Episode 60: Keri Maijala, LinkedIn - Building and leading a content practice at LinkedIn

Kristina Halvorson:

So I basically just read your bio and then we jump right into it.

Keri Maijala:

Okay. Sounds good.

Kristina Halvorson:

Then we'll just let it go. And we'll talk for about 35, 40 minutes. Is that okay?

Keri Maijala:

That sounds good. Got nothing else to do.

Kristina Halvorson:

Great. I should really check and see which season this is, so that I am telling people the appropriate season. Season seven. It's random. We just make up seasons. I just make them up, seriously. Rob's like, "Do you want to be done with this season?" I'm like, "I do.

Keri Maijala:

Sounds good.

Kristina Halvorson:

Friends and neighbors, welcome back to another season of the Content Strategy Podcast. It's me, Kristina.

This is season seven if you can believe it. So many seasons, so many lovely interviews, so many smart people and there are so many additional smart people ahead in this month's, year's season. I don't even know. I have to admit to you, we just make up the seasons. We were like, "Is it 10? Are there 10 episodes? Great. Is there 9? I don't have time to record a 10th." Anyway, we have decided that this is season seven starting now. You and I are both extraordinarily lucky because our guest today is truly, and I know I am often over-the-top talking about how extraordinary my guests are and how smart they are and how much they delight me, and it's true. I wouldn't invite them on if I didn't think this.

However, let me tell you that there is a very special place in my heart and in my world for today's guest, and it is Keri Maijala, and I'm going to introduce you to her. Keri Maijala leads the content design team at LinkedIn. She's been in the user experience space for more than 20 years, focusing on creating and organizing good, relevant content that uses human words for human people. Lately, she's been spending her professional time exploring how to best demonstrate the value of content design and what it means to be a leader. In her non-professional time, she can be found hanging out with her husband and bald Pomeranian in Santa Cruz, California, trying her best to figure out how to sneak roller skates into Disneyland. Keri, welcome to the Content Strategy Podcast.

Keri Maijala:

Hi, Kristina. It's so wonderful to be here.

Kristina Halvorson:

Finally.

Keri Maijala:

Finally. Season seven.

Kristina Halvorson:

So dumb that you haven't been here before. Every once in a while I'm just like, "I talk to this person all the time, and yet somehow it's never occurred to me to record our conversation." So here we are-

Keri Maijala:

It's fine.

Kristina Halvorson:

... recording today's conversation. I have said this several times, but the entire reason I started this podcast is that I was meeting so many incredibly interesting smart people who also cracked me up, and I was like, "Everybody should be able to hear this conversation." So how lucky that everybody's going to be able to listen to this one?

Keri Maijala:

So lucky.

Kristina Halvorson:

So lucky. Although I don't know, by the end of the podcast, they might be like, "I'm not sure lucky is the word I would've used. Let's revisit that." Keri, I always start off the podcast by asking my guests to share a little bit with our listening audience about their journey through the world of content strategy, and in your case content design, to where you are now. So I wonder if you could tell us about your winding yellow brick road.

Keri Maijala:

Oh my goodness. All right, so buckle up buttercup, we're going to go way back. So I was getting my English degree at the college I was going to not really knowing what I was going to do with it. Like, "I like writing, so let's do that." And I was working at an office at the college at the time. That's how I earned my degree, by working at the college. And I double-clicked on the, I think it was the Netscape icon on the work computer. And I'm like, "What's this? This is super interesting." And that's how I discovered the worldwide web and how you could do things to get on it. And so from then on, I figured that that might be a path for me. So I taught myself Photoshop and HTML, and ultimately became a web designer at a time where you just needed a little bit of talent to do that because everybody needed it and there were a few of us, and I had a little bit of talent so I made that work as a career for a while.

