Well, he ended up donating or helping raise money for some prints that he did for his rooftop series during quarantine. He was on the cover of New York Magazine, and worked with a company called Darkroom to send or to donate the proceeds of some portrait sales or some picture sales to nonprofit, which was a really cool thing. This was somebody who, despite having this viral success, really wanted to administer it back to the community.

Nik Conklin:
That was a really, really awesome early story for us. The relationship has continued to develop where Jeremy just got done doing another brief project for us. Where we were when we told that Jeremy Cohen story is very much a different place than where we're at now, kind of how we're developing content at this point in time. When I say that a lot has changed and a lot has transpired since the beginning of the pandemic and since I've been with this company, I can confidently say more has changed and more has shifted in the last seven months with this company than my entire five and a half years at Clemson.

Brian Bosche:
The world is changing very quickly right now, especially startups are changing anyway, you constantly have to adapt and evolve. How have you gone about prioritizing the specific pieces of content? I guess, how have you prioritized what to try out? What's your strategy behind, "This type of content is working well. This isn't?" How does it evolve over time? Do you have some sort of a framework you use? How are you going about these changes?

Nik Conklin:
It's an interesting question. I think, to borrow a part of what was an element of the success that we had at Clemson is we always prepared to react. We always prepared to react to a loss, to a win. Whatever the situation was, whatever the outcome was going to be, we wanted to ensure that we were doing our best to make sure that we were prepared for whatever [crosstalk 00:19:17].

Brian Bosche:
I get it. I like the to prepared to react. I think a lot more-

Nik Conklin:
Not prepared to react.

Brian Bosche:
... marketing creative teams need to adopt that.

Nik Conklin:
You can be as proactive as you can be. You can prep, you can prep, you can prep. But, you also have to have this mindset that there's a lot of stuff where you're going to have to react. If you don't have an element of preparedness in order to be reactionary, then, I think you're going to fall short. There's an element of that with what we're doing at :betr.

Nik Conklin:
To give it to you cut and dry, we don't want to just talk about social justice issues as a result of George Floyd's murder. This is something that we want to do and carry on 365 days a year. Same thing with LGBTQ. Same thing with anxiety and depression. These are things that, whether you're a part of a marginalized community or whether you're just somebody that's struggling with it day in and day out, we have to continue to carry and have these conversations 365 days a year.

Nik Conklin:
There are certain things that are very topical for us. For example, the election that's coming up in November 3rd. We remain very politically agnostic, but we also want to ensure that people exercise their right and that they're staying informed and that their voice can be heard by voting. I would say, another big moment for us right now is entering another school year. I know we're about two months into it now, maybe, a month and a half of high school and college students have returned to a new normal of having to just do online school. I know that's not all colleges. I know that's not all high schools, but there is a significant amount of the population that is sitting in their bedroom on Zoom classes.

Nik Conklin:
What are the mental health pitfalls of not having the social interaction of being around your friends, seeing them in between classes, or being in classes with them. That's something that's serious. There's a lot of pretty dire statistics out there. We're trying to address these things and say, "Here are some resources for you. Here are some outlets. Let's keep the conversation going, again, 365 days a year, just to make sure that we don't fall off from discussing these things, and that they remain very top of mind."

Brian Bosche:
You've organized that on :betr with these different series with these different formats. You've organized things in kind of the bite sized things. You have the different topics that you decide on. What's the thought process behind establishing those type of consistent series so that you can have that constant flow of content through them, and deciding what's going to be our longer form, shorter form, medium form? What topics are we going to put in the headline of our website that we're going to focus on? How do you decide on those? I think it's hard for any marketing team to say, "Alright, we're going to stick with these three content series. We're going to go forward with them."

Nik Conklin:
We've got four brand pillars, which are identity, humanity, wellness, and the feels. Every type of piece of content, without diving into what each of those means, we want them to fall in those buckets.

Brian Bosche:
It's like a guiding principle.

Nik Conklin:
Yeah, exactly.

Brian Bosche:
It needs to fit into one of these. At least, we have that at the high level strategy.

Nik Conklin:
100%. I'm looking, again, to borrow from my experience at Clemson, it was identifying our target audience, which was recruits. It could fall into these four buckets of current student athletes, prospective student athletes, which was recruits, current Clemson fans, or prospective Clemson fans, not necessarily prospective Clemson fans, but, basically, we wanted Clemson to be your second favorite team if it wasn't your first. Those are the buckets that we could create within.

