 And offering to help with no benefit at all to yourself is something that has built a lot of great relationships for me. And then ultimately, you know, I think it's better than always being the one that's reaching out and just pitching to truly build that relationship to offer to help, even if it's even if it's of no benefit to you. Hello and welcome to a new weekly universal remote webcast. Each week we'll take 20 minutes to talk about realities of remote work. We'll tackle the real challenges, ask the hard questions, and of course, we won't take ourselves too seriously. I'm Natasha Woods. I'm the director of corporate communications at GitLab. And joining me today is Steph Donnelly, head of communications at Dappier and Hailey Griffiths, head of public relations at Buffer. Thank you both for joining me today. Thanks Natasha. Good to be here. Thanks for having us. Wonderful. Well, let's dive right in. So Steph, would you like to introduce yourself first? Yeah, absolutely. As Natasha said, I'm Steph Donnelly. I'm the head of communication at Zappier. Zappier is a task automation tool that helps you get your work done faster. And my team does PR, social media, and we also run the blog. And I am based in Portland, Oregon. Wonderful. Hailey, would you love to hear a little bit about yourself as well? Yeah. So like you mentioned, head of public relations at Buffer. Buffer is a social media management platform. So we help small businesses share posts to social media and analyze the data and engage with their audience. I am originally from Canada. I live in Virginia now with a lot of pets, dogs, cats, fish, shrimp. And when I'm not doing PR, and I'm not on the internet, I spend a lot of time doing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu when we're allowed to be close to other humans, that is. Oh my gosh, that sounds so interesting. I bet you miss it. I do, yeah. It's one of those things that is a big stress reliever, but it's hard not to have it and suddenly to be confined to home. Hopefully there's some online tutorials you can take right now. There are a few. Yeah, it's not the same, but I think we've all realized that with everything online. It's not the same, but it'll do for now. Definitely. Well, speaking about remote, so I know all of us are in different places. I'd love to hear how long you've been remote and what you brought you to remote, a remote opportunity, and then stuff I'd love to hear the same from you. Yeah, so I've been fully remote with Buffer for four and a half years now. And before that, I was not fully remote, but I was always that person at a company that was trying to convince them to go fully remote. And so I had a few companies implemented a remote work policy where it was like we can work remotely one week out of the quarter. So a couple times a year I could work remotely. And before that, when I finished school, I turned down two job opportunities in the place where I went to university because they wanted me to stay in that town. And I was convinced that I'd be able to work remotely. So I have been really keen on remote work for a long time and it's primarily just the flexibility. And at the time several years ago, it was because I wanted to travel. And now it's because I want the freedom to create my own schedule. And we were mentioning this before the recording started not have to commute. It's very nice. Yeah, for sure. I definitely don't miss the commute myself. So I've been remote for two years pretty much since I started at Zapier. I love it now, but I have to admit when I first started remote work, I was a little apprehensive. And that's because in my mind, the remote worker image was usually somebody that was like a digital nomad working out of hostels around the world. And I was just thinking like, that's not really me. I'm, you know, my husband and I had just moved to Portland, we really were hoping to just stay in one place. And I wasn't sure at the time that I could be a remote worker and grow in my career at the same time. And I've been very, very pleased to know that I was very much wrong. It definitely helps to I think that the three of us know it helps to be at a company where there are, you know, paths in place for everyone to grow regardless of whether you want to be a manager or like be an expert in your craft. It also helps to have like these rules and norms in place to, you know, just help you like figure out how to grow both as like a as a communicator as well as just an employee at the company. Yeah, I definitely feel that as well. So I've been remote for about four and a half years. I started at remote my remote journey at the Linux Foundation. And then when I came over to GitLab, one of the reasons I was willing to move was because it was remote. And I really wanted to be able to grow in my career and focus. And I actually decided to go remote. When I went back from maternity leave after having my first son, and I was I live in the Bay Area, I was community in San Francisco and San Jose and anybody that's ever been out here knows that the traffic is horrendous. And I was missing bedtime and other milestones my child that why have a child if I'm going to miss all these milestones. And so I made the decision to only look for companies that allowed