But as I moved on through my career, I found that first of all, there were much better designers than I was. And because I was a writer, by default, people kept asking me to actually write. They'd go like, "You're a writer. We need words for this homepage or whatever. Could you just whip some of that up for us?" So I was doing that. And then at the same time, because I was self-taught in a lot of this technology, I found I was really good at collecting complicated information and explaining it in a way that people that weren't a part of whatever I was explaining could understand it. So I became a client liaison, and then I discovered information architecture. I'm like, "Well, it's really important that I know how to organize this information." So I started doing that, and then I realized that what I was really good at was creating and organizing content. So I'm like, "There's got to be a job that does this, right?"

So I think it was 2006, must have been 2007, I decided I'm going to do that for a living. And I was looking for something called a Content Manager, because that was the terminology that was going around at the time. And this job popped up on eBay and it was called a Content Strategist, and they wanted somebody with an English degree. They wanted somebody that worked in the web space. They wanted somebody ideally with information architecture experience and client liaison experience. And I read that and I went, "There's a term for this. It's called a Content Strategist. That's what I am." So I applied to that job. And if I remember correctly, they offered me the job the same day. It was like, "Here you go." And that's how that got kicked off. I've been in the content space since 2007, and now I'm at LinkedIn. I moved from an IC role, independent contributor role to a management leadership role, and I lead a team of content designers at LinkedIn.

Kristina Halvorson:

Keri, you literally just skipped over 16 years of your career.

Keri Maijala:

I absolutely did.

Kristina Halvorson:

Literally, you can't go from 2007 to 2020.

Keri Maijala:

Sure I can. Look, I just did.

Kristina Halvorson:

No.

Keri Maijala:

Look, I just did. I mean, I can backtrack if you want. I was a consultant for several years. That's super fun. I worked for a financial institution. If you want to organize complicated content, the financial space is great for that. You learn a lot about finances. I mean, I just went to where I thought the work was interesting, where I thought there were interesting problems to solve, and ideally where the people were good.

Kristina Halvorson:

So talk to me about your last gig and how that translated or what the transition was like between that and coming to work for LinkedIn. Because you were the first content designer, you were there to build up the practice at LinkedIn, right?

Keri Maijala:

That's exactly right. So what that looks like, and I mean I can go a little bit into that history, they did a couple of reorgs and they moved content creation under marketing. So product writing went under marketing, and they figured out pretty quickly that that wasn't quite working in the way that they had hoped. So they brought me in specifically to start a practice for content design. We were called UX Writing at the time. So it's really interesting coming into a very established company as the first. Because at the time, I think there were 18,000 people working for LinkedIn, and I was the only person designated as a UX writer. So for the first year or so, my goal was to talk to as many people as possible, to learn as much about the product as possible and to touch as many experiences as possible.

So I was spread thin to say the least. It was a lot of office hour type situations where it was a little vein switch. They'd come in, it's like, "I have this line of content for you." I'm like, "That's great, but have you considered reorganizing the way this whole experience looks?" So I did a lot of that and had a lot of success in that because it's really about getting in front of the right people that can help advocate for you and to see what it looks like when a content design point of view comes into the experience. Because what they were expecting was me to change a couple of words around, and what they got was all of this experience coming in to say, "It's really not the words here that are making this experience a little clunky. Let's go back and take a look at everything that came before and what we're trying to get them to do, what the user wants to do and what they are looking to do, and let's create an experience that way. And by the way, here are some words to make that better."

Kristina Halvorson:

A thing that we have tackled over the last several years of this podcast is trying to parse the language of content professions. So content marketing, content strategy, what does it all mean? And when we launched this podcast, we are also going to have launched our new website for Brain Traffic where we offer specifically website content strategy and enterprise content strategy. So we don't even offer content design services, but a thing that has evolved for us and for me as I continue with the podcast and helping program these conferences, Confab formerly and then Button coming up and working with all of these clients is that it's become pretty clear to me that there are content, still not our best favorite word... but that enterprise content strategy is where we're really working to, whether or not it's centralize operations, at least come up with shared principles, shared structures, shared process, shared role understanding and definition so that content can become organized and synchronized and purposeful across an organization.

