Young Professional Interview: Jake Quade

This week Keyobi had the opportunity to chat with Jake Quade, a young professional working as the Content Marketing Manager at finder.com.au in Australia. We were very excited that he was willing to share his experience and insight with us about the marketing industry.

So Jake, tell us how you got started in the marketing profession?

After university, I got started in working in public relations. I see marketing as a way to bring people in and to look at what draws people’s attention and the way to market something is depends on the target audience.

What is the one thing you wish you knew before you started working in marketing?

I wish I knew that there are ways to speed up any kind of interaction; that things can be automated, you don’t have to always be on the pulse. There is code that you can write to help things be more automated and having something automated isn’t necessarily “cheating”. For example, if you find something you like on Medium, you can automatically publish to Twitter. People will have to look into automation more to put out even more content.

If you could give someone one piece of advice, what would it be?

Put yourself into a position where it’s about the title and work you do. Get an internship where you can have a lot of freedom in what you can do or get yourself a job in a company (even if it’s small) where the position is high up. I was the editor in chief of a small magazine but the position gave me the opportunity to organize interviews with well known musicians and the position sounded very prestigious when applying to other jobs.

Is the marketing profession different from what you first expected?

Marketing is more fast paced than I first expected. I didn’t know that you would have to know how to code at times but it can be very helpful having a script running in the background looking for people to follow on Twitter or similar posts. Marketing is actually more automatic, and has quicker processing by using coding.

What is your favourite form of social media to use and why?

I like Reddit because it’s really weird. On other forms of social media, people are going to respond and you need reply to them. On Reddit, your authority doesn’t mean anything, popularity of a post solely depends on the content.

What do you find most exciting about modern marketing?

I’m interested to see how social media for companies will change. There’s currently a lot of pressure for companies to be on social media. The initial buzz and need may start to wear off, and we’ll see more corporate responsibilities to not being on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media channels. I also see there being more discussion on ownership of content on other platforms such as Medium.

What is a major obstacle to overcome in marketing?

Getting brand image down is really interesting. It’s all about selling the idea that a brand can have a voice.

What does success in marketing look like to you?

I think long term human interaction is the goal. Quantitative metrics is less important. It should be less about looking at page views and more at time on sites. Exit pages will be a big thing. We need to develop more ways to understand what things look like with the biggest focus on moving away from statistics on quantity over quality.

What is the most memorable milestone in your career so far?

There’s a music festival in Australia called Splendour in the Grass, and we did a massive data audit on the last 3–6 set lists and gigs. Then we matched which artists had been ripping off the same songs or experience. We partnered with a massive publication, and revealed the artists who recycled music. It opened up a lot of eyes to the fact that music is less about bands and more about individual hits. I want to look into doing more of data heavy journalism in the future.

How do you think what you are doing now will impact your career in the future?

The way I see it, with a lot of careers, if you’re the kind of person who gets bored, you’ll stay with same company but move horizontally to different positions. Or, you can build yourself and your experience up and move to similar roles in different companies. That’s what I aim to do. Different companies will give you a different experience and you’ll learn new things even if it is a similar role to one you had before. My next step would be branching out to different companies, and take the next steps to moving into more marketing.

A big thanks to Jake for taking the time to share his wisdom and expertise with us. Hope you enjoyed learning some insight from a talented and young marketing professional. If you have any questions or comments get in touch with us @Keyobi or Jake @jake_quade!

Originally published at blog.keyobi.com.