Marketing Happy Hour - Audience Insights 101: Sliding in the DMs | Sara Arbelaez of Heelys

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey there, welcome to the Marketing Happy Hour podcast, where each week we're learning career-defining advice, powerful social media strategies, unique creative tips, groundbreaking influencer marketing tactics, and more from marketing experts that represent some of the world's leading brands. Let's dive in. Grab a drink and join your hosts, Cassie and Erica, for this week's episode. This week, Erica and I are getting nerdy and talking strategy and data with Sarah Arbalas, social media and influencer marketing strategist for Heelys. That's right. The shoes we wore as kids with wheels built into them.

Starting point is 00:00:51 They're still a thing. Trust me. Sarah takes us through the beginning of her career where she navigated her interest to discover a marketing career she loves in a field she's super excited about and how she faced rejection along the way. We discuss strategies for engaging Gen Z shoppers, including crafting content just for them and building genuine connections with this age group. Sarah also spills her secret for getting to know Healy's target market on a very deep level. Hint, it involves spending a lot of time in your brand's DMsms we round out the conversation with some personal branding advice from a fellow linkedin content queen and of course share

Starting point is 00:01:31 some professional advice grab your favorite beverage and let's get ready to dive into this week's conversation with sarah of healy's hey sarah how are you i'm, how are you? I'm good. How are you guys doing? Well, super excited to hear from you today about all of your experience. You've worked for some really awesome brands. So excited to dive into that. But I do have an important question for you that we ask all of our guests, and that is what is in your glass tonight? This is marketing happy hour after all. So I was prepared for this one right now I have a glass of white wine but I'm going to be honest with you guys I wanted to have like a four loco ready not even mention it and super casually like oh I'm drinking a four

Starting point is 00:02:16 loco right now oh yeah I was like maybe just not start off that way so I have one for now it's too good we would not judge no love it absolutely not we actually so um one of my LinkedIn connections sent us some what is this called rowdy mermaid rowdy mermaid and it's actually so fun it's like kombucha uh a adaptonic which I thought meant adaptogens yeah yeah I think it has like oh yeah reishi mushroom I don't know anyway it's really good it's delicious so shout out to rowdy mermaid what I see those more and more on tiktok oh really oh my gosh yeah I mean I hadn't like heard of the brand but they're really good and I'm very impressed. So shout out to rowdy mermaid kombucha. Very, very excited to be trying these. So yeah,

Starting point is 00:03:12 absolutely. Yeah. Well, Sarah, as Erica mentioned, you have worked with some pretty awesome brands, carnival, a cruise line, PGA of America, and now Heelys. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience and how you got to where you are today? Yeah, totally. So my background is I went to school for communications. I honestly kind of had no idea what I was doing. I knew I liked creating. I knew I liked storytelling. I thought I might want to go into journalism or be a reporter. But as soon as I kind of got into my program, it ended up being like a lot of rhetoric and writing. And I knew I was always a good writer, but I didn't feel passionate about it anymore. And again, like really felt kind of lost in the moment. Didn't know exactly what I wanted. I don't know how I stumbled into PR,

Starting point is 00:04:06 but I was like, okay, let me just try PR. I kind of think I've always seen like Sex in the City, Samantha Jones. And I'm like, oh my gosh, she's so glamorous. She's so fab. Maybe that's something I would like to do. And then from there, I realized that my college didn't offer a PR program at the time. I couldn't leave because I was there on an internship. That's how I was able, internship. I was there on a scholarship and I wasn't really able to steer away from that. So I kind of took it upon myself to do what I can at the moment. I did a few internships at PR agencies, kind of dabbled in a little bit there. I was like, okay, maybe this is something that I can like. Graduation was kind of around the corner. Again, I had no idea what I

Starting point is 00:04:52 wanted to do. I felt like such an infant going into the real world. And then someone in my class actually mentioned that there was this intensive internship program at PGA of America that kind of paid for your room at the time you go on site. And I think I was just so lost that I kind of wanted to get away for a moment and really get that experience. I applied for their PR program, went through a bunch of interview rounds,

