Bridget Willard | SaaS Marketing Agency

Category: Business Advice

  • It’s Never Too Late to Change Your Career

    Sometimes we think that the older we are, the less likely we can change our careers — to a successful degree. But it simply isn’t true. And this is why I love WordPress.

    I love WordPress because it allowed me to change the entire trajectory of my career — at 42 years old.

    https://twitter.com/YouTooCanBeGuru/status/690314588974280706

    My Backstory

    I grew up poor. I learned office skills in high school, after a disastrous bus boy position. I needed to learn to type. That trade served me well all of these years.

    My mom and grandmother told me I had to get a college education. They were right to push me. It took me seven years, three major changes, and a student loan balance, but I have that degree.

    Shortly after I was married, we lost our business. Accountants, am I right? No offense, but this guy stole money and ran away with it. We fell on hard times.

    I got my multiple subjects teaching credential and ended up teaching junior high and high school math at a private school at a church.

    When I went for teaching I never considered parents. Whoa! No one told me there’d be so many bosses. No matter what I did, they were unhappy.

    One year later, the school closed and I was out of a job. The church offered me a secretarial position for the same salary. That was fine by me, I never wanted to teach again.

    Except for two years while finishing my degree at San Diego State and a year teaching, I’d been some form of secretary since I was 14. That’s a lifetime for some.

    Look, office work is honest work. I’m good at it. I enjoyed it. But the potential for career (read: salary) growth is limited at best. Since my husband is retired, I was the sole provider.

    I was feeling trapped.

    Social Media Guru

    In 2009, I started tweeting for Riggins Construction — along with my Office Manager duties. The economy tanked. Something had to be done. So I did it.

    You know, there are people who talk about being self-starters and then there are those of us who go forward and ask permission later.

    People started asking me questions. They saw something that, at the time, I did not. I was good at this social media stuff. Joking, I started this whole blog/persona: You, Too, Can Be a Guru.

    I didn’t start content marketing at my former job in order to leave it. I just wanted to do something positive. I learned a lot from 2009-2015.

    The WordCamp Era

    I started going to WordCamp because of my friend Pam of Pam Ann Marketing.

    With Carol Stephen at WordCamp Orange County 2013 – My very first.

    There were a group of us who got to know each other on Twitter. Each of us were in the construction or industrial sector trying to make B2B connections. A joke about us being “The Pink Ladies of Twitter” turned into a Facebook group and the rest is history.

    So when Pam mentioned she planned to attend WordCamp Orange County back in 2013, I didn’t know what it was or entailed.

    We wanted to hang out with Pam and for only $40 there was no reason not to go. So, my other pal Carol flew down from the Bay Area and we loved it. Pam didn’t make it that year. We started a fun tradition. If you want to know what a WordCamp is read this post.

    Social Media Mastermind

    If you want to level up your life, you have to hang around people who 1) think differently than you do; and, 2) are smarter than you are.

    I started attending a meetup in January of 2014 that I’d seen people tweeting about: SMMOC.

    https://twitter.com/YouTooCanBeGuru/status/521328198702092289

    This mastermind group is a facilitated discussion. The people who attend want to learn from one another. To say this is an amazing group of people is an understatement.

    Some of us went to lunch afterward, we became Facebook Friends, etc.

    We bonded and the hashtag kept us together. It’s no longer running but those people are still my peers and close friends.

    Apply For A Crazy Job

    Sometimes, you have to apply for a job you don’t think you can do. Maybe you think you can do it. But this post wouldn’t be complete without acknowledging Buffer’s role. When their job posting came up for a Happiness Hero (and they post the salary because of transparency) I knew that a career in social media could be a reality for me.

    I ran into a snag. They required reading two books before you could apply. Not being a fast reader, my SMMOC girlfriends told me to listen to them on Audible. In two weeks, I had applied to a new job.

    But that’s not the main point.

    One of the books they required was Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh. Listening to it driving to work, I cried. And not just once.

    I did not know people could be happy at work. I only knew that I needed a job — my happiness was not important. Someone had to pay the rent. That was my responsibility.

    A few weeks later, I got an email from Buffer saying I didn’t fit. I was bummed, if I’m honest. They were right. If they had hired me, I wouldn’t have found my fit.

    So, thank you, Buffer (I’m looking at you Nicole).

    Change Your Career with Writing

    The first step was believing what people kept telling me. It’s a sad commentary on my psyche, maybe, but true. I thought people were just being nice. They were being honest.

