I’d experienced incredible joy. I’d experienced overwhelming fear. I’d never experienced both of these so intensely and at the exact same time.

“Oh, a Spring baby” they’d say. “That’ll be great for going on walks when she’s born”. My due date was April 8th, 2020 and this was a common response from anyone who learned I was pregnant.

It turns out, they were partially right. It was a great time to go on walks. Clasping a mask, crossing the street with the stroller, trying not to get too close to the neighbors.

My daughter was born on April 3rd. Only…

What’s the most useful thing you saw online lately? A YouTube tutorial? A blog post that clearly explained something you’ve been trying to figure out? An inspirational story your friend posted to Facebook?

How did you get to the video and the blog? Odds are, you typed a phrase into Google. Long before that, though, someone put in the work to understand what people were searching for. Then they created the most useful content possible on the topic.

Why did you see the inspirational Facebook post from your friend? Probably because you’ve clicked on, commented on or liked their posts…

You could say I stumbled into my marketing career.

My path looked something like this:

• I got a degree in magazine journalism and briefly worked in that field. Less than a year later, the magazine was acquired by another company and my position was eliminated.
• I landed in the editorial department of New York City tourism. Still not technically marketing, but I was creating content to “ sell” New York City to tourists.
• I moved to Boston and got a job on the content team at a public relations agency. I spent a lot of time working with founders, developers…

… no matter what you’re selling

A couple of years ago, my husband and I started a kitchen renovation. For three months, a sign stood on our lawn with the company’s name and contact information. Earlier this year, we needed our roof replaced. The new company and new roof came with a new sign at the end of the driveway.

I didn’t think twice about those signs. After all, they were small and out of the way.

Then, this weekend we were out on a walk and passed a home on our street with beautiful new landscaping. We’d been thinking…

I majored in journalism and I work in content marketing. Let’s just say my curiosity can lead me down some interesting rabbit holes.

Also relevant: my colleagues and I in the marketing department are used to receiving email pitches for everything from sales enablement platforms to translation services. And because we work in marketing, a few things are true:

1. The average ones get forgotten (and ultimately deleted)
2. The really bad ones get deleted a little quicker
3. The good ones might get a response if the product is especially relevant
4. The great ones typically get replied to or shared with the…

You brainstormed and strategized and researched. You outlined and wrote and edited. You added the perfect images. You published your work and…

Now what? Cross it off your to-do list and move on to the next thing?

What if I challenged you to create something new every day for a month — without creating anything 100% from scratch? What about two months?

Sixty days of no brand-new content. Maybe you think I’m crazy. But you know what also sounds crazy? Pouring all your time and brainpower into an amazing article, eBook, or video and moving on to the next thing…

Let’s get one thing out of the way: I am not a recruiter and I’m not a certified resume writer. What I am is someone who approaches job applications as a creative challenge. When I’ve applied to jobs in the past, I’ve always thought:

• How can I stand out?
• How can I make it clear I really, really want this job?
• How can I go beyond what everyone else is doing?
• How can I do these things in the most efficient way possible?

I’m also a content strategist by trade, which comes in handy here. …

You’re probably thinking, “of course I’m a person!”

And yet, there are countless ways we seem to remove humans from the equation when we’re working furiously toward answering business questions and solving problems.

This topic came up earlier this year in a conversation with my husband and got stuck in our minds for a while. He’s a computational biologist at a healthcare startup. I manage content and social media at a global tech company. Both of our brains contributed to this article.

Back when large gatherings were a thing, he returned from a healthcare conference with his head spinning from…