Nik Conklin:
We found that, if we hit the nail on the head with recruits, that it resonated much more deeply with the other three target audiences. Borrowing that again with what we're creating at :betr, it needs to fall into one of those buckets. Unlike recruiting, in football, there isn't one of these buckets that hits a little bit harder than the other. Consistency matters. You asked the question pretty early on about kind of how we go about having such a small team, creating the content that we create. I like to say that we fight above our weight class a little bit.

Brian Bosche:
Seriously?

Nik Conklin:
Yeah.

Brian Bosche:
You don't have very many people.

Nik Conklin:
We don't. Again, we fight above our weight class. You have to approach these very holistic. Going back to the Jeremy Cohen interview that we did, I wasn't the only person on that call to interview Jeremy Cohen. Our lead writer, Caitlyn Hitt, was on it as well. That's just a level of communication. If we've got a dozen employees, then I want to make sure that the people that need to know what's happening know what's happening. It doesn't hurt to copy somebody on an email. If we bring these ideas to fruition, I want to make sure that we're looking at the list from point A to point B, point C, and saying, "If it's this deliverable, do we need written? Do we need graphics? Do we need this? What do we need for social?" That's an element, again, to use the phrase, I'm going to repeat myself a lot on here [crosstalk 00:24:52].

Brian Bosche:
That's okay. We need to hear things to learn.

Nik Conklin:
Exactly.

Brian Bosche:
It's repetition.

Nik Conklin:
Fighting above our weight class. It's not enough to say, "Well, we only have two video people on staff, so we have to be short-changed on what we can do for social and what we can do for longer form content. Maybe, a series that's built for YouTube. Let's have an idea. Let's approach that idea and say, 'This is who needs to be looped in. Let's dissect it. Then, we'll execute.'" It's a lot. I probably got off-topic a little bit there.

Brian Bosche:
No, that's great. For the actual team building, because a lot of marketing team's, "We're building a new team. Who do we need to bring on? What are some of the core skillsets we need?" What is your team composed of? Alternatively, what would you recommend if someone's trying to build out their content team? Is there a balance of, "Alright, we need one copywriter, or, maybe, we contract a copywriter out? Do we need a video person in-house, or can we contract?" What's kind of do you think an ideal team to build around these different creative skillsets?

Nik Conklin:
Well, I'll tell you, it's probably changed. I can confidently say it has changed, especially since the pandemic's hit. What we would be doing is we would be out capturing this stuff. We would be out capturing this content. In-house, you'd be traveling to these locations. We didn't shoot on location with Jeremy Cohen. We didn't shoot on location with fine art photographer, [Rob Woodcocks 00:26:14]. We're not shooting with these people. We have to find a way to facilitate that during a pandemic.

Nik Conklin:
What I have learned to appreciate is we've had to contract people out remotely to ensure that they're willing to do the work safely, efficiently, obviously. We vet the process very thoroughly to make sure that they're creators that are about the right thing, producers that are about the right thing. I have learned to appreciate animation and motion graphics more than I probably valued it before pandemic. When there are limitations on how we can capture, how do we get creative within those limitations? The sandbox was this before pandemic. I know this is a podcast. My hands are very wide.

Brian Bosche:
It's going on YouTube, too. The YouTuber is going to say it?

Nik Conklin:
Oh, good. Good, good, good. That sandbox has now shrunk to this. The challenge is who do we need to contract out to shoot x in the Pacific Northwest or in the Southeast United States? Who do we have in team that can take the things that are being shot and execute visually on where we might be limited in travel? My opinion pre-pandemic would have said, video producer, designer in-house, obviously, to help facilitate and hone in on brand guidelines and execution. Cait is our lead writer. It's great to have kind of the editorial approach in-house. We're also facilitating a lot of freelance work. Again, very small, scrappy team.

Brian Bosche:
It's good that that one person that can control the voice and be the editor. You're right.

Nik Conklin:
Exactly. There's so many layers to this onion, man, I'm telling you. We were in an office in Boston. I traveled up to Boston every so often at the end of January in February, and was going to be doing that very consistently. This pandemic hit, so I'm not doing that anymore. We're all working remotely. What you have to do now is rely on people to do their jobs and to own their space, more than they would have, which was already very high pre-pandemic.

