#13 - Corporate Natalie

Hey all,

I’m extremely excited to share what I’ve learned from this week’s guest, Natalie Marshall (AKA Corporate Natalie). If you’ve doomscrolled TikTok or Instagram in the last couple of years, there’s no way you haven’t run into her. 

She turned her hilarious corporate videos into a full-blown content career, and it was awesome to pick her brain about the journey. 

Here's one key takeaway from the conversation: 

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Natalie’s first viral post was back in 2020, when folks were sharing idealized versions of their new work-from-home life. Instead of matcha tea and meditation, she showed what WFH was really like for her

• Waking up 30 seconds before a meeting
• Making her bed look nice in the background even though her room is a total mess
• Hunching over at a computer for nine hours a day
• Eating a singular piece of American cheese for breakfast

Since then, Natalie’s grown far beyond the early days of top-of-mind TikToks from her small apartment. 

Now, she puts out dozens of pieces of content per week, making her an expert on the question a lot of founders are asking: how do you create content sustainably over time?

Here are the five hacks that have allowed Natalie’s content machine to thrive in the last five years:

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1. She knows her niche.

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Natalie started with a pretty narrow box: she made jokes about what it was like to exist in the corporate world. Corporate Natalie easily caught on because it was relatable —  but it also provided her a structure to riff on.

“It’s good to be known for something. It’s good to be the person who does XYZ, and do that thing, and really keep doubling down on it and reiterating it over time.”

The big advantage she cites of knowing her niche is this: it allows her to stay in her lane and get really great at the one thing she does.

“You don’t have to be good at everything. You don’t have to have an opinion on everything.”

Her niche has grown and changed since the start, but she stays pretty specific about the roles she plays online.

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‍2. She repurposes — a LOT

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Natalie and I talked a lot about repurposing. She cited the value of the “goldfish brain” pretty early in our conversation, pointing out the fact that pretty much none of us remember even the last video we watched. 

She advocates for serious “reducing, reusing, and recycling” on TikTok, Instagram, and even LinkedIn.. Maybe take a different spin in the caption or change the written portion but, in general, you can reuse substantially.

“If something works, I’m going to lean in. Don’t worry about reusing content. People do it all the time.”

Also, get out of your head that everybody you know or everybody who's ever watched anything from you is watching every single post. At best, they're watching 1% of your total library. So you really are hitting a different audience every time. 

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3. She plans ahead

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Even though Natalie’s TikToks feel current, she actually plans a bit ahead. Every week, she scripts for the following week with her brand manager, Annie. Then they head into their week with 20-ish ideas of what they’re going to film that week.

When she plans ahead, she can take breaks and avoid daily filming, because they’ll batch content creation.

During the planning process, she also takes a look at what they were doing on that day the year before. If it was strong or can still be resonant, she’ll rinse & reuse.

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4. She keeps an eye on trends

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Nowadays, Natalie leans on her brand manager to help find trends and trending sounds. Even though Natalie knows what she offers, it’s important that she makes twists on stuff that’s already popular. She keeps a pulse on what’s happening in her online communities so she can post videos that will resonate.

There’s an interesting spin for LinkedIn content here. We don’t often think about trends on LinkedIn, beyond the “I just got engaged and here’s what it taught me about B2B marketing.” It might be worth paying more attention to trending topics and discussions.

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5. She outsources things that don’t fall in her core capacity

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The last thing Natalie does that makes content sustainable is outsource tasks that are beyond her core capacity. 

It’s a good reminder that we can really underestimate the teams people have online. 

She relies on accountants and financial advisors to help her grow, in addition to her brand manager that helps her ideate. She also made a (unsolicited!) plug for Good Content—if you want to make content without worrying about the strategy, editing, or publishing, you’ll want to lean on our team.

But regardless of what’s inside or outside of your capacity, the reality is true: you can’t do it all. No one online is doing it all, either.

Natalie and I covered way too much to include in a newsletter, so if you want to listen to the full episode and hear more about her journey and the rise of B2B influencers, check out this link.

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Meanwhile at Good Content…

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Top wins:

• We are excited to welcome 1 new client this month
• I’m honored to be a featured expert on Emily Kramer’s new podcast Dear Marketers. The episode will air on 3/19—check it out!

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Top learnings:

• LinkedIn now surfaces analytics on impressions generated from your comments. It’s eye-opening to see just how much traffic and value is generated from commenting on posts, and reinforces how important it is to set aside time to do so. More info here.

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Top recommendation:

• The State of LinkedIn report from Aware. They just released this huge analysis of 13M LinkedIn posts to synthesize exactly what’s happening on the platform. It was required reading for my team.

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Thanks for stopping by, folks. As always, feel free to reach out with questions, feedback, suggestions, or anything else that’s top of mind for you.

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- Peter

We're on a mission to master thought leadership content for B2B executives and their teams. Follow along to stay up to date with what we're learning, and please consider forwarding to a friend who might find this helpful.

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Next Guest:

Alex Boyd, Co-founder at Aware

‍Thursday, March 27