Starting point is 00:05:18 sent in writing samples. They essentially called me back and were like, hey, you didn't get the position, but we think you'd be a good fit for our social team in our marketing department um so at that point I was just thankful to get a position I was like of course I'll give it a try it brought me into the world of social media and marketing it was very corporate based so I was like okay maybe I like the marketing aspect a little bit more than the social and back then social isn't what it is now right um after that was over kind of just

Starting point is 00:05:52 applied to everything in marketing and I was able to get a really cool opportunity at Carnival Cruise Line I again like I kind of just wanted a big name under my belt in the moment I was just like brand name brand names as much as I can so went through that um it was more so content based a lot of writing a lot of html learned a lot about website upkeep but I felt like I was lacking that visual creativeness like yes you can be creative with writing but it was kind of just it was missing something I was losing my passion in what I was doing. And at the time they opened up a social media position. I was like, okay, maybe let's try this out. Did the same thing, went through a bunch of interview rounds. And thankfully I was there and

Starting point is 00:06:35 the director was able to pull me aside and was like, Hey, that was great. But honestly, we're looking for more. So an influencer position we want someone with really lots of experience on the influencer side so you didn't get the job so I was like okay here this again um I'm like why is this happening of course I felt super defeated and crazy enough it was like a week after the pandemic hit and that position was completely eliminated wow and I was able to luckily keep my job for a good amount of time but with her feedback and I wish more interviewers did this I was able to get that information and be like okay this is what I'm going to need for my next role if I'm wanting to go into social media so this is what I'm going to look for I think

Starting point is 00:07:24 sometimes we just interview and we don't get the job and we're kind of like, okay, so like what now? What did I do wrong? And then from there, of course, like I eventually lost my job. It was carnival, a pandemic.

Starting point is 00:07:36 There was no sailing going on. And at that point, I just decided to apply to everything that had influencer partnerships. I literally applied to everything under the sun. There wasn't that many jobs at the moment. So I was freaking out. And then I was able to get this position, which I'm currently at. And I've been here for around two years and it wasn't what I expected. I went into the interview. Of course I did my research at the company and

Starting point is 00:08:02 they kind of had a bunch of brands named. Yeah. no idea what exactly would be and then in an interview they were like have you heard of Heelys what do you mean yes I grew up on Heelys um and yeah it's been it was a challenge at first but it's been so fun that's that's awesome do, because you kind of transitioned from, uh, you know, being in the sports industry to travel to fashion, what was that transition like across industries? Was that kind of difficult for you or was kind of learning the industries pretty quick or how did you go about those transitions? Yeah. So for the P pga one it was interesting because when i first heard about it it was a boy in my class talking about it very like golf bros type i was like i know nothing about golf my version of golf was just tiger woods and that's it right but i just

Starting point is 00:08:57 wanted to try it was such a challenge um especially it was a very male dominated industry most of my meetings were much older men I was kind of usually only the only girl in the room and of course the social side everyone is like oh it's so easy it's so fun um so that was really hard to navigate didn't really know the terms of golf but learned a lot through there and then with carnival it was I've always loved travel all the coffee I was doing was more so like travel based I was really focused on the shore excursion side so that I feel like came a little bit more naturally and then switching over to commerce it's it was a very different tone the first two I felt was very corporate not much you can do and again like social wasn't what it was now and now I think I'm thankful enough for my team to trust in me that I could kind of

Starting point is 00:09:52 be a little chaotic with others be a little crazy on TikTok say pretty like funny stuff on Twitter so just very different industries and they have all been very different. I've definitely taken like some challenges from past and applied it to now, but the way like we've talked in every single industry is so different. Yeah. Like you mentioned, Healy's really has to be like such a fun brand to work for. I'm sure because I've seen all of your content. You guys do get a little crazy on social and it's so fun. It's really striking like that nostalgic cord with millennials. And I'm sure now that like the customer base is

Starting point is 00:10:32 primarily Gen Z, could you just talk about how Healy's kind of determines its ideal customer profile and then how you're speaking to each of those customers on social media? I know you guys do a lot with the nostalgia play for like older generation, but then you also speaking to each of those customers on social media. I know you guys do a lot with the nostalgia play for like older generation, but then you also have to speak to this new generation that might not have grown totally up with Healy's. I feel like it went away for a while and then came back in full force. So if you just have any insight around that, it'd be awesome to hear. Yeah, totally. So we have a really good mix of millennial and Gen Z, like you mentioned. And we know this through analytics, but most importantly, just being so