remote and have really been lucky in that fact. And I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything when it comes to my kids lives. And I feel like we have an amazing balance, but I'm able to further my career and do something that I genuinely love. So definitely remote work has tons of benefits. Love that. Well, I mean, a lot of people got to experience remote work in 2020. You know, due to do the pandemic and other things that have happened. And to say 2020 has been a roller coaster as an understatement. And there's no end in sight. But, you know, what are some of the ways that you've seen external comms, you know, have to pivot in 2020 alone? So Steph, do you want to start us off? Yeah. So I know that, you know, with the three of us coming from remote companies, one of the ways that external comms is pivoted for the three of us is that we got very, very busy when people were trying to figure out how to work remotely so that we could kind of weigh in there. So that, you know, that was one big impact. I think that, you know, another thing in terms of if we zoom out and look at external comms as a whole, there it was a very real, it was really a very noisy news cycle. So far this year, it's probably about to get a little noisier with the US elections coming up in November as well. And so, you know, I think that if you have a PR story or a company story that isn't relevant to, you know, the news that you're seeing in the news cycle, it's really forced communicators to think about, you know, does my story, does my company fit into this new cycle? Should I try to make it fit into this new cycle? Or should I sit this one out a little bit and just, you know, work with my executives to figure out, you know, when is a good time for us to start talking about ourselves again? I think that was a really big lesson. We're also seeing, you know, from the past month alone, just a lot of opportunities for companies to change internally, in terms of externally, there's a lot of calls for change in terms of how we do things. Google and Facebook just in the past, you know, Google, especially in the past week, getting called to offer more remote work options from their own employees. So it's forcing a lot of communicators to think about like, okay, what are we, what are we going to say? What are the actions that we're going to take to back up the words that we're putting out there as well? Yeah, I love that. I think we're seeing a lot of the same things. I totally agree that it got really busy as soon as the pandemic started, especially if you've done any sort of thought leadership around remote work with your CEO before, suddenly getting all sorts of requests. And I think it was really validating that if you were working in remote work before this, that you really did establish that thought leadership that so many journalists were reaching out, it was such a great opportunity to build those relationships. So I completely agree with that. And the noisy news cycle, definitely. I think something else that that I've seen is if you don't already have a focus on crisis comms or some sort of crisis comms plan, that is not great. You should probably get that going, especially in 2020. I know that things keep happening and people are like, this is it. This is the end. We don't need to worry about this anymore. And I think, like you said, Natasha, it's a roller coaster. So there could be times again, we'll need crisis comms. So I think one of the biggest things that we've done is just like really reevaluating our crisis comm guidelines, making sure that they're up to date, creating new checklists, and then just making sure that that information is ready in case anything else happens this year and really reflecting on it more recently. And I did have someone ask me, well, what if it's not a crisis internally, does it still count as crisis comms? And I think anything that could impact your reputation from the way that you are talking about it or the way that anyone from your company is reacting could qualify as crisis comms. So I think crisis comms is the biggest change that I've seen. The other thing that I've seen, and I think this is a byproduct of the noisy news cycle, we've always had a very active blog is that focus towards owned content and really leveraging your social media presence and your blog to make statements that you otherwise maybe would have pitched or you would reach out to a media contact because they're busy. You know, the media has a lot going on, not just the stories, but also the budgeting cuts and like the financial aspect as well is really difficult to deal with too. So if you don't have something that you're sure that they're going to take, what we've been doing is putting it on our own blog, and then I have like some syndication partners will then take it, or I have something to point them to if we're ranking on Google, they're like, oh, you know what, I am interested in this, they might already find us. So I think the shift to owned content has been the other thing that I've seen in 2020. Yeah, we've definitely, I get a lot of shift to a lot more own content as well. Something that happened for a lot of us is no in-person events. And so a lot of my Q1, Q2, com strategy was really tied to these big