Nik Conklin:
But, now, it's like, "I know you're working from home." We got to be sensitive to everybody's circumstances. I got two kids. There's other people on staff that have kids. It's a challenge to try and make it work. The structure of the team right now to make sure that everybody's on the same page, and that everybody is accepting the challenges and accepting their roles and executing on the roles as finely as they can.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, it's tougher than ever. You're right. I like the idea of, alright, we're more constrained now. Post production is more important than ever, having the consistent look and feel and brand of the post production effort if you're just capturing stuff on Zoom or relying on freelancers. We started out as a video production company, actually. We used a lot of video producer contractors. Or, we had our clients shoot themselves, which was always a nightmare.

Brian Bosche:
We would work with Spartan Race or some race company and give them a GoPro. They just filmed the sky for three hours. You get that back and you're like, "What are we going to do with this?" You're right there. Putting the finishing touches on almost user-generated content or contracted out content becomes so important. You're kind of the moderation layer.

Nik Conklin:
Well, Brian, yes, exactly. To put a cap on what you're saying, it's like, we're struggling with that to refine what our aesthetic is.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. It's hard.

Nik Conklin:
As a media company, as different brands or advertisers are like, "What can you guys do? What can :betr do?" It's been very difficult. It's been a massive challenge to say, "This is our staff. This is how our stuff can look." When I say before that the vetting process is x. It's to the nth degree to make sure that we bring somebody in that understands our mission, that understands what we're about, but that can also execute on that vision.

Nik Conklin:
A lot of that comes from creative direction. A lot of that comes from ideation and brainstorming. A lot of creatives, you can either give them a blank canvas, and they can go out and they can execute to perfection. Shout-out to Max Huggins. I'm going to give Max a shout out because Max is now working with a Fresh Tape Media, but he was one of my students at Clemson. I could always count on Max, just like, "Get the shot." He needed a little bit of direction, but he can do it.

Nik Conklin:
Then, there's other creative that, again, I mentioned sandbox. It has to be here. Direction and parameters have to be specific, where there's no margin for movement, which is okay. It's okay. That's all a part of the creative process. That's all a part of, how do you execute, what kind of direction and guidance do you need?

Nik Conklin:
Well, during this pandemic, it's been very difficult, again, to establish that aesthetic, because we've had to have, "I can't be with you on set," or, "I can't be there on site," to, one, either, do it myself to execute on my own vision, so I have to find a way to relay it and to communicate it to you, to, you go out and do it. Then, I hope, fingers crossed, when you send me the hard drive or you send us the work, that it's what we needed. I would say the same thing goes for our team, internally. We can't walk down the hallway and have whiteboard sessions. I missed that. It's the small things. I miss having an office. I miss just checking up on somebody, because that can be the difference between they get the idea or they don't.

Brian Bosche:
I think that's a really good insight and learning for other teams in a pandemic, where it feels like when you're in-person, you can almost have shortcuts. You don't really need to scale past yourself. You can go on site. You can have your hands on every single thing that's being created. And, it can stay consistent. When you're in a pandemic, when you have to do things remotely, when you have to scale out to contractors, you need to do the work upfront just to really set down what your brand is, what your voice is. Then, create content where that scales and other people know just by accessing the resources or the brief or seeing those reference materials.

Brian Bosche:
Otherwise, you're right, you can't create that consistent flow. We just had our huge annual event at Smartsheet. There's a ton of content you have to produce for an event. A lot of people are doing this virtually now for the first time, and trying to figure out, "How do we have our brands look and feel be transferred to this event experience using contractors and agencies, maybe we haven't worked before, because we have to do a online learning session instead of an actual in-person event production?" Yeah, that's a really good insight that I hadn't quite realized, is you have to nail your brand and voice and communicate that better than ever before.

Nik Conklin:
100%. I have to kind of analyze myself a little bit, as this is my professional reality now.

Brian Bosche:
Who knows when it's over?

Nik Conklin:
I know, exactly. Who knows when it's over?

Brian Bosche:
It's going to be the new reality.