Starting point is 00:11:12 in tune with our community. I'm lucky enough. I was also a Healy's kid when I was little. So I feel like speaking to the millennial side kind of comes naturally. My goal is to always just kind of comes naturally my goal is to always just kind of hit a nostalgic core with this type of audience um but then also keeping in mind that gen z is with this resurgence of helies of course gen z is the new generation and i think a lot of companies need to keep in mind that the analytics if you're just focusing on the numbers it will skew a little bit older because these people need to sign like sign the turn of the agreement but that's where the community management comes into play when you actually see how your audience is interacting and what they're saying and looking how they're talking to each other you could really see they skew so much younger than your analytics might be set to be and the way we talk to both audiences I think

Starting point is 00:12:07 has it's similar and different in a lot of ways I'm always trying to just hit that connection factor but with Gen Z I think one of everyone's social media fear is to get cancelled I think cancel culture is really big amongst Gen Z and it's really just taking the time to go into this. This is like a very big tip of mine. Go into every DM, go into all your DM requests, go onto people's profiles. We go into a rabbit hole of just, I don't want to say stalking people, but just going through like what they're talking about yeah seeing who they like seeing like what interactions they have is so helpful and it is time consuming but I do want to say like I think I got a really good insight from just going into our twitter dms it's not necessarily

Starting point is 00:12:57 all about talking about Heelys but just seeing like what do these people like what do these people want to see what are they talking about what are they watching on tv like what's their culture like and you could speak to the audience so well when you know like when you dive into the world a little bit more yeah yeah yeah do you guys use any like social listening tools to kind of dive even deeper into that side of things or is it mainly just you getting involved on social media with your consumer yeah right now it's a team of one on the organic side yeah um so yeah I do my best in really going deep dive into the dms going on forums reddit discord is pretty new to me but there's a lot of cool information on there I think really just taking your time to

Starting point is 00:13:45 just see what Gen Z is talking about is super important because this generation like really moves the needle. We see this like new authenticity of what they want. And I think it's really changed the social game. Social media isn't what it was a few years ago and Gen Z like rules. Yeah, absolutely. You've mentioned a little bit, um, some of the platforms that you all are on, some of the strategies that you utilize for Healy's, but anything else around current social media strategy that you'd like to share and what platforms as a whole, are you guys on Tik TOK as well? Are you on Instagram reels? Like what are you doing right now that you feel like is working for you guys? Yeah. So we actually have

Starting point is 00:14:31 a lot of platforms. Um, I kind of like to sprinkle Healy's onto everything. Cause you never know who will pick it up, but we're currently on Instagram, Facebook, dabbling into YouTube TikTok Twitter and I try to do my best in upkeeping Pinterest which is slow slept on yeah but you get some distraction from Pinterest especially with holiday times and yeah really reaching those parents yeah so really and our strategy is very different across the board I think my overall strategy is building this connection with our audience. I think we all go on social media to feel some type of way, whether it's to like escape or feel seen or feel understood, or even just feel sad for a moment, but you somehow like relate to it.

Starting point is 00:15:24 I think we're all going to social media for that. So the overall strategy is to make you feel some type of way. But of course, it's different with different platforms. Our Twitter is very Gen Z based. So the way I talk on Twitter is completely different than the way I talk on Instagram. The way we interact on TikTok is completely different than the way we interact on Facebook. So keep in mind, the audience for each has its own strategy and always being willing to adapt. I'm sure you guys know, like you, we always have to adapt our strategy. And yeah, it's not a sense of like feeling defeated when things don't work out. It's more so, okay, that didn't work. What can I try better?