events that we were going to, as well as like field marketing and lead, you know, generation was tied to these events. And so we've really had to shift. And how do you still engage with these leads that might be a longer form lead? And of course, like comms is that top of funnel, where we just kind of keep that awareness going. And how do you keep that awareness going in a way that is, you know, empathetic to what's going on, and you're not bombarding them, but at the same time, you're trying to be more hopeful with them. And so I think that that's where a lot of our own contents really come from. And really, I think I've been pulled into a lot of different reviews of content that I normally wouldn't have, because it was like, does this message have the right tone? You know, are we speaking to that audience from an authentic manner? You know, will this resonate here? And so that's, that definitely has really kind of changed. And, you know, that kind of brings me to another thought is, you know, we've seen a lot of folks posting about like the how tos and the tips and tricks, articles and interviews about going remote. But how can we determine what are experts and what are what are kind of those armchair commentators? And, you know, how do you really find that trustworthy voice? So, Healy, do you have thoughts on that? Yeah. So when it comes to really finding the experts, I think one of the things that I was most focused on when I started seeing more information is, was this person writing or speaking about remote work before the pandemic? Or is this just something that they're starting to say after the pandemic? So really looking for a history and sort of more of that thought leadership over time, rather than all of it coming from one to two weeks of experience. Because I think that there are a lot of realizations that you have when you're at home or working from home for the first time. But I think that those of us who have been remote for a long time, learn those all really quickly. The other thing I was looking for is remote policies, because I think a lot of places will say that they know a lot about remote work. And then their tactics will be, we track everyone's time and like install things on everyone's computer so we know exactly what they're doing. And depending on what your beliefs are for us at Buffer, that's not how we do things. And so those are the experts that I don't really look to for their information, because I know that that just doesn't align with our values and how we run our companies. And the other thing that we look for is all remote companies. So if they were remote before and especially all remote companies, they have such better practices of communication because they are used to having to make everything some level of asynchronous or they're used to having to make sure that everyone is included rather than trying to work with just remote workers over here and then a couple of office people over here. So I think it's a different setup. So looking for all remote companies is another one that we look to. Yeah. And adding to Haley, speaking of all remote companies, obviously Zapier, Buffer, GitLab are great places to start for these resources. There's also great all remote communities like WorkFrom that are amazing places to grab content and this sort of stuff. When I'm thinking of who's an armchair expert in remote work versus an actual expert in remote work, I also look for what are systems that they've set up? What are ongoing practices that you've built to help you be successful at remote work? Go a level deeper than, hey, you should have a routine. You should drink water. You should be able to walk away from your computer. I think those are some really basic things you probably learned maybe your first week of working remote, but how do you actually become successful long-term? You really have to build processes and systems and find ways to stay really productive and just find ways to avoid distraction as a whole. Yeah, I definitely agree. And I think here at GitLab, we're really lucky to have someone that literally wrote a book on all remote and has been doing it for 14 years, Darren Murph, who's the head of all remote. And I take a lot of my cues of what he's reading, but I also love when people are so new to remote and they're like, we're struggling with this or our company systems aren't set up this way. And we're having a hard time and then seeing how the experts comment and how they shift their position and provide that advice. I think it's really valuable because there's a complete difference between being remote from the beginning and having all the systems in place and having the culture in place and having to pivot last minute to be all remote. And then how do you keep your company's culture and you ensure your systems are not hindering their ability to do work or hindering the security of the company, but also adapting very quickly. And so I really like to see how people are kind of adjusting. And speaking of people that are new to remote, I know all of us have seen the funniest tips and tricks and headlines and hacks for people that are new to remote. And I get a joy out of reading those. Have you guys seen anything that just made you chuckle? I think the one that I've