Nik Conklin:
I know. I used to walk down the hallways and I say "hey" to people. I'm a very outgoing individual. I was just checking in, "Good morning," and all this stuff. I've learned a lot about myself in the process. I'm allowed to be kind of introspective here a little bit. There's the Xs and Os of how this stuff needs to be executed on. Nik Conklin, the professional five and a half years ago is very much different than Nik Conklin, the father of two working from home. Our baby, Ruby, sometimes, she's knocking on my glass here. Sometimes, I have to kick myself to say, "Okay, I have to take care of myself before I can help take care of the team," or, that the team can work together. I can contribute productively just because this is the reality.

Nik Conklin:
This is the [crosstalk 00:34:49]. It's a challenge. Again, just being introspective for a bit. It's like take a break on yourself, because this is something new that a lot of people are dealing with and have been dealing with for, since, I guess, late winter or early spring. It's a new normal for a lot of people to understand how production gets facilitated, how content gets created, and how consistency gets executed upon. It's all out the window. I'm learning right now, too.

Brian Bosche:
On that, what are some things that you found for the creative collaboration? You mentioned, it's frustrating not being able to whiteboard or stop by people's desks. I feel the same. It's a lot harder to collaborate on ideas and brainstorm. Have you found anything, like weekly trivia with the team? I don't know if you're using Miro for collaborative whiteboard sessions? What are some ways you found in the last seven months to collaborate creatively remotely?

Nik Conklin:
Man, I wish I had a really good answer. I don't. We're in the process of still revamping and finding what that is. Unfortunately, this sounds so lame, but there are Zoom meetings. I am massive proponent on efficiency. Every meeting I schedule, I will put on my calendar, I purposely keep it to 30 minutes, because I'm like, "I have to get the information." If I could keep it to 15, I would. "I have to get the information to you in this amount of time." If there is a situation where there's an elevated level of brainstorming, obviously, we'll allow for more time.

Nik Conklin:
I was speaking with Gina Uttaro, who's our Head of Marketing. She's great. Spent a lot of time in advertising agency. She and I were talking this morning about, we're doing this kind of this content idea for World Mental Health Day, excuse me, on October 10th. I said, the idea really isn't coming to fruition based on the first iteration of designs that we got. I said, Man, "Gina, I really wish we were in Boston, and we could walk down the hallway, and everybody could just sit on the beanbag chairs and talk through this stuff." That's me subconsciously telling myself, "I have to find a solution for this, because that's not happening anytime soon."

Nik Conklin:
What does it take right now? It takes over-communication. I don't want to brief a project in, I don't want to put a project up, communicate via Slack or email to say, "This is what it is. Can we execute upon this?" I'm not doing enough if I don't put the legwork in to say, "Hey, I haven't spoken to you in a while." Whether it's [Julian 00:37:41], our illustrator, [Brittany 00:37:43], our designer, Dan, our video producer, that one-on-one communication goes a long way, especially, without having an appropriate solution for us to accurately execute upon right now, which we don't. We're working on that. Shout-outs to Jon Willey, who's our VP of Content Strategy. I know that's something that he's a big proponent on.

Nik Conklin:
The small things go a long way, whether it's having taken a 330 coffee break and everybody just kind of hops on Zoom and kind of talks through some stuff and shoots the breeze. That may jumpstart what we need, but we haven't perfected it yet. If I'm being honest, we're working towards it.

Brian Bosche:
I think it's hard for everyone. We've tried Miro boards, which is the online collaborative whiteboards, which is fine. The Zoom calls is fine. It's almost better if I just walk and talk on the phone because you're getting a little bit. You're seeing new space, not just trapped in your apartment or house in your room, which is just so creatively confining and frustrating, where it's just, "I have eight Zoom calls today." I can't be creative if I'm just looking a little window all day. It's so hard. I think we're all adapting. I think we're going to see a lot of, maybe, new technology that comes out that makes it a little bit easier.

Nik Conklin:
100%. I strongly considered taking this call on my headphones, so that I could step outside and just-

Brian Bosche:
Go for a walk, yeah.

Nik Conklin:
Yeah, it's beautiful weather outside. It'd be very refreshing and I might come up with a better solution. That stuff is important. It's so easy to lose sight of get out of the four walls that you're confined to.

Brian Bosche:
Trapped. You're trapped.

Nik Conklin:
Exactly.

Brian Bosche:
I get so cabined. I just like, "It's awful."