Starting point is 00:16:05 And that might work in a few months because we'll never know. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And just by looking at the content that you guys post, it's obvious that video is very important to you guys, as it should be to most brands or all brands, I would say, um, how has video impacted your guys's strategy, but also how has that been important to you guys as a brand too? Yeah. So video is literally my jam. If you talk to anyone at the office, I'm like video queen. I'm always asking for video, always taking video. I'm always looking for new videos to film new ideas. It feel like it's just really changed the game on social media. I think video kind of adds that extra personality to your brand, which I always say is like my motto, all brands need a personality and video kind of shows

Starting point is 00:16:59 your company culture, kind of what you stand for. And of course, it's so much better when your product is Healy's. And of course, you need to actually show the shoe rolling. But we're really just steering away from that aesthetically pleasing grid that we all thought social media management was a few years ago. Being yourself and being authentic. No one wants to hear like, I'm obsessed with this product and this is why you should buy it because X, Y, and Z. It's like, show me you relate, show me, you know, the trends, show me that you're like a real person trying to do a good job at what you're doing and not just like shoving a product down my throat. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. Less sales, more relatability.

Starting point is 00:17:41 I love that. And I, I cannot imagine, like we were talking about before, like how fun creating content for Healy's must be. I mean, you could imagine, I can imagine the number of things you could just do. That would be a load, load of fun. But speaking of video too, I want to ask about TikTok for a second. Are you guys able to track sales from TikTok? Like what does that conversion look like for you guys and driving people to your website to purchase? How has that been for you all? So TikTok, we got a pretty good audience.

Starting point is 00:18:13 Like I want to say a year ago, we actually just hit 200,000 on TikTok. It's very exciting. We were like the end of year goal and hit it by October. So I was like, heck yeah. Awesome. We do track sales every month. I'll do a report on exactly how many sales we got per TikTok. Also keeping in mind that I do understand Healy's is not like a basic need of life as much as I, as I wish it was. But I'm really tracking how many, how many sessions come from just our TikTok yeah I kind of just want to like hook you into okay you see our TikTok you go onto our website

Starting point is 00:18:51 we start feeding you a little bit of ads here and there you might not have the money right now but when that money does come in or if there's a birthday party and you're like Healy's is top of mind yeah so like of some, some months the sales aren't as good as others, but really just trying to build those sessions on our site is super important to us. Of course, other than like creating direct conversion. Are you guys tracking that through like Google analytics or is it like the backend of the website type thing or are you using like coupon codes or anything like that? Yeah. So we track through Google analytics. That's like kind of our safe spot. We do have Shopify and Shopify has like a really great integration of like showing you

Starting point is 00:19:36 percentages and how many sessions you've had compared to last month. But I think Google analytics would be like our best bet in tracking. It's the most reliable. Yeah. And then of course we use bitly a lot. So we'll try to do the link in bio and see the traffic from there. So it's always like looking up everything you can find. Yeah. Being a little bit scrappy is always a good thing though. Cause then you're like able to even get your hands on more of like, Oh, this piece of content generated like this many people going here or like this many people going here. And that's, that's so fun to see the back end of that. So you can continue to like strategize and create new content. I know. I know. Yeah. I think

Starting point is 00:20:15 it's interesting too, because like a lot of the things that you've mentioned, I feel like are very attainable ways of tracking analytics and things. I think people usually think about big companies and they're like, Oh, they use these crazy platforms that cost a ton of money that are like very hard for a small business to utilize. But I think people forget that there's so much power in Google analytics, which is free and available to you or Shopify, which is like low cost or depending on, you know, how many products or whatnot you're offering, but there's a lot of easy ways to track that stuff. And you don't have to spend like thousands and thousands of dollars a year to be able to get

Starting point is 00:20:56 nitty gritty details because it's all just right there for you. So that's awesome. It is time consuming, but really just it's taking your time to go into like every post and seeing the insight, like how many people clicked on the product, how many people are sharing it? Like, what do you see works? I'm like obsessed with the numbers on the social side. And just taking your time to read all that is so helpful in your future strategy. Cause like we're always switching strategies.

Starting point is 00:21:22 Like if I, I always say, if I told someone what what everything I know about social media today like it could all change tomorrow yep and none of that will matter and we're always trying to figure out the algorithm yeah definitely um I want to shift gears just a little bit I'm all like about community building it's my jam um so I'd love to just hear more about your influencer program. And I know that you guys just posted about a campus rep program. Could you share a little bit about that too? Yeah. So our campus rep is probably like one of my favorite parts of the job. It's always fun seeing new reps come around.

