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Have you ever conquered obstacles and achieved a goal only to wonder what was next for you? If you answered yes then you’ll want to listen to our guest for today’s show, Carolyn Kopprasch.
Carolyn is a social media marketing expert and Chief Happiness Officer at Buffer, where her passions for social media and customer service come together to create magic. Join us as we talk about all of this and more on the 58th episode of How’d You Get Into That?.
MORE ABOUT THIS SHOW
Growing up in Long Island, NY, Carolyn says she inherited her Dad’s “techy” side. She too has a love of technology and helping people utilize their gadgets fully. To parlay that love into a career she went to college at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN and studied sociology and business.
During her time in college, her interests moved more towards marketing and advertising. While she gravitated towards marketing, Carolyn says traditional marketing seems to play to people’s insecurities, and she didn’t like that. She wanted to approach marketing more from the standpoint of enhancing people’s lives, instead of telling them what needed fixing.
After graduation she got a job at a small PR firm. It was very much a traditional marketing agency, but some of the clients started asking for assistance with email marketing. She didn’t relate as much to traditional marketing, so when the management team asked her to work on the email marketing side of their business, she jumped at it.
THE FINER DETAILS OF THIS SHOW:
- How to figure things out with little or no support.
- Why it’s important to find work that regularly challenges you.
- The joy of helping customers.
- How to learn a new skill set.
- How Buffer can help you in your business.
- And so much more!
Carolyn admits she was terrified because she didn’t know HTML or really anything about email marketing. But she dove in, kept a positive attitude, and went for it. And that’s how anyone learns a new skill set, she says. There wasn’t a lot of support at her firm, so she got a Twitter account, followed all the marketing gurus, and started reading all the free information available out there on blogs.
After about a year at the PR firm, she joined the agency service team at Emma, an email marketing company. She liked learning the technology side of things, but what she really loved was working with customers, and she had plenty of opportunity to do that at Emma. What’s more, there was tons of support from upper management.
After about three years at Emma she had hit her stride in email marketing and was wondering what was next for her. So she made a short list of the companies she would like to work for someday, and a company called Buffer was on it. Buffer is a social media application she discovered while at Emma that helps people manage multiple social media accounts at once and measure their reach through analytics.
She really liked Buffer’s vision, and their philosophy of commitment to culture and customers. They were looking for a “Happiness Hero” in the US. When they tweeted out the job opportunity for it, she saw it and went for it. She was excited about it as it was a true collaborative connection with customers; and help them grow their businesses using Buffer and other social media tools.
Today, Carolyn is the Chief Happiness Officer for Buffer, where she directs a team of seven Happiness Heroes and one Community Champion. She says the Happiness Heroes are her customers now, and her job is to make sure they have everything they need to serve Buffer’s 1.8 million customers every day.
Please join me in thanking Carolyn for sharing her story, her happiness and her knowledge biscuits with us today. Thanks for being here and we’ll see you next time!
Tweetable: “Customers are people like you and me.” Carolyn Kopprasch
EPISODE RESOURCES
- Buffer’s web site
- Carolyn Kopprasch on Twitter
- Buffer on Facebook
- Buffer on Twitter
- Subscribe to the show on iTunes
- Subscribe to the show on Stitcher
- Email me with any questions, comments or guest suggestions at Grant@GrantBaldwin.com