    Now I knew I had the instinct for social media and marketing, but I didn’t have the business, journalism, or English degree. I lacked almost every requirement on any job posting I saw on LinkedIn. If that wasn’t that, it was a lack of remote work opportunity.

    I knew that by building a self-hosted site I could build my brand — one post at a time. BridgetWillard(dot)com was going to be my resume.

    I had to write my way out of secretarial work. I had to write my way into social media.

    And so, because of my friends, my new-found experience, and some courage from DesktopServer, this site went live in April 2015.

    Of course, I wrote about it here.

    Reviewing Plugins

    I suppose it helps to have a super BFF who is an Admin in the Advanced WordPress Group on Facebook. She posted my debrief there and introduced me to Matt Cromwell through email. Thanks, Heather. You’re the best!

    Matt (my Matt) from WordImpress sent me an email asking if I’d like to review plugins. Sure he asked the wrong person, I gave him the top ten list for why I’m not a good match but I’m super flattered.

    Seriously, he wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. I did try to get out of it. I’m glad he didn’t give up on me.

    What I didn’t realize is that he wanted a series written by a non-developer with a background in business-to-business. That’s how the Normal People Great Plugins series was born.

    Volunteer at WordCamp

    In the summer 2015, I was asked to tweet for WordCamp Los Angeles. I had a blast.

    Volunteering at a WordCamp was totally under-rated by me. I am way too shy to ever have volunteered on my own.

    I’m thankful that Alex reached out to me because people I’d only seen on Twitter a few times, I had a chance to talk with more substantively. Of course, I got to meet the speakers and some of the sponsors. and that enriched my experience, too.

    After that experience, I was asked to do the social for WordCamp San Diego in 2016.

    WPblab

    Jason Tucker, of WPwatercooler fame, sent me a message one day in October 2015. He wanted to start a weekly show answering WordPress questions on Blab. He asked his wife who he should pick for a co-host and they thought of me — because I “was everywhere.”

    I tried to talk him out of it, but he thought it would be a good combination: an IT geek and a Twitter Nerd.

    It turns out, he’s right. We did the show until August 7, 2023.

    A Job in WordPress

    I didn’t use WordPress to get a job in WordPress. I didn’t go to WordCamp to get a job in WordPress. I wanted a social media job.

    I went to WordPress because the software was easy for a non-developer like me. I went to WordCamp because I learned valuable business, writing, and other skills.

    I went to WordCamp to learn at first. Then I met people and made friends. It’s amazing how generous the WordPress community is with their knowledge. The WordPress community has a nose for people that don’t really fit in.

    Director of Marketing

    Slowly by slowly, I was given more side work from my friends at Thought House (sold to Liquid Web May 11, 2021), including the Twitter account for GiveWP, which I grew from 167 to 1000 followers in two months. Needless to say, they were impressed.

    We hung out at their office one day and had lunch. We hung out at WordCamp Orange County in June and then I spent time with each of the guys (Devin, Jason, and Matt) at WordCamp Los Angeles. I presumed they were feeling me out for a culture fit.

    In late November of 2015, they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I started December 1, 2015 and ended as Director of Marketing in October of 2017.

    Yes, You Can Change Your Career

    That fall of 2015, for the first time in my adult life, I took a risk. A big one.

    I quit a stable job to take the scariest adventure ever: working for a tech startup in a niche market. In 2015 that was scary, but in 2017 I started freelancing. There were tears. Two years in, I am happy, over my revenue goals, and highly respected in my industry.

    It’s been a long road from 2001 in roofing to being a marketing freelancer but I would do it all over again.

    If I can do it you can, too.

    Say “yes” to yourself. You can control your career. You can change it.

  • Job Costing: Value Versus Time

    Do we charge for value or time? We charge for value. But you can’t charge for value until you know how much you cost.

    I’m often asked how much social media should cost. I’m also asked how much  you should charge. But just like Alex Vasquez says to charge for value the opposite is also true. If you don’t know how much you cost, do you even know your own value?

    How much is your time worth?

    How much is my time worth?

    These are the questions we ask ourselves when we decide to outsource. Does it make sense to do $18/hour bookkeeping work when your time is worth $100? No. You outsource.

    I talked a bit about why it costs so much to outsource your social media in this post, but let’s dig deeper.

    Pricing by Time or Value?

    Most of my peers believe we are worth more than a dollar amount per hour.

    Last year at WordCamp, Alex Vasquez said,

    “We price by the service, we price by the value we bring, not our time.”

    There’s a lot of truth to that. We care about value, but we also care about our time. After all, there are only 24 hours in a day, no matter what you charge.

