A Journey From College Grad to Intern to Full-time Marketing Officer

From graduating college to interning to finding a full time job has been quite the ride over the past year. As much as you say you are prepared for the real world no one and nothing can prepare you for this transition. And if you ever meet anyone who says it's easy, they are fibbin'. It's tough. After twelve months I finally found my niche although it was not a breeze, the journey was so worth it. 

Growing up, I was told on more than one occassion, "You should do what you love in life." Throughout college and post college I was set on doing just that. With a proud shiny degree from the University of Notre Dame (Go Irish!) I thought I had my career in the bag. However, after months of tedious applications and interviews, I realized I was mistaken. I was unhappy with my first internship out of college and was craving a position of growth; I wanted to be challenged. After browsing for weeks upon weeks on Indeed.com, LinkedIn, One Day One Job, I finally found ToutApp. ToutApp was offering a Marketing Internship, the position summed up as:

If you want to kickstart your career in startup marketing, if you're willing to learn, if you're creative, and if you've got the hustle in you: THIS IS THE ROLE FOR YOU.

I was sold. I interviewed and was offered the position a couple days later. I landed quite a unique internship at ToutApp. 

As an entry level Marketing Intern I was given tasks that were not typical for an intern. Instead of the usual hand holding process I was given the freedom to be innovative and share my thoughts and ideas. And with much guidance and support from TK, CEO and Founder of Tout, I learned a great deal more within the startup world than I ever imagined. From monitoring anayltics and metrics of content to creating product videos I was constantly learning something new and fresh everyday. Months later, I was fortunate to be offered a full-time position in Marketing at ToutApp. From the product video development side to blogging to content creation, and distribution, I landed an exciting job within a company in the midst of serious growth and is still growing today. 

While working at ToutApp, I was introduced to Paul Singh, and he provided me some of the best advice. Paul told me to search out my greatest strengths and master them. I took his advice to heart. Eight months later, with much mentoring, reading and research within the marketing field I am actually doing something I feel good about and am getting good at. 

With the advice of my mentor TK, I have come to realize:

If you really want a rewarding career of growth and ultimately success + happiness - find out your ultimate strengths and skill set and become the most knowledgeable master of them. And once you become really good at what you do each day with research and practice, you'll be passionate about your career.

I will be the first to admit that I'm no Einstein, no prodigy of Marketing, just a twenty two year old college grad trying to find my path to be successful within my new career and thought I would share my experience with you all. My advice to those just getting out of college and have absolutely no idea what you want to do... try the following:

Find a mentor

Find and reach out to someone older, more experienced, smarter and wiser. Ask them to teach you the things they wish they would have known. You will gain a tremendous amount of knowledge. As Neil Patel coined, "Average people learn from their mistakes. Smart people learn from other people's mistakes."

Find your strengths 

Apply for an internship for a company that will allow you to grow and take on different tasks and projects outside of your comfort zone. A challenging position will become the most rewarding position.

Master them

Master the crap out of them. Read, chat, join webinars, take a skillshare course, go to a Meet-up. Follow the top twitter accounts, top bloggers and influence leaders in the field. And soak it in and apply it to what you are doing. You will only grow.

Try Sales or Marketing 

Many companies have amazing training programs. Take those as an opportunity to grow and learn about the industry. If you are interested in a sales career, check out the ToutApp Sales Job Spotlight featuring awesome sales jobs at companies all over the world. This is a great way for you to kick start your journey. 

Have faith

Believe in yourself. You will find your niche. Be patient. Keep working towards your goal, whatever it may be, for the long haul. You will eventually find it. 

So venture out into the real working world, your career awaits you. A journey from College Grad to Intern to Full-time Marketing Officer - SHARE YOUR JOURNEY! 

“ToutApp gives insight into the psychology of every single one of my prospects”

Our featured User of the Week entry comes from Mark Baer, Business Development Manager at ConnectAndSell. Every week or so, we'll profile a different user who uses our app to improve their email productivity. If you would like to be featured in the future, you can apply here. 

