Go behind the scenes of the day-to-day responsibilities of InterWorkers and get a glimpse of our unique company culture.
Riffing on our previous series format, this two-part blog will provide a look at the inner workings of the InterWorks Marketing Team and how content is the anchor point for so much of what we do. In this post, I’ll highlight different members of the Marketing Team, how their specialty intersects with content and how that interplay fuels our creativity and distinguishes InterWorks from other companies in the data and tech space. I’ll start.
As Content Coordinator, my highest goal is always to share the stories of the InterWorks team with the rest of the world in a way that is empowering, informative, dazzling and leads to engagement with our brand. Within that, I aim to maintain consistency and excellence in the communication and representation of our brand identity, so when people see and think “InterWorks,” there’s a trusted identity, tone and style that comes to mind.
From a content perspective on the Marketing Team, our priority is always to share InterWorkers’ successes, experience and expertise with the world, and I try to facilitate that process as smoothly and seamlessly as possible. A lot of times, that looks like providing structure for others to use as they build out their stories or messaging. Then I share those final products on our social media platforms to highlight our contributions to the data community at large and spotlight our quirky company culture.
The Playful Potential of Internal Content
Everything comes back to our people. Our amazing team members are what power InterWorks and make it into the exciting, innovative entity that it is, so cultivating our company culture and regularly celebrating and appreciating our team is an important part of that. When our team is empowered and feels valued and known, we can do our best work, so taking events like an annual Holiday Party or virtual Summer Summit and treating them as opportunities to create something special for our team is a privilege. And super fun, too!
No one works in a vacuum, and often when we’re working on people-focused culture projects, we’re working in tandem with our incredible Employee Experience team. When putting together creative assets for these events, we seek out ways to make space for a variety of InterWorkers to shine, whether that’s highlighting our global offices and what makes them special or supporting individuals as they host virtual sessions.
One fun project that coincided with Earth Day was a seed packet project where we curated a variety of wildflower seeds, packaged them up in InterWorks branding and sent them out to all of our team members. This was a great way to give a little something to our people for really no reason and brighten their day. Many InterWorkers shared pictures of their blooming wildflowers or the planting process with their families. This project was brought to life by Graphic Designer, Alex Gelmers.
View this post on Instagram
Below, Alex shares a little about why he loves this sort of work:
Q: From your perspective, what makes internal culture projects impactful?
The internal projects allow for employees to connect with InterWorks in a way they normally wouldn’t. These are opportunities to show how much we appreciate our employees by providing a small experience to help brighten their day, week or year. Not only is the work we do important, but we also want to make sure InterWorks is a place people enjoy working at and are proud of. Through impactful and meaningful designs within our internal cultural projects, we can create a connection with our employees that they might not otherwise experience.
Q: What appeals to you about internal culture projects and keeps you engaged and interested?
I love creating the visual experience that comes with them. There is something special about being able to create something people can connect with and hold on to. The opportunity to create a special moment for someone through design always keeps me interested. Another aspect I enjoy is that since they are internal-facing, oftentimes they’re an opportunity to flex outside of our normal design styles and explore/practice a new style. It’s also fun when I see someone post a pic of something they received from InterWorks, whether it’s something small like a card, a sticker or even a design I created for the birthday gifts.
One of Our Greatest Assets: The InterWorks Blog
The blog! This is easily the biggest source of traffic on our website, and it’s something we’re exceedingly proud of. We feature upwards of 20 different InterWorks contributors on the blog every month, and our posts cover everything from super granular topics like Veeam NAS backup and Tableau table calculations to broader, more people-centric posts like a Tableau dashboard of our company’s Spotify Wrapped data or a series on our quarantine hobbies. We love having a diverse offering of content pieces from a broad spectrum of InterWorks authors. We’ve seen over and over how valuable our team sharing their perspectives on different data solutions has been to the wider community, and we plan to continue sharing our expertise and experience with the world for as long as we can!
The blog would not exist if it weren’t for the company at large. Marketing isn’t the team that’s out on the front lines of our consulting work. We absolutely rely on our fellow InterWorkers to feel out the trends and needs of the data and IT communities and respond to what’s going on there via the blog. We do our best to make that as easy as possible, but the blog is a success because our team is composed of brilliant individuals who take initiative and fill the knowledge gaps they see in the industry.
Above: A screenshot of a TC19 featured viz created by Keith Dykstra with design support from Alex. Explore the blog here.