Starting point is 00:21:58 We have reps every semester. So we have them for around four months. They're always able to kind of keep going within our program. They all get like a Healy swag box in the beginning of the semester which will have Healy's and a couple little goodies their requirements are posting once a month which is the perfect way to get UGC content so many other companies like thinking like how how can we do this? Having a campus ambassador program is so helpful. We do like a prize at the end of the month. We'll vote on who has like the best post. We'll either give a gift card or like a limited edition pair.

Starting point is 00:22:35 But that's super helpful. We used to do the discount code more so like affiliate, but that kind of was just got out of hand with our internal team. Honestly, it was a lot of turnaround to get like 32 new reps every like five months yeah and then when COVID happened it was just too much to keep up with so that stopped but it is something that I hope to bring again because I think people are more going to promote your product when they have like a discount and it kind of like the clouded of it all like oh this company gave me a discount it's like bragging rights so something that we're

Starting point is 00:23:11 definitely trying to push for again and but we do have an affiliate program for one of our other brands which I'm also the social lead on and that is great We use a Shopify integration called GoFPro. I couldn't recommend it enough. What is it called again? GoFPro. GoFPro. P-O-A-F-F-P-R-O. Amazing. It is so helpful. It's so easy to set up and accept people. People just kind of apply apply submit their applications of who they are what they're looking for and you get a personalized link which allows you to get like five percent of commission off each shoe sold using your link um so I think it's pretty great for both business and ambassador it's kind of you get what you make of it um as much as you promote as much as you get back and we get back so it's super helpful I think we're seeing more companies have

Starting point is 00:24:11 this affiliate program and it is such an easy I don't want to say easy but it is a great way yeah yeah you get content and just to keep promoting your product without you having to you do the work on the back end, but you kind of sit back and trust the people that you have as your ambassador. Awesome. Yeah, absolutely. How are you guys currently, I don't know, like seeding product to these ambassadors or campus reps? Like, do you, is there like, oh, there's an important launch coming up let's see if any of our ambassadors want this new product or is it more of just like that constant every semester thing yeah so for our campus reps it's just every semester you get a new pair of shoes

Starting point is 00:25:01 and then in terms of our influencers some we have a pretty good roster of who we worked with in the past thankfully Heelys is kind of just a really fun brand so before we had a lot of reach organically we would send product out I would send like my maximum was 20 my minimum was 20 shoes a month so it's just like seating up product and kind of fingers crossed hoping for the best yeah and we brought a lot from that but I think now with the shift of these are people's jobs and taking that into consideration we've honestly seen a decline on how many people are posting of course people want to get paid the same way like this is my job the same way it's their job to create content so we've shifted

Starting point is 00:25:45 gears a little bit in the past few months um trying to find out kind of just like a sweet contract to not negotiate too much but every every contract is different everyone wants different things different deliverables but i would say the best way we work with influencers is kind of just trusting their space like we want to work with you because we genuinely like you and what you do and you know, your audience best. So like, who am I to say exactly what I need? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I, that kind of brings me to the next question of like, how do you determine who's a good fit for the brand? I know you're probably looking at your consumer base and trying to tap into some influencers that speak to that specific consumer base, but I'd love to know like what that looks

Starting point is 00:26:29 like from beginning to end when you're looking at an influencer campaign. Yeah. So thankfully, like I mentioned, we have a pretty good roster. So some of the times it's really just looking at people we've worked with in the past and who makes sense for what we're doing at the moment. It all depends on like the shoes and what we're trying to get out of it but more so we are just looking for I don't want to say kid-like but pg-13 friendly sure we kind of give the guidelines of be family friendly don't do anything crazy like we don't want you to chug a bottle and go down a hill on Heelys and be like, I'm sponsored by Heelys. But

Starting point is 00:27:11 like your audience, we are just looking for people that I think just genuinely enjoy Heelys rather than looking for people that are just chasing a check. And they're like, yeah, I love Heelys totally. And you've never ridden them in your life. So it's definitely the authentic factor that we're looking for. Yeah, absolutely. And with that too, kind of on another topic, we've noticed you guys have done a lot of really fun, limited time collabs with other brands. And so I would be curious, what's kind of your role in those partnerships? And how did those, the strategy behind promoting those differ from maybe an evergreen product or like a standard shoe that you'd release to the market? Yeah. So we have so many right now, but just super exciting. Especially especially to me since I feel like most of the

