Goodbits Community Manager, Lana Topham
Heya here!
Happy Toonie Day!
Thanks for being here today. We are excited to be able to chat with Lana Topham from Brewhouse and Goodbits.
Here’s more from Lana:
I’m a Creative, disguised as a Community Manager!
What I Do: Goodbits allows you to quickly build slick email newsletters for your audience with links you share on Buffer. We automatically collect your Buffer links throughout the week, so you can focus on curating the magic and sharing it with your subscribers!
One of the hats I wear is Community Manager for Goodbits. Because we are a small firm, I also do Payroll, HR, Events, Office Management, Accounting….umm…does anyone else wear this many hats? #jugglefest
My Story + Other: In my me-time, I’m an athlete-sewer. Wha the wat? Firstly, I love to play! Basketball, volleyball, running, biking, hiking, crossfit, snowshoeing, skiing, etc. I apply the same enthusiasm and energy into my favourite hobby — sewing. My personal website is www.hearttextiles.com where I just started documenting projects and flexing my maker-muscles. I dabble in surface design for fabric, too. One day, I would like to open up a shop that sells rad fabric, locally-made items, and has a sewing lounge for people to learn and inspire one another.
I think that 100 duck-sized horses would win over 1 horse-sized duck.
(You can follow Lana on Twitter here!)
Thanks for joining us today, Lana! Welcome! 😊
Community
To start us off, I’d love to ask a community-related question. I love that you are building a community around Goodbits.
What are some of the things you have been/are working on in terms of the community aspect? Following that, what has worked well for you and what hasn’t quite work that well?
Well, maybe that’s 2 questions 😊 — Alfred Lua
What has worked really well has been hosting little events to get people in Vancouver in one spot, having a beer, chatting…casually < — that’s key. Has to be authentic.
What hasn’t worked is trying to have a presence on all the social sites and communities — if you don’t have time to give love to your snapchat channel, there’s no point in creating one.
I have found that the term Community Manager is a bit different depending on the company. Would love to hear what your day to day is like as a Community Manager for Goodbits is like. If that’s a bit broad, I’d love to know the top 3 applications, tools that you use as a Community Manager. — Beatrice Leung
It literally changes day-to-day but I think I am wired for that now. I used to work in HR all day and found that I was on autopilot but now I am always having to use my creative mind to solve problems and that appeals to me. HOWEVER, I do feel scattered from time-to-time. 😊
Top 3: 1) I use Feedly weekly to source great marketing content to share and to continue to learn what’s going on in that space. (Buffer is a fav to source content..duh!), 2) Slack, I suppose, but don’t we all use it to stay connected with our co-workers and communities? and 3) Spotify, to quiet the noise. CAN COFFEE BE CONSIDERED A TOOL?!!
I’m interested in whether you guys are looking to build a community around Brewhouse, Goodbits or both? That has to be a challenge especially when you’re splitting your time. — James Qualtrough
Actually, my focus is on Goodbits, as far as building a global community. When it comes to Brewhouse though, it’s more of an internal community I am a part of building (Friday Family Feast lunches where one team member cooks for the others, team beers, celebrating birthdays and holidays).
How do you monitor your success and growth as community manager, what KPIs are you looking at? — Joshua Price
We measure that qualitatively. It’s a bit fuzzy. We measure by community growth and conversations we have on twitter and blog posts, conversations on communities we’re involved in and influencers that recommend us.
Is that all in a spreadsheet or do you have a favourite tool to track twitter followers / conversations? 😊 — Hailley Griffis
Great question, Hailley! We do have a ghetto little spreadsheet to track conversations and whom we’ve sent swag and gifts to. We’ve tried some Twitter tools to auto follow, unfollow and whatnot but I ended up not liking them because you’re not getting your true fans that are interested in your product. I do this a manually now. I suppose a tool like Sprout Social could help but the volume isn’t quite there to warrant the price tag.
What would be your go-to-tip to create a community when you don’t really have a product or service to work with yet? Background: We are creating a mobile app to connect IoT devices with rules and conditions. I feel like dry-swimming to connect to influencers, possible advocates, other audiences because the app is not done yet. But on the other I want to get a headstart when we go live. How would you work with that? — Frank Meeuwsen
I think if there is an area you’re interested in, then start curating content around that area to share and see who the interested are. For example, we one Goodbits customer that focuses on Augmented and Virtual Reality and he was really into that space (Hammer & Tusk). He started an email newsletter and started gaining subscribers …found his tribe!
Start Up Culture
Following James Qualtrough’s question and your answer, it’s amazing to see you and your team at Brewhouse work on Goodbits as a side project (I totally thought it is a startup on its own!). It feels quite similar to Buffer and Pablo.
What are some of the lessons you all have learnt so far? For example, how does your team manage the resources between the main business and Goodbits? And has it been worth working on this side project? — Alfred Lua
Less of a side project and more of one of many products up the pipeline! We are having so much fun. And my boss, Kalv (and team), had to create this tool — there wasn’t anything out there that collected links w/a browser extension and pre-populated an upcoming email newsletter two years ago so it was an itch that needed to be scratched and he needed it for his other business at the time! As far as resources, we work on features for Goodbits when a chunk of time opens up or there’s a feature we feel needs to be added, and the remainder is focusing on Brewhouse clients. We’re able to bootstrap Goodbits because all of our eggs are not in one basket — we’re not assuming Goodbits will work.