One of the (many) distinguishing characteristics about the blog that we love so much is the feature image that accompanies each post. Our Graphic Designer, Carter Link, creates each one and says this about the creative process behind them:
“Blog images have an impact on the more day-to-day evolution of the InterWorks brand. While we have some big projects that can impact the way we do things, blog headers have been a consistent driver of the way our brand looks and feels to customers. Blog headers keep me engaged because they are constantly evolving and changing as the look of InterWorks changes. The goal is to create something that looks as good as the blog is informative, so I am always trying to think of ways to level up our blog imagery. Since I create one almost every day, I have to find new ways to make data and IT services look fun and interesting!”
Above: A sampling of Carter’s feature images
Social Media As the Content Megaphone
When it comes to social media, our goal is to edify the data community at large and celebrate and share exciting news about our partners, clients and team members. Social Media Land is an approachable space for us to connect with others, hear from them and – from a marketing perspective – be a bit more playful with the assets we create. Each platform has its unique audience, tone and objectives, and we like tailoring our messaging to each.
Social media affords us an opportunity to stand out because of the striking nature of our visual assets (as you saw above) and the unconventional way we interact with our audience. For example, in previous years during the Tableau Conference keynotes, Garrett Sauls live-tweets the session, highlighting big news announcements, sharing funny memes and pulling out nuggets of wisdom shared by the speakers. Why would we do something like this? There are several reasons, but this is an easy way we can utilize social media to amplify Tableau’s voice and achievements, support the #datafam and share valuable insights with them. Everything we do is motivated by our desire to share people’s expertise and experience, and being creative when doing so is what makes marketing so rewarding for us!
View this post on Instagram
Here are some more thoughts from Carter, who brings many of our social media projects to life:
“Social media has an impact on the way people perceive InterWorks’ personality. It is a place where we show not only what InterWorks looks like but also what it feels like. Getting a view of how and why people engage with different types of content is fascinating. Sometimes, the things you think won’t work at all get tons of user engagement, and sometimes, the things that seem like a sure win will flop. So it is a constant game of figuring out what your audience wants to see and how you can deliver in a way that is consistent but ever-evolving! It’s been fun to try super creative things on our social channels and see what is most effective – sometimes the new, weird ideas make a big splash just because they are different.”
Hang out with us on social media! You can find us on the following platforms:
A Company Culture in Motion
Multimedia is such a fun medium to use to experiment with new creative skills, see what resonates with our audience and break up some of the more written, long-form content we tend to use in other places. Our team is a talented bunch, and this is yet another way we can show that off and share it with others. Whether we’re creating something animated, highlighting interviews with our team members or producing a media-based case study, we love trying new things and peeling back the layers of our company personality. These projects are often more time-intensive and provide opportunities for collaboration with even more members of Marketing. I’ll let two of our biggest multimedia contributors – Carter and InterWorks’ Multimedia Coordinator, Ricki Thompson – share their perspectives on the power of multimedia to engage with customers and deliver value to our audience.
Carter
“Multimedia is impactful because usually we have a totally captive audience. People naturally like to watch things that move because they feel more human than something that is totally stagnant; if you can bring someone into a video or animation, it can be quite powerful. Getting to be a part of helping guide our users’ experiences through video and animation is really fun.”
Above: The Best Practices for Designing Efficient Tableau Dashboards video to promote our team’s recent work on updating a Tableau whitepaper
Ricki
“InterWorks offers top tier consulting and IT services across the globe, but our trade secret is that we have the best people. On the Marketing Team, it’s our job to yell from the mountaintops that InterWorks rules and all the reasons why. Multimedia has an ability to really pull an audience into that message. Curating enjoyable and interesting virtual experiences makes talking about a service or product exciting and inspiring to a viewer. What you say is meaningful, but how you say it is just as important! Multimedia really embodies the ‘how’.
I’m drawn to multimedia because the variety in it. InterWorks has a lot to offer, so we should have many different ways to communicate. Webinars, podcasts, images and videos each evoke very different senses and experiences. Using these mediums to share ideas is a challenge, but it’s also always rewarding. One of my favorite aspects of multimedia at InterWorks is the people that I work with. I realize this sounds like the canned InterWorks answer. But I’d be lying if I said anything different! I love multimedia, and I really enjoy working in marketing, but the best part about my role here is its collaborative nature. I get to work with creative, kind and hilarious people. We have a good time.”
Join the Team!
As members of the Marketing Team at InterWorks, we have the unique position of being able to work with a wide range of InterWorks all across the globe. Every day brings an exciting new opportunity to grow and learn, and we’re so grateful to celebrate and honor our team day in and day out. As this blog illustrated, the way we do that takes many different forms, but our commitment to authenticity and serving our community never wavers.
At InterWorks, the work we do is fun, and the people we work with are even better. If you’re interested in being a part of our company, take a look at our open roles. We are always on the lookout for hardworking individuals with that special spark. Maybe we’ll see you around soon!
