Episode 117: Allison Smith

Introducing Allison Smith

Allison is a journalist turned marketer who transforms tech talk into irresistible stories. An avid reader, she has a penchant for books, chocolate, and content first design.

Show Notes

Website | aesmithcontent.com (under construction)

Twitter | @aesmithcontent

Instagram | @aesmithcontent

Preferred Pronouns | She/Her

Episode Transcript

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions and our guests share their stories, ideas, and perspectives.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 117.

Tara: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Tara Claeys.

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Allison Smith. Allison is a journalist turned marketer who transformed tech talk into irresistible stories. An avid reader, she has a penchant for books, chocolate, and content first design. Welcome, Allison.

Allison: Thank you. And thank you so much for having me on. I am excited.

Tara: We are excited too. Thanks for joining us. Allison, why don’t you start off by telling us a little bit of your story about yourself.

Allison: So journalist turned marketer, that happened about six years ago. Before that, I had had a lot of experience in community journalism up here in Canada in the Ontario Niagara area, if you’ve ever been here. I wrote about everything from the economy, to my city council, to sports and pretty much everything you find a newspaper, took the photos, laid out the paper, and every Monday got it out. That was fantastic for a few years.

Then I kind of found myself out of work and jumped around doing a few stints and various gigs. Through serendipity and meeting a bunch of people in my local co-working community, I made the transition to copywriting and marketing. Since then, I’ve found a real passion for helping tech-focused businesses and manufacturers. Because they have amazing stories and they’re so very passionate about what they do, but sometimes I think they have trouble themselves and talking about themselves and marketing themselves. So I love helping them. That’s me.

Tara: It’s really interesting. I think a lot of people have trouble marketing themselves. Do you find that problem for yourself? Because it’s sometimes easy to market other people but how about yourself. What do you do to market yourself? Do you set a good example?

Allison: Oh, for myself, I find it difficult too. Talking about my clients and talking about how passionate I am about what I do is easy because you’re telling a story, you’re focusing on somebody else. But the minute I’m asked to give like an elevator speech or any kind of bio…right now I’m in the final stages of writing my own website and it’s a special kind of torture I think for everyone – even for marketers.

Tara: Making your own website?

Allison: Yeah. You just do the best you can. I think the key is more to focus on your audience and that one person you want to talk to, like your ideal client, rather than yourself if you’re nervous. It’s really about having a conversation. Marketing should really be about two people, maybe more, in a conversation, right? That’s kind of what I tell myself is that it’s a two-way street.

Tara: Do you find yourself laboring over what you’re writing on your own website whereas probably you felt like it was clients who labor over it on their own content. Talk a little bit about your process and your perfectionism or how you…it sounds like you struggled to get your website out.