That sounds like a great model of doing things. People work on Brewhouse to generate the income to work on Goodbits. With that in mind is the real passion for people Goodbits or would you say people working for both equally enjoy both? — Chris Joyce ⚡
YES! It is a good model. Some call it bootstrapping 😊 Hmmm…I’m not exactly sure what you mean on that last sentence…We are a team of 9 and basically it’s me and 8 developers and designers. We have developers that love working on the Goodbits features and some of the guys love the diversity of working on different client work.
Apologies, the last sentence was poorly worded. If Goodbits ‘took off’ and became a commercial and financial success do you believe work on Brewhouse would cease, or would people continue to work on both? — Chris Joyce ⚡
Ahh, I see now Chris! Good question! I would say NO. I know that sounds weird but these guys at Brewhouse love creating code more than anything …what would happen is we would grow the Goodbits team separately and have dedicated developers, Product Manager, Sales, etc and have it as its own entity and continue on to the next product idea + client work. But don’t quote me on that!
Hey there Lana, awesome to have you here. 😊 So what’s the biggest challenge you face as a multi-function team member of Goodbits? — Stephen’Bern’ Banham
The biggest challenge is definitely trying to figure out the priorities for the day. Some times things are on fire, other times they’re just on slow-burn…trying to prioritize the tasks.
Do you guys all work in an office or are you distributed? — Joshua Price
We are all in one space in beautiful Gastown (haha) Side note: they’re filming a movie down here right now and there are NY cabs driving everywhere. But half of our team is out of the office this week working on client work.
My boss has always wanted people to be all in one space because it’s a way to unintentionally get to know each other and start a culture naturally. I don’t know how you Buffers do it being remote. I know it works (you’re a testament to it all but it seems like it would be difficult).
How ‘agency’ is your office — do you have a slide? — James Qualtrough
We’re more of a product studio and we partner with companies to build ideas. But maybe we should get a slide. Do you know of a place, James? I heard Slidecraft is a good one!!
We haven’t grown to slide status yet. We’re bootstrapped too so in the same office as our agency. So for Brewhouse do your team work with startups on new software or clients with legacy systems or a mixture of both? — James Qualtrough
Ahh, I see, James! Apologies. We do a mix of both creating brand new tools for clients and also diving into their code base and cleaning it all up. We dig rails but we keep abreast of what’s going on.
A day in the life…
On a more serious note, is Tim Hortons as good as other Canadians claim it to be? — Joshua Price
Haha….NO!! We are called Brewhouse for a reason — we LOVE our coffee!!! I have not touched Timmy Ho’s for the last couple of years. We like Blue Bottle over here!
I’ve got a time management question. How do you fit in your 30+ sports on top of work and sewing??? Do you have longer days in Vancouver than the rest of us? — James Qualtrough
Great question, James! I don’t have kids or a dog or many responsibilities so when I am done work, I am done and it’s on to me-time. I actually play 51 sports though.
Explain the difference between sewing and crochet (however it’s spelled) — Joshua Price
Sewing is like the stitches that make up your clothes. See the clothes you’re wearing? They are sewn together with thread…and they’re probably awesome. I don’t know what crochet is…I think it’s with yarn and you make doilies for your coffee table. I dunno!
What happens if I miss a stitch, can I save my scarf? — James Qualtrough
If you miss a stitch, just toss it!! Haha..that’s knitting!
On this topic, would you be up for sharing more about your favourite hobby, sewing? I love your dedication to it! How did it become your favourite hobby?
P.S. That party PJ looks super comfy! — Alfred Lua
My Mom was always sewing when I was little. She was a single Mom with 2 kids and needed to save money where she could. I started sewing little doll clothes. Then I became a tomboy and started with all the sports but have come back to sewing a different times of my life. It’s the ultimate creative outlet for me. The possibilities! It’s weird but there is a resurgence with the craft — more and more young people are taking it up.
And it has the power to propel change! I made this quilt square to represent one of the 43 students who went missing in Mexico two years ago and it is going to be part of a quilt for protests. Kinda neat.
(Psst…Check out Lana’s sewing site)
It’s interesting to hear that more and more young people are taking it up! — Alfred Lua
Ya, I think it’s just because people want to go back to their roots and are becoming less interested in buying cheap clothes made in factories that aren’t up to standard. And there’s just something about receiving or giving something homemade. It’s a love thing!
What are some newsletters you would recommend us to check out? 😊 — Alfred Lua
I LOVE Little Walden, by James Qualtrough (fellow Bufferer) It’s 5 links for the creatives of the world.
I love NEXT DRAFT by Dave Pell. It’s too good.
We also curate and create a weekly email newsletter. I build it each week for the marketers of the world — Goodbits Weekly.
And just one last thing, a handful of you seemed interested in trying Goodbits out. Here’s a coupon for a pro account for 30 days. Code: bufferlove Mr. Buffer seamlessly integrates with Goodbits. The salacious story here.
Thanks for the recommendations, Lana 😊
Thanks so much for chatting with us today and sharing your wisdom in community building, sewing and playing 51 sports, Lana!
Thanks to everyone who joined us today too! 😊
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