Website content strategy I really start talking about as a lot of, and I'll get to content design, but where it's really focused specifically on the information that is appearing on the website, where it's appearing, how it's organized, how you can browse through it, who its targeting, et cetera, et cetera. It's a related skillset set, but it's a different daily set of activities. And then we come around to content design, which from the minute Facebook launched, from the minute any software-as-a-service launched online, UX writing content design was really a thing because what we've seen is that it's really product companies that have rallied around that title because content designers and UX writers are really working so actively and so closely on feature and experience design with designers and engineers.

And yet, I'm also starting to see more like, "Content designers, we should really be talking about information architecture," for example. Because we discussed how you have, in the past, and I mean before 2009, we weren't talking so much about apps and mobile experiences, LinkedIn wasn't even a thing until what? 2006, 2007... Can you talk to me a little bit about how you feel like your skillset and the way that you have viewed your role first as an IC, as an independent contributor has evolved since the what should go on this hard-coded HTML page?

Keri Maijala:

Oh, gosh. I mean, we can talk a lot about the terminology and I can describe how I see these terms spinning together. And this should no way be taken as definitive, but just when I think about the term content strategy now as opposed to in 2007, when we were talking about content strategy, the way I shorthanded it was, "It is the act of thinking about the content and where it should go before it shows up in front of the user's face." I mean, really that was it rather than the idea of filling in boxes after the design was created. So that was our rallying cry back then. So that's when I think of the content strategy. Now, when I think of content strategy, I think of it more as this entire ecosystem. And I know you just mentioned that the word content itself is a little bit, not problematic, but not accurate.

Kristina Halvorson:

It's what we've got.

Keri Maijala:

It's what we got. But how it all fits together in the ecosystem with all of the different platforms and considering the different ways that it might appear depending on the device or where we think the person is in the world or that thing, it's a very broad, and I almost think of it as almost technical. On the backend, how are we thinking about the content and how it's organized and how we move it and how we place it. That stuff.

When I think about things like content design, it's a lot about what you were saying in that I think, and LinkedIn is the same, is the reason why we moved to this terminology is because we do a lot of the same things that product designers do up until the last five minutes, and now we do the words. But we work with user research and we think about the audience and we think about their goals, and we think about what they might be feeling along the way, and how do we bring them along into the end. And then we get to the end of like, "And here's the best way to express these things inward." So I think that's why we moved to content design.

I think when we were using the term UX writing, and I will share that we were called UX writing when I joined LinkedIn, and I pushed back a little bit on that. I'm like, "Well, but that's not quite what I'm doing." UX writing to me is the act of understanding the best words to use in a specific situation. So when I think about buttons, UX writing to me is, "What is the best label to put on this button? What is the best microcopy to just drive this experience right now and get them what they need?" When I think of content design, I think more around the idea of like, "Well, do we need a button? Should it be here? Is there a better way to present this experience to them?"

And I know a lot of people want to use these terms interchangeably. And honestly, I'm the kind of person, if somebody calls me a copywriter in a meeting, I may burst a little bit but I'm not going to write them an email and go, "I'm not a copywriter, thank you very much. I'm a content designer." But I think it's more about the labels help us think about our work and how we're presenting it, but I don't think it has to be necessarily everything.

Kristina Halvorson:

I find that, for better or worse, we do end up talking about terminology and nomenclature and labeling and job titles and things on the podcast probably more often than some people might like, "However, I always state that I think it is important to discuss because I think that the evolution of the terminology can be very specifically mapped to the value of the work and the understanding of the work through the years. And not just our understanding of it, but the organization's understanding of it, of our managers and their managers," and if they're even paying attention, "executive leadership." And another thing that I have found is that no matter what you call yourself, ultimately, that's not necessarily going to be the thing that shapes perception.

Keri Maijala:

That's exactly right.