Starting point is 00:28:08 people we worked with are brands that I've grown up with or have been so excited on so every time we start working with someone new I get on a client I'm like oh my god we just we just released Pac-Man and when we were on the call I was like I used to play Pac-Man all the time. Like, this is my jam. So luckily we have a pretty good licensing team since our company is a much larger company and we own so many brands, the licensing kind of just comes to us. We get presented like, Hey, do we, we want this opportunity? Do we think this is a good fit and then my role in all that would be kind of betting them like yes no or yeah our audience is talking about them or no like that would not make sense to our consumer um I I know social like sometimes it's overlooked but we are the people that understand the audience best if you present me with a brand that I've never heard

Starting point is 00:29:03 of or I'm like our audience has never talked about that it's more likely like not going to work um every month well I'll send a report of search results on Shopify like what are people looking for what are people talking about or even just throwing up that question option on Instagram and be like wow you guys want to see and then getting all those responses and relaying them to our licensing team. So really I'm just like the hype woman of like, yes, we should do it. Or like, no, we shouldn't do this. And then what then comes talking to the social team on like, how do we promote this? And all of that looks very different. And sometimes

Starting point is 00:29:42 it is challenging since those licenses are pretty strict there's a lot of things you can't say a lot of sounds you can't use so the way we the way we market those are kind of cookie cutter base depending on like who we're working with like pac-man for example was really open with us so we had a lot of fun with them kind of a little banter on twitter to release the launch um and other times it's just kind of graphics text is approved let's do what we can compared to our just regular line that i can use any tiktok sound and kind of get a little bit crazy and i think i mentioned before i'm very lucky that I feel like my team has pretty good trust in me it's awesome I don't want to say do what I want but I think that's crazy I kind of

Starting point is 00:30:31 tweet randomness tweet random jokes use different sounds on TikTok and it's pretty relatable well I try to make it pretty relatable and it's fun so with those shoes I can kind of do whatever when it's our standard shoes and when it comes to licensing I have to be so careful with like the sounds we use what we're saying like what hashtags are we're approved it's crazy if you were to wave a magic wand which brand would you want to create a shoe collab with Lisa Frank oh that would be awesome oh my god so many times I was like there's it makes so much sense like it has to happen yeah that it makes way too much sense that one that one's like more so for me like that I hate my nostalgia but if I can have any collab right now

Starting point is 00:31:21 it'd be Crocs oh I could see that happening for sure. That's awesome. I'm always in their DMs. They're probably, they're so, I'm always like, please, let's do something together. I am waiting for you. I love that. I love that you're like in the DMs and in the comment section just like commenting and doing all of that do you do that a lot on like TikTok and stuff I see brands all the time in the comment sections of like viral videos or like videos that are you know kind of fun and don't really have anything to do with the brand do you do that often I I do I think it kind of makes your name get recognized again it's like people comment back like helies i haven't

Starting point is 00:32:06 heard of you in years that's like our top comment um but just scrolling down like the whole fyp and just kind of making other funny comments or being like why why am i getting served this yeah there was one someone made a video and it was like top comments from brands. And it was when Austin Butler was Elvis and it was just like this hot video of him, honestly. And I'm a shoe. Why am I feeling this way? And then we got put into this like compilation of like brands being extra. And I'm like, Oh my God, that's funny. I don't, I've never worked for a brand that would have that much flexibility for someone to comment from the social team, like something so fun and just like original. And in the moment, like every time that I've worked for a brand, we've had to take those

Starting point is 00:32:56 things like way to the top and like get legal approval and things like that. So I love that you're saying that they like trust you and they know that you kind of can speak for the brand in such a great way. And it really is relatable and just fun. It's so funny too. I love interacting with brands that are like funny on social media. Yeah. And I think it really sets you apart. I think with this whole like social media life, I'm more inclined to pitch for a brand and like love a brand. If I feel like I have a connection to this brand at one point, like if you answer my comment, I'm gonna be like, oh my God, like you're actually a real person behind this. And we see that so much. And like I've said before, going into those DMs, sometimes I'll randomly be like, happy Friday, everyone,