    But for the sake of this post, let’s talk about dollars per hour to gain perspective.

    How much time?

    It’s important to know how much time it takes you to perform a task.

    You do want to make a profit, right?

    So, use a timer. How long are you spending on any given task? Write it down. That just gives you a baseline of what it costs you to do the task. Now, decide how much you want to charge.

    Pricing by Platform or Skill

    Many of my friends have package pricing, often broken out according to Olympic metal colors. You can also price by platform or skill.

    You may decide you don’t want to do a platform. For example, I recommend anyone who wants Pinterest to Carol Stephen and SEO to Pam Aungst.

    If you’re just starting out you should ask yourself some questions. What platforms or digital skills are your strengths? Which are your weaknesses?

    Is Tweeting Just Tweeting?

    Do you count the time actually Tweeting as working a Twitter account?

    What about reading other tweets?

    What about reading articles to tweet and other research?

    What about follower maintenance including unfollowing spammers, keeping the ratio social (1:1, IMHO), and putting them on lists?

    Does tweeting include Twitter chats?

    Does tweeting for a client include client communication time? If you were a lawyer or an accountant, all of that client communication time would be billable.

    All of these tasks combined take at least one hour a day, depending upon the Twitter account. The more followers you have, the more time it takes to engage.

    Per Hour Comparisons

    For the sake of this post, let’s presume you’re going to spend a combined time of one hour a day in a 28-day month for your new Twitter Client.

    In California, the minimum wage is $9/hour.

    If you worked for 1 hour a day for 28 days in a month, that would be $252.

    We haven’t even accounted for the self-employment tax.

    Some quick Googling brought more wages for the sake of comparison. Feel free to refute.

    • The starting wage for In-N-Out Burger is $10.50/hour. A 28-hour month would equal $294 before taxes (gross).
    • The starting wage for Costco is $11.50/hour. For 28 hours, that would be $322.
    • The average wage for an administrative assistant in the Los Angeles area is $21/hour. That would be $588 for 28 hours.
    • The average wage for a marketer in the Los Angeles area is $26/hour. That would be $728 for 28 hours.

    Let’s summarize the 28-hour month by category:

    • Minimum Wage $252
    • In-N-Out $294
    • Costco $322
    • Admin $588
    • Marketing $728

    A Question of Value

    The question to you is, as a social media manager, where does your worth lie?

    The question to you as a client is, what value does your social media manager bring. Is it more or less than a Costco worker?

  • How Social Media Managers Are Like Secretaries (And How To Find One)

    I’ve been thinking about writing this post for a long time now but afraid that people would burn my effigy in their front yards.

    Give me some leeway.

    Disclaimer: I’ve been some form of an office worker from 14–42. I became a Marketing Manager at 42 years old. I’m big on analogies. I realize that a social media manager is a better paying and more highly esteemed profession than secretary, administrative assistant, office manager, or whatever other title given to this type of work.

    Office Work.

    It’s routine. It’s perfect for a task-oriented, routine oriented person like myself. Papers come in, papers go out. They get sorted, filed, distributed. Phones ring, calls are transferred, messages are taken. This is the essence of a secretary. You’re filling in for someone who is otherwise occupied at present.

    It’s a thankless job. Like laundry, no one notices your work until it’s not done or until you make a snafu like mixing red fabric with whites.

    You write memos, answer emails, and open physical mail. All communication, both incoming and outgoing, goes through you.

    Discretion, organization, and reliability are key components to any office worker’s persona. After all, you’re representing your boss and their company. You’re at the front line of their branding.

    Social Media Management

    Much like office work, effective social media management requires a routine oriented person who can effectively respond to several sources (social media platforms) of communication.

    Lots of people are really more idea-oriented. That’s great! You need good ideas. But then you need to do the work. You get new followers. They need to be filed (listed) and possibly followed back. You need to respond.

    You become the middleman between the public and your company, just like a secretary. You make quick decisions constantly. No one wants a secretary who goes to them for approval on every email. You have to use your best judgement. This comes from experience.

    It can also be a thankless position, more often than not, going outside of the Monday-Friday 8–5 hours, too.

    Proud of the perfectly-composed, less-than-140 character tweet, no one cares except for you. Your only recognition is from generous, non-competing peers.

    People who don’t understand the intricacies of your position and the skills it takes to do it well often discount your position. This is not unlike how a secretary is viewed.

