10 Questions With Tara Hunt (S1, Ep3)

Building a community takes more than a presence. The author of "The Whuffie Factor" and CEO of strategic marketing agency Truly talks content, marketing, and how to truly value your worth.

Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter are all social networks where brands have flocked to and some have even flourished. The mistake companies make is thinking that by simply setting up shop on any of these services means that their customers will flock to them.

For entrepreneur and consultant Tara Hunt, she is acutely aware of what drives a community. The founder and chief executive of social media marketing agency Truly, she is helping her clients understand that a comprehensive strategy, one involving content, design, insight, and purpose leads to success. Prior to that, she advised Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's campaign, and co-founded the San Francisco co-working space Citizen Space. Mrs. Hunt is also the author of "The Whuffie Factor", a book about social capital derived by one's influence through social media and networking.

In this edition of "10 Questions", she shares her experiences, how brands can view social media and content marketing, building a community, and discusses a blog post she wrote about how she discovered the right way to evaluate her worth.

This interview has been edited for brevity.

Before starting Truly, you launched a few companies including consultancies, worked for the campaign of now Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and even opened up a co-working space in San Francisco. What have you learned as an entrepreneur and what drew you to technology?

Let's start with technology, as that answer is simpler. :) I was drawn to technology at a very young age, partially encouraged by my father. He was a small-town veterinarian — so not in the business — but the biggest gadget geek anyone knew those days! I recall him bringing home the Apple IIe and buying those early coding magazines for us. I would follow the instructions and build text-based games for hours, playing with the code to see what else it would do.

I went into computer science in university with the ambition to become a developer, only to be completely turned off by the culture of the department. I ended up switching degrees in my second year — to a BA in communications and cultural studies — but it didn't turn me off technology itself. 

As far as being an entrepreneur, I also learned that from my father, but there were many things that he couldn't teach me and I've learnt myself over the years. One thing that has kept me moving forward is adopting a growth mindset. This means that I see failure as a learning experience and a challenge as an opportunity. I've also learned that entrepreneurial life isn't for everyone.

There is a lot that you sacrifice along the way and a big potential for getting nothing in return but a lot of experience. You have to love that idea. Too many people jump into business thinking that it's a way to make millions (or billions). That may be an outcome, but the majority of the time, it is not. True entrepreneurs love the journey, not the destination.

Ten years ago you authored "The Whuffie Factor" which was about harnessing social capital. Since then, how do you think social media and our influence changed?

The only things that have changed since TWF are the platforms. Social capital works the same as it always did. But something else has gotten in the way and I didn't predict this with TWF because I'm an optimist about human beings. That something is short-termism. In the book, I referenced Matt Ridley's thesis in the "Origins of Virtue" which is that people are selfish, but their selfish need to survive and thrive will always bring them back to cooperate and collaborate.

Decades of social science has shown us that people, if left on their own, will cooperate towards achieving the greatest good. Unfortunately, people haven't been left on their own. Social networks and social reward systems have encouraged competition over cooperation. Now "personal brands" and "influencers" are rewarded for their ability to attract as much attention as possible, leading to terribly anti-social behavior. I don't recognize social media anymore and find myself spending less time on the platforms and more time building my social capital in my own spaces, increasingly offline.

Is there a one-size-fits-all method for creating a community? How should brands think about putting together a community? Should it be around a brand or product?

There is never a one-size-fits-all for anything, let along creating and building a community. There are definitely guidelines to follow (some obvious do's and don'ts), but every community is different. Branded communities are not built as much as they are a result of people rallying love and support around strong, purpose-driven companies. Too many people think that you can open up a forum or fire up a Slack and just create some fun content and quizzes and a community will happen. A place to gather doesn't make a community, a place comes out of the natural gathering of a community.

The expression that describes this nicely is "paving cow paths." Build a brand with purpose and mission and value, and people will start to connect around it. THEN you provide the space. I just recently saw Douglas Atkin — formerly of Airbnb (and long-time community advocate) — speak at a conference. He told the story of Brian Chesky asking him to "grow a community" for Airbnb. His answer was, "Let's find a purpose instead." That's a great story, but even better was when he talked about times that Airbnb lost sight of that purpose and how it negatively affected the growth of the community AND the business. So, long story short, a brand can build a community, but it's better to have a purpose that drives community growth. Community isn't a tactic, it's an outcome.

Your firm worked with Nokia to launch a publication called "Futurithmic". Tell us what that is and how you came about to produce it? What was the strategy behind it?

"Futurithmic" was born out of luck, insights and passion. Luck, because I received an invitation to a writer's room on a project that Shaftesbury Films and Michael Hainsworth (a former BNN TV journalist) were working on. They needed a social/digital content expert to weigh-in on the ideas. This led to our collective group sending a spark of an idea to some amazing leaders at Nokia, who saw the spark and shared our vision. Truly, then, dove into our process of audience insights — where we take 'markets' and/or 'personas' and go on an anthropological mission of really understanding the whole person and culture around them to come up with an editorial mission and strategy. Futurithmic.com was the result.

The overall mission — to create an intentional future by exploring the hard questions around technology (ones that Facebook should have asked years ago) — came out of Nokia's history of thoughtful design, the questions that their customers were asking (leaders at CSPs), and the political climate we are operating in. We saw too much breathless coverage of technology and possibilities without the sober examination of consequences. We're not about being utopic, we're not about being dystopic, but we are about being intentional.

We reach out to and recruit people who we think are asking the right questions and doing that intentional work. From our insights, we knew we needed to approach it in an engaging, but informed way, and we needed to build a platform for this that was editorially independent of the brand. We work with the teams at Nokia, but they never interfere in our editorial. The only rules they have are around neutrality.

