PREMIUM BizPro Interview Series: Natalie Sisson, Social Media Strategist

Here’s the audio file (12 MB — 16:40 min)

Natalie Sisson

ABOUT NATALIE SISSON

Natalie is the creator of WomanzWorld Global Services Co. and The Suitcase Entrepreneur blog which helps women entrepreneurs create freedom in business and adventure in life by learning creative ways to run a business from anywhere. It includes blog articles, videos, resources, and tools

Her products include the Social Media Bootcamp, Passport to Business Freedom and the upcoming Ultimate Entrepreneur’s Toolkit. These provide bite-sized chunks of easily digestible information on building a successful business.

She also offers Business Design coaching and Social Media Personal Training for small businesses on integrated marketing, effective use of social media, brand visibility and authority, and business growth method. She’s accumulated over 9 years of rich international experience across the full marketing spectrum including brand & product management, events, communications, business development, research and budgeting and of course social media.

Among other things she’s a World Champion in Beach Ultimate and broke a World Record for Dragon Boating across the English Channel. She adores travel and adventure.

GOAL OF INTERVIEW

From the perspective of a social media manager what do I want to learn from Natalie Sisson, an expert Social Media Strategist?

What have been Natalie’s secrets to online success?

1. What practical steps she took and in what order to get the results she achieved
2. What mindset/strategy sets her apart and was responsible for her success

BACKSTORY

Natalie is from New Zealand but has been travelling since age two. For the last five and a half years she’s been living out of her suitcase travelling the world.  Back in New Zealand she travelled during her child years and went to great schools.  At university she received two degrees in record time — information systems and tourism and service management and marketing.  After graduating she took a year off to travel.

She’d always wanted to get into marketing, which was one of her first roles out of college back in New Zealand.  She took on positions overseeing the broad scope of marketing including, event management, branding, communications, PR, and web presence.  When she went to work in London, England she was urged to change her focus into a highly ‘niched’ area of expertise but was resistant because it limited her ability to pull from different skill sets.

She managed to find high-level roles that enabled her to travel all throughout Europe in a product management role for some cool companies.  It sparked her interest because she was able to utilize a lot of her different skills, practice different languages, and travel internationally.

After coming to Vancover in 2008 to play in the World Championship Ultimate Frisby, she was determined to start her own business around health and fitness.  Her plan was to take her education into corporations to help them reduce their overhead in medical costs and insurance by teaching people how to live healthier lifestyles.  Instead she met her business partner over a big glass of wine and cheese at a technology meetup.  Her partner had an idea for a tech company which she thought was a great idea.  He brought her in as a co-founder and for the next 18 months she worked in the roller coaster world of tech startups.

She was involved with everything from getting investors on board, to putting the business model together, to pitching and developing the product and its features, to testing it out with customers, and doing all the marketing.  During the marketing phase was when Natalie really got involved in social media because they had built their fundraising application on the Facebook platform, which is now the #1 social commerce fundraising application within Facebook.

It forced her to look at Facebook in a different way.  Up until then she had been posting photos, updates, and checking in on her friends and really just using it as a personal tool.  Through her experience developing the product she realized the social commerce side was very different — from how it runs, to the algorithms, to the ever-changing features within Facebook. Her passion arose from utilizing social media as a tool for marketing, sales, and customer service.  From there she branched out into Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and WordPress.  She was interested in figuring out how to link them all into a seamless marketing, sales, and customer service department at your fingertips.

She started the Suitcase Entrepreneur in order to chart her entrepreneurial journey, interview more women in business to see how they were using technology, and help others utilize the tools available today to start their own businesses.

H.E.R.B.

Habits

• Morning power hour: 5 minutes of yoga, exercise outside while listening to great music or an audiobook
• Before starting any work she journals for 200-250 words with an online tool called penzu.com.  It helps her clarify her thoughts. She asks herself, “What are my intentions for the day?”
• She doesn’t check her social media or email for at least the first hour and a half because its her time to write, create and produce.

Environments

• More effective when working on planes and terminals
• Whenever there’s no wifi she’s able to stay focused without the distraction of being online (busses/boats)
• She is able to get in the zone when working at a cafe
• She seeks out a location and sets up shop for a couple of hours then walks to a new location
• It hasn’t always been easy because of unreliable Internet access or dealing with plugs or noisy environments, but since she’s gotten used to it she really loves to change up her working environment everyday.  She also likes the idea that she sometimes has to travel to get to where she’s working — whether it be walking, cycling, or jumping on the metro.

Resources

• She’s a big fan of listening to and watching TED videos. She puts aside 10-20 minutes a week to take herself outside of the normal content she digests everyday
• Developed a great network with co-mentors who mentor each other.  She found these people through summits and conferences she’s been to through Young Entrepreneur Council.  She likes how they hold her accountable, help her raise her game, give her feedback, and act as her advisor board.
• Loves business books, particularly Seth Godin, Steven Pressfield (Do The Work), Guy Kawasaki (Social media and building a company), Eric Reese (The Lean Startup Method),
• She makes sure to attend at least one Webinar (Hubspot), seminar, or teleseminar a week because it’s an hour of knowledge investment.

Beliefs

• A huge portion of the population is now online using social media and if your business is not on there you’re just missing out.  Operating on social media has revolutionized Natalie’s business because she’s built her business using it.  She’s very surprised to hear people say social media is a fad because Harvard and Brown universities are even teaching courses on the use of social media.

To get the full-length interview, plus transcription notes and bonuses, check out our Social Media Strategy PREMIUM BizPro Interview Series featuring Amy Porterfield, Natalie Sisson, and Josh Peters.

These 3 world-class experts will teach you how to target your ideal customer with killer content, manage your campaigns to drive massive growth, and build up a thriving list of paying clients by leveraging the power of social media!