Kristina Halvorson:

And so I mean, I agree with you. I consider UX writing to be an activity that lives within the practice of content design. That is my strong opinion. But I'm not going to point fingers and just be like "You shouldn't be calling those people UX writers." And I think that especially, well, what I have seen play out in recent client engagements is that it's still, people are like, "We do more than just the words." Well, guess what? Everybody in the organization sees, "It's just the words." There's all invisible stuff happening behind the scenes. And that when we come to directors or the people who are responsible for allocating budget and approving headcount and participating in reorgs and things like that, and we say, "I want to talk about content," they're just like, "I don't care about content. I care about outcomes. I care about KPIs. I care about OKRs. I care about resource allocation. I care about what my boss is putting pressure on me to do."

And so I want to talk a little bit, and this shifts the conversation then into what you said in your bio that you are spending time thinking about exploring what it means to be a leader. Because what it means is when people see you're a lead, oftentimes what they think is leading a team. But there's so much more to leadership in terms of especially when you're working to shape perception around the work that your team is doing, and to not just advocate, but actually identify ways in which to demonstrate and spread the word about value. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit then about what that process for you is like, how's that journey going? What are your secrets, Keri? What are your secrets to success? Because I know you've got it all figured out. You fixed everything.

Keri Maijala:

I fixed it.

Kristina Halvorson:

And you're living in Nirvana. Are you laughing right now?

Keri Maijala:

I'm crying. For whatever reason, this weekend in particular, I've been taking all notes and just thinking about really even on different levels, what individuals can do to help the perception of what it is that we do and the value that we bring. And again, nerd. I was looking at our CPPs and I'm looking at my notes-

Kristina Halvorson:

Sorry, what is that?

Keri Maijala:

I'm sorry. Career path profile. It's basically a description of the expectation of each level and what you're expected to do at your level. And I was rewriting them in my head, I'm like, "This doesn't show up the way that I want it to." So when I think about the individuals and the value that they bring, it's so much around initiative, it's so much around ownership and what they can control. So if you are showing up and somebody puts something in front of you and says, "Write the words for this experience," how are you showing up? For more junior roles, that's fine. That's what you're learning to do. But as you move up the career path, what we're looking for is like, "That's great. I can absolutely write the words, but what if we tried this? Have we thought about approaching it this way?" Or, "I've done some research or I've worked directly with research. I was really curious about this thing and so we did some work together and we found this out. Why don't we add this into the mix?"

And what you said about the invisible work, that really hits home for me because in some ways we do have a little bit of a harder time than product design because their work is extremely visible. You can see before and after of a product design work and are like, "Oh, wow. I can clearly see the difference." The visible work that we do is very often so subtle that we really have to point out what we've done to really make that difference. So when I talk to people that are looking for content design work, or even when we were interviewing for roles and I would do sessions with them before they came to a presentation, what I really coach them on is before and afters are great, but what we really want to see, what I want to see is how you thought through this information.

Show me all of that invisible work that you've done in the background. Show me how you think about design. Show us how you worked through a problem and maybe it didn't work, but then what did you do after that? You got stuck, and then now what? Where do you go from there? And what I'm really trying to work on with my team is that in everything that they do, we're in review season right now so this is foremost on my mind, is to really do the citation needed. So when they say, "I did a thing," I want to hear, "Great. And now what? What did that do?" If somebody says, "I took a class," my response is, "Great. What did you learn? What kind of difference did that make on your team? What kind of problems were you able to solve with that?" And it's a really, really hard shift for content design because we don't often put together portfolios.

We don't often think about our work in that way. And again, in the same way that product designers do. Product designers very often have a portfolio that they might've put together in school as a part of their final project. Content designers, if there is a course in college for content design, that's not a thing. So it's very much a shift in thinking about how documenting and sharing your work is a part of what you do. And I think the perception is that it is outside of the work and it's extra work, and therefore a burden. So helping my team and helping other people outside of my team, I do a lot of conversations with people looking to get into this, it's definitely a shift and it's hard a lot of the time.

Kristina Halvorson:

So let me ask you this. That is all outstanding insight and direction, especially around when people are working to better... It is more of that show and tell versus just the tell. We can all put together decks on why content design matters, we can write 18,000 billion posts online about why content design matters but not a single person on our product teams or product managers cares. They just don't care why it matters. They want to see. They want to see.