    The Myths and Job Requirements

    This is where the analogy breaks down. As an office manager no one expects me to be the CPA. Sure, I have a basic understanding of general ledger codes and I know how to enter invoices and journal entries. However, I do not, nor am I expected to, do a financial audit, come up with financial statements, make recommendations for tax or accounting purposes, or file corporate taxes.

    A CPA is a highly-trained, highly-specialized position just like a SEO consultant. Though a Social Media Manager should have a basic understanding of SEO which translates into good headlines, proper use of social platforms, and possibly blogging (but not all social media managers blog), a Social Media Manager would almost never be considered an expert.

    A Social Media Manager is also not a graphic designer. I love this post by Amy Donohue because she comes across this all of the time. We’re also not web developers.

    Now, it may be that a web developer and/or graphic artist can be a Social Media Manager, but not all Social Media Managers have that skill set. Nor should they.

    I find it absurd that Social Media Managers are required to be jack of all trades. Would you expect a salesman to be an accountant? No. Just because a computer is used doesn’t mean the skills are automatic.

    How Do You Find A Good Social Media Manager?

    Do you hire for company culture? Do you ask for the last ten years of their work written out on a PDF? Or are your requirements so stringent that Jesus, Himself couldn’t get the job?

    Carol Stephen has some suggestions in this blog post. She gives you good questions to ask.

    My suggestion is this: ask for as many of their Twitter handles as they’ll give.

    Twitter Tells you Everything You Need to Know.

    Look at their own Twitter account. Twitter is a primary way to meet people, extend reach, and explore based upon hashtags. From there you should be able to find out everything you need to know.

    Look for grammar.

    Look for concise writing style.

    Look for humor.

    You’ll know if they fit in your company.

    How automated are they? Are they using if this then that to tweet out Mashable articles? Are 90% of their posts from Paper.li or Triberr? Automation is a helpful tool for anyone but it shouldn’t be the majority of their tweets. I’d say 50% or less is good.

    How cross-posted are they? This is another controversy. But cross-posting is lazy. I said, it, but I’m not alone. It shows they don’t want to or cannot craft a post that fits the platform’s culture. Gary Vaynerchuk talks about knowing a platform’s culture in this post.

    How many retweets are in their feed? Why does this matter? I think it’s a branding issue. I prefer old-school retweets.

    Do they ever respond to people? On Twitter.com, check their “tweets and replies” column to see if they ever respond to people. If they only tweet out their own blog posts, they are not engaging.

    Though numbers isn’t everything, check out their following to follower ratio. If you were asking me to help you find someone, I’d say that should be close to 1:1. If they’re not following people back because the Twitter stream overwhelms them, that tells you they don’t know how to use lists.

    If the person’s online accounts pass these things, then look granular toward your culture. You can tell if someone is generous, kind, appreciative, and appreciated by the community they built. If they’re like this on Twitter, I’d bet they’d be good at Instagram, Facebook, and any other platform that’s thrown our way.

    I Know What You’re Thinking: “You’re Off Track.”

    Not really.

    At 14, I started on a typewriter, graduated to DOS, Windows 95, and am now on an iMac.

    A secretary, like a social media manager, has to contend with ever-changing technology, office politics, and management style.

    Look for those skills and you’re sure to find a winner.

    Originally posted on LinkedIn 2/6/15

  • Do I want Facebook or The X Platform (Twitter) for my Business?

    It’s a tug of war of sorts.

    Facebook copies Twitter. Twitter copies Facebook. This goes on and on. Call it competition, tug of war, or innovation. Regardless, it’s good for the consumer.

    Who has the bigger audience? Who has the most spam? Who’s trying to pry into your personal details?

    So, I’m a business, which should I use?

    I’m always amazed at this question. Why not both?

    But if you really have to choose, ask yourself this:

    • What do you want to achieve?
    • Who do you want to reach?
    • Do you want to build up one and then the other?
    • Can you devote the time to doing them both simultaneously?
    *Disclaimer 1: Twitter and Facebook could change any of what I’m about to point out at any time. This post was written on August 19, 2014.
    *Disclaimer 2: It’s hard for me to be objective. Everyone who knows me knows I favor Twitter and my own numbers support that. This is my best effort to present objective pros and cons.

    Below I compare Twitter and Facebook by feature. I apologize for the length, but every business has different needs, people who will be using the platform, and how (mobile or desktop) they will use it. You’ll need to consider them all to choose.

    First Things First

    Facebook and Twitter have entirely different cultures and different rules, protocols, or expectations.

    Respect each platform for its own benefits, audience, and culture. I beg you not to connect the two so that you Tweet to Facebook or Tweet from Facebook. Just because something is easy, doesn’t mean it’s good.