Starting point is 00:33:41 like hope you have the best day and then all our mentions from there on I was like I talk to Heelys like even if they've never bought Heelys yeah kind of just starting that relationship and it like I it's time consuming but making someone's day really goes such a long way in the long run yeah I love that I think that's so smart and that's more companies should do that. I know a lot of people are doing it now, especially on like TikTok, especially with like, you know, of the moment videos where it is just so funny to comment on, but yeah, I think it's so smart. That's awesome. So Sarah, I am a loyal follower of yours on social media, on LinkedIn, and you're always sharing some great insight. I would just want to hear a little bit about how you've kind of built your community

Starting point is 00:34:32 on LinkedIn and how sharing your insights and experiences is boosting your personal brand and why that's kind of important to your career is having that personal brand. That was very new to me. LinkedIn is a whole new scope, but I think it has given me so much opportunities. Like for example, like we're doing this because we connected on LinkedIn. I think when I first started working, I can't emphasize enough how lost I felt so many times. And I wish I kind of had someone not guiding me, but just being like, you're okay. Like things aren't chaos. It's just all in your head. And I found myself in a group chat with all the other brands. So like when you see us all comment, it's because we all have a secret group chat on the back end of things. And then going into that, I saw a lot of my other social friends just

Starting point is 00:35:27 post on LinkedIn. And I felt so seen in the moment. I'm not going crazy. Like so many people are going through the same thing. And it made me feel so much safer being in the industry. And we do read a lot of comments, like as much great comments as we get, we get a lot of negative comments negative comments as well and not just about the brand but about who's managing the brand which can get really toxic yeah that's like a whole nother topic but seeing them talk about their personal lives and their journey of work on LinkedIn made me feel so safe and I was like if they're making me feel this way I hope to be that to someone else some way somehow and I started posting a lot about my work journey and my mental health on LinkedIn and from that I think I built so many great connections professionally and personally

Starting point is 00:36:17 and I've had people reach out in terms of like I've struggled through the same thing mentally or hey I've been looking for a job in social like how did you get to the point of where you are or so many of the relationships we've built with brands and the collabs we've done some have come from just having a conversation on LinkedIn we have a super exclusive collab coming out which I wish I could say right now but most of that conversation came from the relationships built from LinkedIn to Twitter and all that stuff so the opportunity is there and I do wish I started earlier but just by doing like a few posts here and there I my goal is to be more consistent with it again but just have grown so much yeah absolutely and besides your personal, I noticed you share a lot of awesome like tips and strategies on there. How do you find inspiration for sharing content on LinkedIn? Because I feel like a lot of times for me, I'm like, I want to be more consistent on LinkedIn, but I'm like, what do I post? I don't know what to share in a given day. So any tips there or things that you've used to kind of like stay consistent and have enough

Starting point is 00:37:25 content to put out there? Yeah. One of my things is definitely, I want to be more consistent. Most of the time I feel like I take what has gone through in my day and just apply it to a LinkedIn post. If I felt like some type of way and something that happened like in work or personally, I'll be like, okay, this is actually a great thing that I feel like a lot of people can relate to um most of the time it's just trying to think of how my day when I know like recently I posted about getting off at five on the dot and my whole life

Starting point is 00:37:56 I thought leaving at five was so looked down on and I felt so judged and coming from such a corporate side of the world I felt so judged and so many of a corporate side of the world I felt so judged and so many of the things that I do so I take moments like that and I'm like oh wait if I'm feeling this like someone else might be feeling it too and sometimes when I post up I'm like this is crazy like why am I sharing this and when you hear the feedback of people being like thank you for posting this I'm like oh thank god Yeah. I think most of the time too, like when I've seen the most success with an Instagram or I'm sorry, LinkedIn posts is when I don't overthink it. I think that's the big thing. Like, just like you said, sharing about

Starting point is 00:38:35 how your day went, sharing about something that came up during the day and just kind of like firing that off and then hearing back, like all feedback is is really cool for sure yeah absolutely well Sarah unfortunately we are coming to the end of the conversation which I'm very bummed about this has been so much fun just talking with you and chatting about what's going on in your life but we do have a question for you that we love to ask all of our guests at the end of a recording um but what do you know now that you wish you knew early on in your career? Um, I'm like, I wish I could write a book to myself, like full blown book of like, I wish I knew everything, but I think writing now, right. We'll help you