So let me ask you this. Even above that, above product managers. When we're starting to talk about reorg beyond just within our teams, and it's difficult to be brought into those conversations. It's difficult. I mean, I tell people all the time, executive leadership, don't ever say the word content to them because they do not care. Unless they're a CMO, they might want to talk to you about content marketing. The CDO, CTO, they don't want to hear "content". They want to hear "tech", they want to hear "design", they want to hear "product", they want to hear "roadmap". Content, it is in fact just the words.

And a lot of what I run into is we can walk in at Brain Traffic as consultants, and when we do have the opportunity to present at the VP or the executive level, we run into, "Well, why isn't this already happening? I spent all this money. I've hired all these people. I'm seeing that there are content designers. If you're telling me that this has got to be the end game in terms of how things are supposed to be working, why isn't it already happening?" And so I think that needing to be able to identify obstacles in terms of not just the symptoms and what's going wrong, but the obstacles to actually starting to improve and fix is such a critical component for leaders. I mean, it's change management. Right?

Keri Maijala:

Absolutely, it is.

Kristina Halvorson:

And I thought that that phrase was managing up, not what managing up means. Managing up means making your boss's life easier. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about influence beyond your boss, beyond your boss's boss. Talk to me a little bit about your ideas and experience around working for larger organizational change, even just beyond trying to help people understand the value of your day-to-day activities.

Keri Maijala:

It's really interesting. I was having a conversation with another manager, and this was probably a couple of years ago, and this was when I was in the moment shaking my fist at clouds and saying, "But I see other people at other organizations having access." And he was like, "Yeah, but you're talking about the organizations that you've named have 2,000 employees. So I mean just, they have better access." One of the things that I've been thinking about is the importance of getting into the room. And sometimes you don't have access to the room that you need to be in. So the idea is, "I can't control that, but what I can control is I understand what the company priorities are." They've made it very clear what the company priorities are, and I can control how my team is organized and I can control how the work is distributed.

And I made a shift on my team a few months ago. I saw what was happening in terms of the pace that we were moving and the projects that we were doing, and that we weren't aligned in the way that we should be to make the best impact that we could. So I reorganized my team to get us to the projects where I understood were going to have the most impact. And because I did that, my team was now in the room with the people that were making the decisions. So rather than me trying to break down a door and get into a room so that I could say my thing and I can say, "This is why content design matters," I went, "I see how this is going right now, that's fine." And then put my team into the room. And I am starting to see how the perception is changing right now.

We have a very small team, and so sometimes I have to move people around. And I did that one day and I'm getting calls like, "We need a content designer on this. Why did you move this person? We need a content designer." I'm like, "Okay, I hear you. Let me see what I can do. Let me find you a resource." And it became less about me having access and more about making sure that my team was positioned where they needed to be in order to make that happen. And I can see it starting now.

I can see the wheels turning. I can see their work showing up in more and more reviews. I can see them being called out more. And honestly, my team is happier now than they were before because they're working on deep, meaningful things that are showcasing their skills. So I think that if you're finding it difficult to get the audience that you need, think about the way that your team is organized. Look ahead a little bit to see what matters to them, and are there ways that you can make your team contribute to what matters to them.

Kristina Halvorson:

Well, and also to circle back to where you started, being able to connect the dots between what matters to your team and what the organization has stated matters in terms of business performance and how to make those connections.

Keri Maijala:

That's exactly right.

Kristina Halvorson:

Because I think that that's what I see falling apart in a lot of teams where teams will become very emotional like, "I don't see that my work matters. I don't see that I'm being heard. I don't feel like I'm being called into these meetings," and asking the manager, "Why can't you fix this? Why can't you fix this?" And to be fair, I think in a lot of organizations, managers are like, "I would love to be able to put you on work that matters, except that nobody can tell me clearly what that is." Because there are so many organizations where leadership is just scrambling or you're getting different mandates and different directives every two weeks, and that can be really tough.