Nik Conklin:
I know. They seem like they're closing in more and more each day, which is a song lyric I think, these four walls closing more and more each days. I don't remember what song it is. I think you have to step outside. I'll get an idea. We have leadership calls every Tuesday. Sometimes, I just go and sit outside. That allows me some level of thought that I wouldn't get if I was just stuck inside. That is important. That's an important piece of working from home, is really maximize what you do have around you. You got to find a way to escape a little bit.

Brian Bosche:
Again, you're the Head of Content. Kind of overseeing all the content that's produced, how do you go about understanding the analytics behind it? What's performing well? What you prioritize? What are some of the things that you put in place to help you measure, really, what matters and what moves the needle for :betr? I think a lot of companies are trying to figure out better ways to find the ROI of content in general. What are some ways you found at :betr to do this?

Nik Conklin:
We work incredibly close with our marketing team. That's Gina Uttaro and Stephanie Stoops, who's on our social team. We work very close with him. Sorry. We work very close with them to look at the analytics of the content. To be totally frank and honest, if something is not working, we have to reroute. We reroute. If it's not performing well, or it's just not resonating, sometimes, we've experienced content fatigue, our audiences experienced content fatigue, we use our social meetings on Thursday, where Stephanie kind of delivers an update on how our audience is feeling.

Nik Conklin:
If there's a general consensus that the audience is feeling down, we take that back internally and look at the calendar and say, "Well, how can we create content that isn't going to add to the feelings or the emotions or the tone that our audience is currently experiencing?" We don't want to overdo it. We don't want to cause them any level of fatigue. We really want to be a resource and outlet that they can enjoy and that they're going to get behind. They're not going to get behind us if we're hitting them over the head with something that, one, they don't enjoy, but, two, they're seeing too often or too frequently.

Nik Conklin:
A lot of our social content has gone through a pretty significant amount of iterations since I began. That's good. I think it's important for me to certainly learn what is successful, what is a failure, acknowledge those failures, and either scrap it. If I'm looking at the waste bin in my mind, there's a lot of balled up paper just overflowing from it. That's what it is. There's a lot of that that happens. There's a lot of ideas that are thrown at the wall, that we have executed on, that have never seen the light of day. There are still some ideas that we're trying to tease out and say, "Is there an influencer career that we can get in front of this? Is it this something that we need to do as a team internally?"

Nik Conklin:
We're constantly, constantly looking at the analytics. We're making a very significant push to get a few series up that are going to live exclusively on YouTube, which is a very heavy lift with a very small team. Again, pointing back to fighting above our weight class, we want to ensure that watch times are good and that retention rates are good, and it's not signing up to do a nine-episode series, it's signing up to do three, because that works.

Brian Bosche:
Iterate on it.

Nik Conklin:
Exactly. Say like, "Whoever the host is, or whatever the content is, this is where we need to tweak it. This is where they're dropping off. This is where it's not going right?" And evolve. We have to evolve. When I say a lot has changed in the window of time that I've been with :betr more than what it did at Clemson. That's part of it. Part of it is bobbing and weaving and rolling with a lot of the punches that are thrown our way as a small startup. At Clemson, in 2014, I could tell you pretty much, maybe, 90% what my yearly calendar was going to look like in 2020. Now, I was [crosstalk 00:44:26].

Brian Bosche:
It's established.

Nik Conklin:
Exactly. Very much established. Its regimen [crosstalk 00:44:30].

Brian Bosche:
That's a playbook for college.

Nik Conklin:
With :betr, as a startup, some days are good, some days are not as good, and some weeks are great, some weeks I kind of struggled a little bit. In between making these iterations for content and relying on the analytics to kind of give us updates and numbers and say, "This is resonating with the audience. This is their tone." Outside of that is also the personal ebb and flow of trying to continue to go upward, while knowing with myself, I can't. No human operates in the straight line of emotion being like, "We're going to get it." It's got to be here. I got to cut myself some slacks sometimes, because there have been things that haven't worked out.

Brian Bosche:
It's so hard. How do you measure that sentiment from the community? Community is such a big part of media companies. Where are they getting that data from? Is it just watch rates? Is it responses on Instagram? Where do they get that assessment from?

Nik Conklin:
Right now, our largest audience is our Instagram audience.

Brian Bosche:
That's huge, by the way, over 100,000, right?

