Episode 5: How to Avoid Becoming a Generic Content Marketer with Andra Zaharia

Steve sits down with Andra Zaharia, a freelance content marketer with ten years of experience as a communication specialist. She has focused on the infosec industry for five of those years.

A self-proclaimed “cyber-realist”, Andra helps her clients make smarter decisions as they navigate our fast-paced and ever-evolving information society. Her work involves helping organizations build scalable content systems, alongside promoting cybersecurity literacy to make products accessible to a wider audience.

Listen in as Andra illustrates the power of community as she shares her time in the startup world, where she juggled the no-nonsense demands of growing a company with her values-driven approach to business and marketing.

She then shares her top lessons learned about mentorship while being part of one of the first cohorts of Seth Godin’s altMBA. Also, in line with her belief in ethical marketing that puts the human first and top-of-mind, Andra talks about one of the biggest pitfalls in marketing cybersecurity: overreliance on automation over high-touch interactions.

Key Takeaways:

• You have to find alignment between your values and the role you take on in the industry you work in. Such alignment leads to exponential growth in both your personal and professional development.
• When working in a startup, prioritization of tasks is crucial considering a relatively small budget and limited resources.
• We need three kinds of people in our lives for continuous growth: mentors to learn from, peers to discuss our learnings with, and mentees with which we can teach what we’ve learned.
• While publishing articles or blog posts regularly is a great strategy to build authority, another powerful, albeit less-utilized tactic is to create a comprehensive, even definitive guide to whatever it is you are trying to be seen as an authority in.
• Automation is not meant to replace you. It is meant to help you offload certain tasks, but it can never replicate your humanity with all its creativity and ability to personalize interactions.

Connect with Andra Zaharia on LinkedIn.