Keri Maijala:

Yeah. I mean, they've been pretty clear with us about what matters. So we're lucky in that way. But before that, it was very, "Fix this content. Plug this hole. Make this not suck." And we were just spread extremely thin. So it's not all love and roses in that because my team is very deeply focused, that means that other things don't get the attention. But at the same time, I think we are much better positioned to have a better understanding of our work and what it is that we do, and how, when we show up with a content design point of view, the product is better, the experiences are better. And I think they're a lot happier because of that.

Kristina Halvorson:

I absolutely agree. That's what I'm seeing play out as well. And I've just spent so much time too thinking about how in experience design and content strategy, and even when we get into content management and content engineering, that if people can have some baseline understanding of, "When I do this thing, not only here's how this is benefiting the user, here's how this is benefiting a overall product or a website or a process or whatever quality, but here's also why it matters to the organization's priorities." And I just think that once that connection can be made that it's just a lot of stuff really starts falling into place. I think team morale improves. I think that leaders, once they understand the connection, are in a better place to develop that story, develop those mantras and start to spread the word. I think I'm just seeing leaders within content design and content strategy really begin to mature at a relatively rapid pace in terms of how they're presenting the case beyond, "Let me talk to you directly about why this work is important and what it is." Because people don't care.

Keri Maijala:

And I was just going to say that. I mean, it just feels like door-to-door sales. You knock on the door like, "Hey, do you have a moment to talk about content design?"

Kristina Halvorson:

No. Nobody cares.

Keri Maijala:

And it's like, "I don't, no." Nobody does.

Kristina Halvorson:

But that doesn't mean that you can't do your job. It doesn't mean that it doesn't matter. But it is, you can only say so many times, "This matters. Let me in. Let me do the work," until you just become completely demoralized. And I think that that is something that we're seeing throughout the field. Is that the same thing that we saw in website content strategy so many years ago? Do you know?

Keri Maijala:

I'm laughing because it's so true. I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm old and tired. But I feel like I've been yelling that it matters for years and years and years and years, and my throat is sore and I'm tired and I want to do the work. I want to show the work. I want to have a team that feels fulfilled and feels like they're doing their best work, and that they are working in places that make a difference and the work matters. And then for people to see that and want more of that, that's what I want.

Kristina Halvorson:

Well, and I think that that's what we can have. And I think that the way to do it is what you're describing, which is to figure out what the people, your manager, your manager's manager, manager's manager, what do they care about. Because whatever they care about, 99% of the time, you can tie the work that you're doing to whatever they care about and the trick is to talk to them about what they care about. Because we care about the work, we care about language, we care about findability, we care about accessibility and inclusivity. They don't care about any of that.

Keri Maijala:

They don't care about that.

Kristina Halvorson:

No. But then again, it's a whole other process of having a million conversations until you can get to the person that's like, "Yes, I sit in a room with this person and they are right on this all the time," and then you begin to shape the story.

Keri Maijala:

And I just really feel like it's all about placing your team in the right places so that they can do that work. And then when it's seen, because I'm experiencing that right now, my team is being seen in a way that hasn't before. I've been at LinkedIn for five years. The last six months I feel like have been pivotal for my team for a lot of reasons, but I'm just going to go ahead and take credit for putting them in the places where they can really do their best work in a way that matters. Once that happens, then you, content design leader, are much better positioned to get in that room and have that conversation.

Kristina Halvorson:

So good. It's so good. And I'll just share with listeners that Keri and I were together in March of this year doing a business retreat and also potentially being at Disney World.

Keri Maijala:

What?

Kristina Halvorson:

But at the time, you were banging your head against the wall.

Keri Maijala:

I was.

Kristina Halvorson:

Just like, "I can only tell this story so many times." I mean yes, you're tired now, but you were really just like, "I've shown the decks. I have made the rounds. I have advocated for my team. I have coached my team and I don't know where to go from here." And shortly thereafter, you really came to, "I need to reorg my team so that they can contribute to the work that is meaningful to the organization and get them in the room." And that was key.