Truly produces a variety of content, from blog posts to short videos and podcasts. What advice would you give to clients about content marketing?

I'd say, don't do content marketing. Create content that means something and reaches the people who would most benefit from it. We don't promote ourselves as content marketers or a "content agency." We say that we build strategies for the social era. Content is a powerful part of that, but it needs to connect first and foremost.

How much marketing should be invested in online advertising and social media these days? Have you noticed a change in the past decade in terms of how brands use Twitter, Facebook, Google, YouTube, and other platforms to reach their customers?

There isn't a formula for investment into any particular platform or tactic, but I would say that companies SHOULD be investing more in insights and strategy. That's where you will find the right mix. We've created strategies for clients that hardly touch social media platforms because their audiences are gathering offline. It all depends on the audience and your goals. 

What are some creative content marketing efforts that you've come across?

I fell in love with this campaign from Lenovo recently. It's so much fun and the approach made learning about confusing, heavy tech concepts very simple. I'm a big fan of using metaphor or real-world examples to explain concepts and they really nailed it. I hope it isn't just a campaign, though. I'm also ALWAYS a huge fan of what Adobe does on the content front. From CMO.com to 99u to their fantastic in-depth blog, filled with great editorial, they do a great job of providing consistent value to their multiple audiences. They've been a huge inspiration to me for years.

Your husband/partner/spouse Carlos Pacheco is Truly's chief operating officer. How has that working relationship been and what strengths does he bring to the team?

Carlos just came up on his one-year anniversary and I couldn't be prouder of him. He's really learning how to be an entrepreneur himself. He comes from the content optimization and audience growth side of things. My strengths lie in market research, strategy and content creation, but would often go to him — even prior to him joining — for advice and updates on how to make sure that content gets in front of the right people. Together, we now have the full cycle of insights-creation-optimization-analytics-back to insights again.

It's also great having a partner who is as passionate about what we're doing as I am. I knew coming into 2018 that I needed help, but having had disastrous partnerships before, I had to be sure that this partner was right. I hadn't even considered Carlos at first — having him in a salaried job was a nice fall-back! — but the more we talked, the more it made sense. I think it's actually brought us closer together.

You wrote a blog post about how you felt you undervalued your work to your clients. Has this view changed? Are there ways you can suggest to overcome this fear, uncertainty, and doubt so others can also be confident in their work?

This one is really tough. I think there will be lots of people who run consultancies who understand that some of the under-valuing of our work has to do with where we're at, with what the market will bear, and with the clients themselves.

In regards to "where you're at," this valuation is tied to a few things:

1. Have you established yourself as a firm that is worth a premium? (i.e., big case studies, awards, coverage, etc.)
2. Is your approach seen as essential or experimental right now? (this is a big one for us as we have clients who spend oodles on TV, but balk at our costs even though we deliver more direct results...because we're still in the experimental camp)

In regards to "what the market will bear," this valuation is tied to:

1. The type/size of businesses you are working with (we don't work with startups any longer),
2. The location of your operations, and,
3. The sophistication of your clients (our ideal client already works with other agencies).

And, finally, "the clients themselves" refers to what I lovingly call the "difficult client surcharge." There are clients who are wonderfully communicative and trusting and collaborative and remove roadblocks and speed bumps and make everything easier. We've had lots of these and we can do so much more for them for less in fees because we don't get caught up in heavy admin. Nokia is one of these! A gigantic, international organization who is SO easy to work with. Then there are the clients who, for whatever reason, hold their cards close to their chests, create extra red-tape, refuse to open up and collaborate and require extra management.

I'm a very service-oriented person, but there have been situations where I've said, "we can't do anything for you," because I already know early on that these projects are doomed due to clients getting in the way of their own success. 

I have so much more to write on this topic and the whole industry is so broken right now that I could go on, but here is where we're at with Truly. We own the company and are trying to do great work to help our clients achieve their goals. If we see a situation where the client doesn't value that or will get in the way of that, I would rather take the hit in the short term so that we make room for the great clients who see our value and collaborate towards their success. Will this make our lives more stressful in the near-term? Yep. It does every day. But we're making sure we have processes in place to hold out on this.

In November, you wrote a blog post saying that branded content is a lie. Please explain.

Well, it was a bit click-bait-y, I will have to admit, but it is true that most branded content sucks. Speaking of broken industry, have you looked at agency websites these days? Well, it seems that, no matter what a firm's core expertise is, they all somehow also do content marketing. It's amazing! Seems that content, much like social media, is some sort of throw-away thing that anyone can just whip up as an "add on." Speaking of being devalued...oy.

My post and video were done out of frustration (which, honestly, drives 99% of my posts and videos!). We do a lot of collaboration with other agencies and would never list things like coding, PR, UX, media planning, brand development, SEO, programmatic, etc. on our website because we prefer to bring in partners to help us with this. Have I built websites before? Yep. Do I understand SEO? Yep. Do I know how to media train someone? Yes. Do I understand how to design a UX flow? Absolutely. But I'm not an expert and, I believe, my clients deserve experts.

The number of times we've been called in to fix crappy content that a PR firm or ad agency has put in place is astounding. You, Ken, know that good writing is rare and good writing that produces great engagement is even rarer, but it's not widely understood.

Photo credit: Tara Hunt

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Special thanks go out to Tara Hunt for participating in this discussion. "10 Questions" is a project designed to learn more from the people in tech and how it relates to businesses. If you'd like to be interviewed, I'd love to hear from you — send me a note on Twitter (@thekenyeung), Facebook, or here on LinkedIn. You can also find this entire series shared on Flipboard and also on Medium.

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