Nik Conklin:
Correct. Our TikTok, I think, is our fastest growing platform, or fastest growing platform but second largest audience outside of Instagram. A lot of it's just feedback. A lot of it's just whether it's in the comments, or whether it's DMs, or people respond to the stories. Our social team and our marketing team, they do a great job of sending weekly recaps on how the stuffs are performing. We had a meeting last week where I said, "It'd be a really cool addition to this is if we have some community feedback in the report." I remember that was a huge, again, not to harp on Clemson too much. I don't want to sound like I keep bouncing back to that. It's obviously a very fresh experience. It was January that I left.

Brian Bosche:
Just almost six years, yeah, totally makes sense.

Nik Conklin:
Exactly. Coach Swinney still has us all in meetings every summer. Jonathan would go speak kind of on our department's behalf. He would always share the deck of what he was going to show to the coaches. The coaches might not necessarily know the engagement rates and the impressions and the arrangement of the stuff. If it has an MIL after it, that's a big deal. This amount of people saw it. The things that really resonated were if the recruits were talking about the content, how's the highlights? [crosstalk 00:47:09]. They picked it up. That was something we kind of shared internally with :betr, that it would be really good. You don't want to get too bogged down in the comments, because there are people that kind of leave some nasty stuff.

Brian Bosche:
Especially in college athletics.

Nik Conklin:
[crosstalk 00:47:26].

Brian Bosche:
Company better at :betr.

Nik Conklin:
100%. That was something that I mentioned, I was like, "Let's kind of throw some of that stuff in there." It's a good morale boost, just to say, "This really helped. It get me through the day. This is just what I needed." With our content, in particular, at :betr, people really may be going through it. If they're willing to open up and share, "This helped. This is what I needed. This helped get me through the day. This helped change my outlook or change how I was feeling about this," that stuff goes a very, very long way. Again, our marketing team is on top of it in order to communicate that to us, communicate that to the staff company-wide so that everybody's on the same page.

Brian Bosche:
That's great. To close this out, Nik, I do this on every creativeBTS pod. I'll give you the question. It's a parting shot. It's your one piece of advice for marketing creative team. I'll give you a little time to mull that over. On creativeBTS, it's supposed to go a little bit more behind the scenes on how you operate and the insights you can give from your specific industry to other marketing creative teams, even in other departments, other industries, entirely.

Brian Bosche:
Nik, what is your parting shot? What would you like to leave the audience with? Other than just be kind to yourself, which I think has been a great through-line. Just be kind to yourself. I think that's a great one, but any others you'd like to leave us with?

Nik Conklin:
I pulled it up because I had a little note sheet. I make notes from here and there. It's, be vulnerable. In addition to that, there's entirely too much progress and growth to be gained from not holding back. That's for yourself. That's for the people that listen to you.

Brian Bosche:
There she is.

Nik Conklin:
Ruby making an appearance. I knew it was going to happen.

Brian Bosche:
Ruby is going to hit the window.

Nik Conklin:
Amen.

Brian Bosche:
Be kind to yourself. It's the new reality.

Nik Conklin:
Working from home.

Brian Bosche:
It's the new reality.

Nik Conklin:
Working from home. I think it's be vulnerable. It's okay to embrace your failures and to embrace your failures, not just for yourself, for your peers, for people that you collaborate with, for people that you frequently communicate. A lot of people are going through it, not just because of the pandemic. Certainly because of the pandemic. Do not get me wrong.

Nik Conklin:
I've had conversations with a lot of my former colleagues and acquaintances, just trying to have conversations with them and say, "Hey, is there anything that :betr can do?" There's some ideas that we were tossing around that never came to fruition. A lot of people during that time were sharing their experiences. It was really, really cool to see that community, in particular, just be open about how they were dealing and how they were being challenged, personally and professionally, because of the pandemic.

Nik Conklin:
That goes a long way. You don't know who's listening. You don't know who's watching. You don't know who's reading. If you share a little bit about your experience, I guarantee you that that will make an impact on somebody. People need to hear it. People need to hear that everybody's still figuring it out. You got to be vulnerable and you have to take a step back sometimes and just be honest with yourself.

Brian Bosche:
Well, thanks, Nik. I appreciate you coming on. I'll let you tend to Ruby there smashing on your door. Thank you so much for coming on.

Nik Conklin:
Thank you, Brian. I appreciate it, man. This is great.