Keri Maijala:

It really was. And I feel like if you again, content design leader or IC, feel like you're banging your head up against the wall and screaming and yelling and it's not working, then perhaps consider something else other than that. What aren't you doing? Or what creative ways can you think of? And I will share with you that reorging my team to where they are now was not my vision. That is not how I wanted my team organized. And I held onto that like, "Nope, that's not how it should be done. That is not the right way." That is not what I wanted to do until I got to a point where I said, "This is not working. Let's try something else." And I think that step is important. The letting go and taking a step back and looking at other ways you might do something. And again, I feel like that's working for my team right now. I don't know what that will look like in six months. But for right now, this was definitely the right decision.

Kristina Halvorson:

And that speaks to a strength of a leader as well, which is to be able to step back and say, "The thing that I want, the thing that I already advocated for, the thing that I got and promised could work is not working, and now I need to go back hat in hand and try something differently." That is a real strength in leadership. So good on you, Keri Maijala.

Keri Maijala:

I did it good.

Kristina Halvorson:

You do. Great. We are just about out of time. I wonder if you could tell our listeners what it is that you're going to be doing on October 16th and 17th this year. Do you remember what it is?

Keri Maijala:

Is that Button? Am I doing button? I'm doing a button.

Kristina Halvorson:

Oh yeah, you're doing a button. But what special thing are you doing at Button, the Content Design Conference?

Keri Maijala:

I'm hosting the leadership portion of Button, and it's two days of leadership conversation. So the conversation, Kristina, that you and I are having right now, we can have that conversation at Button. So let's do that.

Kristina Halvorson:

No, I have other conversations lined up. People can listen to this during their downtime.

Keri Maijala:

Oh, no. I meant the people. So leadership, you, leader. I'm sorry, I'm talking directly to the listener.

Kristina Halvorson:

Are you talking to me? I was like, "Nobody wants to listen to me and not a single person wants to listen me talk about this."

Keri Maijala:

I just made it awkward. I was trying to be clever and it didn't work.

Kristina Halvorson:

You, our listening audience, can have these conversations. It's going to be amazing. We're capping it at 50 people and it's going to be a lot more of a peer-to-peer working session. And you're going to host and it's going to literally be half talks and co interviewees and then half live Q and A, and it's going to be just terrific. Another thing that I want to just plug about Button, because we are talking about the importance of being able to help people understand and see the work up close is that bring your product managers, bring your designers, bring your engineers.

So we have an intro to content design. We get it all. There. I know this is hard to believe. I did not even mean to actively plug Button at the end of this podcast, and yet here we are.

Keri?

Keri Maijala:

Yeah.

Kristina Halvorson:

Can you explain about your bald Pomeranian before we leave, please?

Keri Maijala:

So I have a Pomeranian, his name is Ferris. He is 12 now. He's in his room. He's 12 now. He used to have the most glorious coat, and about two years old, he started losing his hair. And it turns out it's a Pomeranian trait sometimes that they go bald. So he has his face and his feet, and then inexplicably, he started just spontaneously growing hair out of his sides in the last six months. But otherwise, he looks like a plucked chicken. He has a great wardrobe. He's adorable. He is a sight to behold when he's not in his little outfits.

Kristina Halvorson:

I think we're going to have to have a little bit of a Ferris gallery on the episode page

Keri Maijala:

Not safe for work.

Kristina Halvorson:

Yes, it is. It's cute. All right, Keri, this has been delightful as always. I'm so lucky that I can just call you anytime and have these conversations with you, but I am really grateful that you agreed to actually let me record one of them. So thank you so much and thank you to our listeners for joining us.

Keri Maijala:

Thank all of you.

Kristina Halvorson:

Listeners, friends, we'll see you next time.

Thanks so much for joining me for this week’s episode of the Content Strategy Podcast. Our podcast is brought to you by Brain Traffic, a content strategy services and events company. It’s produced by Robert Mills with editing from Bare Value. Our transcripts are from REV.com. You can find all kinds of episodes at contentstrategy.com and you can learn more about Brain Traffic at braintraffic.com. See you soon.