I work as a Business Develpoment Mananger for ConnectAndSell. My responsibilities are to cultivate new opportunities and develop existing business relationships with clients throughout the U.S. One of the main business objectives is to prospect new business and determine interests. Our software enables conversation and we were looking for an effective way to penetrate email conversations. That's where ToutApp came in. 

Why ToutApp?

I use ToutApp to track my opportunity pipeline, prospect net-new business and to do follow-ups before and after phone conversations. The reason I love ToutApp is because it gives me insight and visibility on potential prospects along with one single email thread to help me better manange my time and determine my next steps in a business conversation. ToutApp has been beneficial in helping me turn more of my email efforts into positive outcomes. 

ToutApp gives insight into the psychology of every single one of my prospects. 

Know what is happening with your emails. Start Touting. 

Life without ToutApp would mean “Less Deals Done”

Our featured User of the Week entry comes from Matt Ellsworth, VP of Growth, at Storefront. Every week or so, we'll profile a different user who uses our app to improve their email productivity. If you would like to be featured in the future, you can apply here.

Storefront is a marketplace for short term retail real estate. Artists, eCommerce companies, designers, online retailers and sellers often times are in the market looking for short term real estate which can be difficult to find. What we do is take the legwork out - our team works with brokers and landlords in order to find amazing retail spaces for people to lease on a short term basis so they can sell their products and connect with their customers. 

Storefront makes it easy for people with something to sell to find space to sell it. 

How do you use ToutApp?

Along the lines of why a lot of people use Tout and the most addictive part is knowing when people are opneing you emails, knowing that someone had read your email and you can acknowledge the fact that they did recieve it. Tout allows us to stay on top of our prospects and give us the ability to know how successful our email campaigns are on an individual as well as a team basis.

What success can I attribute to ToutApp? Honestly, a whole lot of time saved.

Why Matt Loves ToutApp

• Real Time Email Tracking: Knowing when people are opening your emails - that something is happening with the emails you send. It's the no clue zone and I like having a clue about that zone.
• ToutApp Meeting Times: Being able to give a list of times you are available to meet or chat on the phone is a game changer. This function can save you 3-4 emails in any given email chain and if you do that five times a dat you are talking about a significant amount of time saved. 
• Tout Templates: Eliminates that repetition and saves you a whole lot of time. 
• Tout Group Emails: Being able to send a personalized email to a group of prospects is really amazing. It fills the void between marketing emails like mailchimp and copying and pasting the sames email over and over again.
• ToutApp Happiness: The ToutApp team is always there to answer any and all questions when you need it. 

My life without Toutapp would mean less deals done. 

Content Marketing is the New Black

Content marketing is the new black, is the future of marketing and isn't going anywhere anytime soon. For those who live under a rock, content marketing is all about creating and distributing valuable content to attract and convert a prospect into a customer. The goal is to educate and engage others so that they know who you are, like what you are sharing and trust you. So really, if you think about it, content marketing isn't really anything new. It's purely speaking to your audience through your own stories. Instead of purchasing advertising to get in to the mind of your consumer -  companies are creating compelling content that captivates and lures your audience in. 

At ToutApp, we consider ourselves a teaching company more than a selling one. We like to teach salespeople how to be better at sales by providing rich content, videos and resources. We are passionate about our product BUT we are also passionate about teaching others how to be better at sales. We found it is key to provide content that in the end will allow your audience to learn something valuable and for use to become a better salesperson all around. 

With that in mind content marketing is a great wat to get customers or just an audience to your site. Just to prove the success we have acquired, we recently published our first iBook: How to Write Kickass Sales Emails. Our iBook generated over 100 conversions in the first few weeks. Simply because we created valuable content. FOR FREE. For salespeople and people who just wanted to learn the logistics of writing a kickass email. Over the past months, we have developed more awesome content where we have learned how to go all in - in the content marketing "trend." And so, we would like to share with you the content marketing truths we've developed at ToutApp around building a great brand, educating, inspiring and sharing valuable content. 

