Month: April 2018

Austin Marketing Jobs, Austin Marketing Technology

Building Community From Scratch By Being Authentic

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Creating community with Lani Rosales

Recipe for building community: start with smarts; add in some savvy; and top it off with plenty of sass. Put those together in a leader and you have Lani Rosales, Chief Operating Officer of The American Genius, a technology and entrepreneurship publication. She is also one of the founders of BASHH (Big Ass Social Happy Hour) and Austin Digital Jobs. The latter is one of the most thriving communities on Facebook, and THE place to go if you’re looking for a job in Austin that involves tech.

I had the absolute pleasure of chatting with Lani Rosales about how she builds the community around her three endeavors, how they tie together, and what unique elements keep all three thriving. Our conversation did not disappoint.

Short on time? Cliff’s Notes below so you can skip to what sounds interesting. Spoiler: it’s all interesting!

  • 4:00 How Lani got to where she is now with a shitty poem.
  • 6:30 Marketing has always been the core of what Lani does in life
  • 7:15 Why we should be thanking the Californians for moving here
  • 8:00 Austin Digital jobs–a meaningful Facebook group 6 years in the making
  • 12:00 Competing against hundreds of thousands of bajillions of groups
  • 14:00 How the Digital Jobs Facebook group feeds into other endeavors
  • 15:30 Give them what they want…and hey, they’ll hang around
  • 17:00 Having an honest voice and a very thick skin
  • 19:05 Keeping things human and organized through specific content
  • 21:10 Austin needs it, so someone has to do–community altruism
  • 21:35 Spinning digital into in-person events
  • 23:05 “I thought Twitter was stupid and I didn’t want to do it.” Networking for those who hate networking
  • 25:45 Keeping the online culture in person because we’re not good at turning on our filters
  • 27:45 What’s next in Lani’s world–retirement? Expansion?
  • 32:30 Where to find Lani, ADJ, and The American Genius

You can follow The American Genius on Twitter, and request an invitation to join over 38,000 members in Austin Digital Jobs (just behave, because Lani will bring the ban-hammer down).

Once again, I’d like to thank our sponsor, ShippingEasy. Visit the website and check them out to show your support of the podcast and find solutions to your e-commerce shipping woes.

Podcast episode

What does it all mean?

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Austin Marketing Podcast Keep Marketing Weird

Weird: adjective

1: of strange or extraordinary character

The above is Webster-Merriam dictionary’s definition of the word weird. When we think of “weird”, our minds often skew more toward the zany, the bizarre, the outcast, or the unexplainable. When it comes to the approach of this podcast, I prefer to focus on the latter portion of that statement.

How often is that you come across marketing that you’d describe as being of “extraordinary character”? My guess is not often. But I’m hoping we can explore some instances where you might find it. Some marketing and marketers that go against the norm, break convention, and keep things, well, weird.

Welcome to Keep Marketing Weird, the Austin marketing podcast. This is the intro episode and accompanying show notes…even though it’s technically coming after a previous episode. Keep it weird, AMIRIGHT?

What’s up with that subtitle: the Austin marketing podcast? In this intro episode, I go into that. It’s more than just the place I live. It’s the community, the marketing community, that I want to build around this endeavor.

It’s a little piece of me that was missing during a major change in my life. I’m probably making it sound more Hallmark movie than it actually is, but who doesn’t love a little dramatic element?

So let’s dive into this short episode, introducing the concepts and approach of the podcast. Hopefully, you’ll listen to this one, the previous one (it’s a great interview, if you haven’t caught it already), and many more after.

One thing I forgot to do, and this is very important, is to tell you my favorite place to get breakfast tacos. This is a question I will be asking all my guests, because it says a lot about someone here in Austin. You know what I mean. My favorite spot is Veracruz Tacos (with El Primo coming in a very close second and El Tacorrido in third).

If you’re so inclined, join our weird marketing community, let’s build something, and get weird together.