You know that moment when you stumble on a brilliant growth tactic hidden in a Reddit thread or buried deep in a comment section? That's the kind of stuff I live for.

In 2020, I interviewed Andrea Lisbona for Forbes about her less than two-year-old hand sanitizer brand, Touchland. The pandemic was wreaking havoc and the very green startup needed to act quickly and smartly.

A few years ago, I was head of content at a health insurance company — a role that required a team of full-time employees and freelancers to get the job done. But once ChatGPT hit the scene, I realized I could strike out on my own.

With 66% of marketers globally using artificial intelligence in their roles, it's no longer a matter of if you should use AI but how. How are other marketers (and your competition) using AI? How can you use AI ethically?

When clients first started asking me to handle their social media, I figured the image part would be easy. Create one clean graphic, upload it across platforms, and the tools would adjust everything automatically.

Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint — a blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of underrepresented business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your own success.

Look, we‘ve all been there — you know your website could be converting better, but figuring out exactly what to fix feels like solving a Rubik’s cube blindfolded. You‘re running A/B tests, analyzing heat maps, and guessing at what’s actually going to move the needle.

“I tried using AI for our marketing content, but it just doesn't sound like us.”

I’ve been in content marketing for about eight years, and I’ll tell you this golden nugget of truth for free: You can’t cheat your way to success in this game. And that’s especially true regarding marketing on a highly visual platform like Instagram.

Every few years, a new channel takes center stage — short-form video, podcasting, or AI-generated content — and people start asking the same question: “Are blogs dead?”

 
Since late 2024, major players in the chatbot game have been rolling out a deep research feature designed to provide what they call “expert-level analysis.”

Welcome to
Breaking the Blueprint
— a blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of underrepresented business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your success.


This piece is in collaboration with HubSpot Podcast Network’s Amplifying Voices campaign partnership with The Gathering Spot.

Pretty landing page examples are nice to look at, but let’s be real: You want yours to convert well — which is exactly what these landing page examples do.

LinkedIn is full of narcissists, and I have the data to prove it.

One of the hardest parts of our three-lesson format is deciding what NOT to include, and a lot of really useful advice is gathering dust in my Google Drive.

Time is money in marketing, so why not use AI workflows to boost productivity? I spoke with some of my colleagues at HubSpot, and they say they've found workflows that maximize their productivity, save time, and act as the perfect automated assistant.

My transformation from serving customers to nurturing a community didn't happen overnight. It started with a crisis. Gymshark’s infamous Black Friday 2015 catastrophe happened during my first week: Our website crashed on one of the busiest shopping days of the year.

In February, OpenAI gave a two-minute demonstration at a private event in Tokyo. The demo didn’t stay quiet for long. It set off a firestorm in the sales industry.

Running a marketing agency used to mean juggling a small army of freelancers, risking missed deadlines, and spending more time managing people than creating content and building strategies.

When I stepped into my role as head of content at Gong, I didn't come with a decade of marketing experience. I came with a sales background and a whole lot of time spent chasing leads. That experience turned out to be my unfair advantage.

You might know your Instagram content is good, but imagine how much better it will seem if it looks like 10,000 people agree.

I’ll never forget the first time someone asked me for a marketing performance update. I had six messy spreadsheets open, no clear narrative, and no KPI dashboard to tie it all together.

When I started working with B2B companies, I quickly realized that understanding how your customers make purchasing decisions is just as important as knowing your product inside and out. This is where a B2B buyer journey map becomes an invaluable asset.

Image editing used to mean opening Photoshop, wading through complex tools, and spending hours on tedious fixes. I've been there. It was frustrating and a massive bottleneck.

Writing with clarity means making your content easy to read and understand. If your audience can’t grasp what you’re trying to say, what’s the point?

Right now, some people will absolutely, 100% say that we’re in, without a doubt, a recession. Others will say that we’re absolutely, positively not in a recession. I think those people should argue with a brick wall. Regardless of where you might personally stand, there’s a lot of ambiguity about what’s actually going on; I’m here to clear it up.

Your website strategy should help drive business and marketing objectives. For your website to work, you need to keep up with what makes a good website today.

Video in ecommerce isn’t optional anymore — it’s the bare minimum. I don’t want to read novel-length product descriptions. I want to see it, feel it, trust it. And your customers want the same.

Let‘s be honest: AI assistants aren’t just for executives anymore. They're the secret weapon that can make you 10x more productive than everyone else in your company.

Video is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s now an absolute must and should be at the forefront of any marketing strategy. With almost half of Gen Z and millennials watching short-form video to discover new products, video is essential to increasing visibility and getting brand recognition.

If you've watched the news recently, the possibility of a recession has captured everyone’s attention.

It feels like not that long ago, companies were just starting to talk about AI in their operations. You had highly specific use cases or industry needs, but the sweeping proclamations of “artificial intelligence will upend business as we know it” are only now feeling especially urgent.

I know I’m in the minority, but the second September hits, I want to break out the Christmas tree, play “Jingle Bells,” and cover everything in baubles and tinsel. But one of the more accepted signs that the festive season is officially upon us is when holiday marketing campaigns start jingling, ringing and ho-ho-ho-ing into our homes, streets, and devices. After all, is it even Christmastime if I’m not hearing sleigh bells every five minutes?

As Wiz’s Head of Marketing Tom Orbach says, “Mini tools are 10x more powerful than free trials.”

Global marketing is no longer reserved for brands with deep pockets, nor is it a hassle for marketing managers who handle all marketing efforts.

If someone asks me to find the average of five values — 1, 4, 7, 8, and 10 — the equation is easy. I add up all five values and divide this by the total number of values.

I’m a former NBCUniversal Page, and I will always remember how thorough the application and interview process for the program was.