Starting point is 00:39:21 start writing everything down like journal. Yeah. But I think my biggest thing would be, and I still need to remind myself of this every single day, but I wish I knew that I made like, you make your own definition of what success means to you. And that is so different than everyone else's version of success and what society tells you what success is and and is most definitely not a straight line up like you were going to feel so lost and confused and still to this day like I feel so lost and confused sometimes but just trusting the process of things might have not worked out and it was for a good reason looking back at my journey, so many times

Starting point is 00:40:06 I was like, why didn't I get that? Like, why didn't that work out? And it's only led me to where I am right now, which is such a great spot. And it felt like I found such a great voice within myself personally and professionally because of all the stuff that's happened before. Yeah, absolutely. I feel like the majority of people we ask that question to have a version of that answer. And I think it's something that I didn't realize either when I was younger and just like starting out in my career. And I mean, we're still all young. We're still in the middle of it. I think it's fun to just like look back and see, oh, wow, like that's a real thing. Like you don't have to put all this pressure on yourself to like be perfect and take on everything. Like your path is your path. And I think that's

Starting point is 00:40:50 important for people to know too. So yeah, like success I thought was always just like climbing this corporate ladder. Like you're going to be the CEO of a company by the time you hit 25. When I passed 25, I was like, okay, well, I'm not there. You like beat yourself up here and there, but just knowing like that's success to other people. Success is like, for me, it might just be happy being at home. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well on that note too, really quickly, do you know what your future looks like or not necessarily what it looks like, but what are you working towards right now? Do you want to continue to be in the influencer space? Would you like to dabble in other areas of marketing? What are you thinking right now? Yeah, I think more so

Starting point is 00:41:34 definitely want to stay in marketing. I think I've been through this recent phase of like trying to find out what my passion is. And my mom the other day was like, you know, you've always been passionate of like creating. Creating and thinking of different ways to just like shed light to things. So definitely something in that realm. I'm not exactly sure where that journey will go yet, but I like where I'm at. I hope to just continue more so focusing

Starting point is 00:42:03 on my personal brand. I hope one day to kind of do things on my own. I love working for companies, but if I can step away from that a bit more and focus on different industries, I think that'd be awesome. So we'll see. Yeah, we're excited to follow along with you and kind of see where you're headed after where you're at now. And in talking about that, where can everyone follow you and follow along with where you're headed after where you're at now. And in talking about that, where can

Starting point is 00:42:26 everyone follow you and follow along with what you're doing and keep up with you in future? Yes, so my personals are all Sarah Arbelez, last name A-R-B-E-L-A-E-Z. It's super confusing. No one knows how to pronounce it, but I talk a lot about personal journey on LinkedIn. I share kind of randomness on Tik TOK and Instagram. So if you guys are interested. Yeah. And where can people follow Healy's Healy's worldwide on everything we are everywhere. Fantastic. We'll put all of that in the show notes, but yeah. Thank you, Sarah, for coming on and just sharing your journey with us. And like Erica said, just so excited to check in with you soon and see where you're at, but we'll continue to follow along with you and everything you're doing at Healy's. Thank you for coming on.

Starting point is 00:43:13 Thank you so much. This was so fun. And thank you for giving me a space. Absolutely. Today, we learned to spend time on the platform and your DMs and comments when learning about your community and what makes them excited. Number two, we learned to pay attention to website data, including sessions and purchases resulting from social media. This can tell you what's resonating with your audience and what is converting your customers and what isn't. Number three, don't let rejection in your career set you back. Use it to propel you forward and push you to develop your skill set. Wasn't Sarah great? She is such a wealth of knowledge when it comes to community building

Starting point is 00:43:57 and showing up for your people online. If you enjoyed listening to this conversation as much as we did, please take a moment to rate and subscribe to the show. And we'd love for you to join us on LinkedIn to continue the conversation with our community. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.

Marketing Happy Hour - Audience Insights 101: Sliding in the DMs | Sara Arbelaez of Heelys

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.