• Create something VALUABLE. Engage your audience with interesting and valuable content. They need to be gaining something new in the first two sentences. 
• Share a PROBLEM. Start with a common problem that you would want some insight on. Solve that problem by giving detailed insight with facts to back it up. 
• Show you have a PULSE. Make you audience giggle, cry or ponder. Allow for them to be able to react and share your content versus bounding away from the page (Bonus: If it creates emotion chances are it will be highly shareable).
• Make the headline...KICKASS. Same goes for the subject line in your email - if they aren't catchy, short and informative most likely they won't open that email or take the time to read your content.
• Don't forget about YOU. Your content needs to encapsulate your company's core values and beliefs. Don't lose sight of this in your messaging. Exude a strong and consistent brand that others can easily recognize.

These simple truths will give you the foundation for getting started for greater resources and rich content check out these blogs:

• Quick Sprout: Neil Patel is the man. Founder of Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics, Neil was named top 100 blogger by Technorati and top influencers on the web according to the Wall Street Journal and boy does his blog rock. He creates some of the most valuable content on the web - seriously start reading Quick Sprout religiously and thank me later. 
• Hubspot: "Create Marketing people love." Hubspot has an enormous library of content from introductory material to advanced. From SEO to content creation. You will be sure to gain more than enough knowledge to become an advanced marketer from their blog. Check out Hubspots most recent post 7 B2B companies to Admire for Exceptional Visual Content.
• Copyblogger has a wide range of knowledge from their in depth tutorials to their popular articles. They break down how to build an audience that builds your business beautifully.
• The Eloqua blog publishes powerful content on marketing from how to create that blog post, infographic, white paper or tutorial video that will turn a prospect into a paying customer. 

Overall they all have some amazing valuable content that will transform you into a content marketing rockstar. So go out publish some valuable high quality content. Educate people and by doing so you will position you and your brand as content thought leaders in your industry. Give the ability to boast and share easily and it will spread. Teach people to be better and they will join you. 

P.S. Try Touting your content. See how others are engaging with your messaging and know what is resonating and what is not. 

Introducing: The Sales Communications Dashboard

First of all, Happy Friday.

For those of you that are already ToutApp users, I hope you had a fantastic week of sales communications with new and exciting leads. Thanks to Tout's Live Feed, you already know who your most engaged leads were, and have probably closed a few more deals than you normally would have since you focused your time on the right people.

For this Friday, as you reflect on how the week went and what you want to do differently next week, we want to give you something that helps synthesize how your sales communications went this week.

Today, we're introducing something brand new that is going to take your sales game to the next level. Today, we're announcing something takes all of that amazing analytics and tracking data around your sales emails and wraps it into one meaningful dashboard. Today, we're announcing our real-time sales communications dashboard.

Although its unorthodox to release stuff on a Friday, we thought it would be great because as you wind down on your long week, you can go ahead and log into ToutApp Dashboard, click on the "This Week" button, and see how your whole week looked in terms of your sales communications.

Tout's pulse dashboard will make meaning out of all those individual email views and clicks and tell you:

1. Which times of the weeks were busiest for you
2. Which times of the week your customers were most engaged
3. How many emails you dealt with this week
4. Which templates you used the most
5. What kind of email content drove the most engagement
6. Who your most engaged leads/prospects/customers are

And ofcourse, the dashboard was designed for Managers and Teams in mind first, so it'll also help you tap into the sales communications across your organization and see how everyones doing as a whole.

We've put in a significant amount of investment into the underlying data infrastrucutre for processing our email and engagement data. We think this dashboard is just the beginning. 

If you and your sales team aren't on ToutApp yet, what are you waiting for? Get Touting.