    You will be judged for being lazy, disregarding either audience, and people will wonder if you’ll ever respond. (Ya, I said it.)

    Read: “Social Media: Different Platform, Different Language” by Carol Stephen

    Audience Size

    According to Facebook, they have “829 million daily active users on average in June 2014.” That’ too large of an audience to ignore this platform. A lot of people have recently said it’s not worth posting on Facebook anymore. I disagree.

    Twitter has 271 million active users.

    They both have massive, growing audiences. This won’t change. They haven’t jumped the shark or lost out like Myspace. (more…)

  • How do you find ideas? Keep learning.

    Updated 2/3/2025

    When I was in college studying to be a teacher, the cliché phrase everyone batted around was “be a lifelong learner.”

    Passion for knowledge is what makes you a great teacher, but being teachable comes from self-awareness and the humility to grow as a person. They’re not necessarily correlated.

    Stagnant water, after a period of time, begins to attract bugs and decay. So it’s no wonder that when we stop learning, we stop finding ideas. They hide from us in the depths of the shadows, like a horrible game of cat and mouse.

    Historically, where do ideas come from? (You should totally watch this video from Steven Johnson.) Most often through cross-pollination and/or collaboration.

    “Allowing yourself to cross-pollinate will make your ideas stronger.  And it gets you out of the tired ‘same old’ marketing all of your competitors are doing.” Sonia Simone of CopyBlogger in “Five Marketing Lessons You Can Learn from a Weird ‘Real World’ Business“

    Don’t stop learning.

    “I’m not an expert and I aspire never to be one. As Frank Lloyd Wright rightly put it, “An expert is a man who has stopped thinking because ‘he knows.’” Brain Pickings began as my record of what I was learning, and it remains a record of what I continue to learn – the writing is just the vehicle for recording, for making sense.” Maria Popova as interviewed by Copyblogger

    For most people, this means reading. My attention span prefers 300-500 word articles if I’m reading online. Whatever books I do read are non-fiction, but it’s rare. If you’re like me, you need other ways to learn that don’t require a library card.

    Documentaries

    In this day and age, there are hundreds of documentaries to watch on YouTube, PBS, The Learning Channel, The History Channel, Discovery, and the lot. I’m currently nerding out on the Absolute History Channel on YouTube.

    Stream a video from Netflix. Personally, I love the Ken Burns documentaries. He has a way of using sound – both in his placement of music and direction of the narration – that seems to enrapture me.  My favorite of his documentaries is Lewis & Clark, closely followed by The Brooklyn Bridge. Challenge yourself to learn something new.

    Lectures

    Many colleges have classes for alumni or those you can audit. There are thousands of podcasts, both video and audio, to stimulate any area of curiosity you can imagine. Look up a TED Talk. They’re a low-level commitment since most of them are 3-20 minutes long. My three favorite talks are “The Power of Vulnerability” by Brené Brown, “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are” by Amy J. Cuddy, and “The 5 C’s of Connection” by Bobby Umar. But there are great ones about the oceans, how to tie your shoes, robots, and anything else you can dream of.

    Museums

    Take a day trip to an aquarium, museum, library, zoo, or botanical park. There are so many of these places near us and many of them have low entrance fees. Take a tour, read the signs, take notes and photos. Enjoy being out in nature or looking at art. This stimulates your brain in different ways which you may not be conscious of at the time.

    “In other words, outside the hubbub of the city, their brains started to rest and reset.” Ben Shiller

    My late husband and I went to Sherman Library & Gardens when we lived in California. It was only $3. Most cities have a botanical garden of some sort.

    Puzzles

    If you’re a vocabulary geek, do the Times Crossword. If numbers are your thing, do Sudoku. The more you challenge yourself, the more neural pathways you create. Essentially, the more you learn, the more you can learn. I do word searches and play Scrabble with my husband (he beats me by 200 point margins every game).

    Questions

    The truly curious mind never stops asking questions. Ask your friends what they’re reading, doing, visiting. Let them tell you. Don’t worry about them using up “your time” in the conversation. Spend time with mentors or colleagues brainstorming with them to solve their problems. Carol Stephen and I brainstorm on Twitter (or Pinterest or Facebook) a lot! It’s actually why I resurrected this post from the draft folder.

    To What End?

    The result of learning is growing. It’s neuroplasticity.

    Learning makes you a better writer, a more interesting person, and, quite possibly, gives you the edge in social circles both online and off.