seen which like clearly had to have been written pre COVID was to, you know, get your family and friends out of the office space. Make sure you avoid distractions from pets, which like it's really funny to me because working at an all remote company, my coworkers kids, their pets, pop into our video calls all the time. Like one of my coworkers is chickens that she regularly shows me on our video calls. It's actually really great. I think it's a piece of this coworker that you wouldn't know about if you were in the office and it's really charming. I actually don't see it as a bad thing. I love that. We see a lot of pets and babies and it's, it's absolutely the best. I've seen a couple of different things. I've had some people tell me like, I'm so productive now that I work from home. I do all of my chores all day and it's great. And I'm like, oh, that's not how I would recommend like setting up your day now that you're remote. So that's one that I've seen that I've, you know, I've talked to people about like, that's probably not sustainable long term just in terms of focus. One of the other ones that I've seen and I'm still mystified by it. So if either of you have context on this, this would be really helpful to me. I've seen so many people who run zoom meetings and like who are new to running zoom meetings that the way that they start them is video off. So you're pretty much not seeing your colleagues now for like until the pandemic is over is what's happening for my, for my husband, for example, because no one is required to use their video. And to me, that just puts a lot of distance between people. And so that, that one has been very strange that I've seen happening. I mean, I could understand that being a cultural thing. So we've been doing a lot of virtual interviews in Korea and Japan because we can't do in person and from a cultural standpoint, we would normally do these in person media interviews. And so instead we're having 10, 14, 20 journalists on these zoom calls, but their culture is camera off. And so GitLab still camera on us. We're doing the interviews and we're presenting the slides, but we're pre prepared to know that media is going to keep camera off. And so I think in that sense, it's more of like a cultural understanding. But I, I would be really sad not to see all my coworkers faces or your guys's face when we're having these conversations. So yeah, one, one thing that I'm looking at outside of just the tips and tricks is I love watching different people at home or like the different chalk shows move to home. And so Stanley Pucci has been doing these videos of making cocktails because he's home with the kids right now. And everyone needs a cocktail after that. And I started doing these monthly cocktail making classes at GitLab where all of us on the marketing team would get on and we would present a different cocktail and teach each other how to make it. And they're so popular. And we just absolutely have the best time and we laugh together. And if you don't drink, you can make like a mocktail or, you know, I think I did our charcuterie board one time because I was like, I'm going to do something non-alcoholic. But it's just, it's just a way to like step into your coworkers world and get to know them more. And I think that that, you know, is really important. Yeah. And I think that that's what people think is missing from remote work. Like when people say I can never imagine working remotely, they think that we don't have any level of that. They think that we're just, you know, emailing each other all day and we never see each other. And like we're not truly, you know, building culture or building relationships with each other, which is so far from the truth at Buffer. We have an entire person. She's the team engagement manager. So she's always looking at different ways to keep the team engaged. She works on all sorts of different activities. We do different fun things. You know, I don't know, we've done a whole host. I love the idea of mocktails. We've done, we did holiday caroling one year via Slack. So someone would kick off a song and then you could only write the next three words of the song. And so you would kind of like, that was a little bit more asynchronous, but we had so much fun. But I think that that idea that it's so hard to connect remotely is what puts a lot of people off of it. And I think that's where the camera thing bothers me of, I don't think that a lot of people are having the best remote experience if they're going into it, just doing, oh, we'll do camera off for all of our meetings or we're not going to talk to each other except for about work things. And I do really hope that after all of this, there will be more remote friendliness in a lot of companies around the world. And I think that creating that positive culture and like truly being thoughtful about the way that you engage with each other is one way to make sure that this lasts a little bit longer. I think so too. I think like one of the things of, one of the benefits of having Zoom and the cameras on and off is it's forcing a lot of teams to be really creative and how they're reconnecting as well. Like Natasha mentioned that a cocktail session, there's a team at Zappier who does a Nicholas Cage movie night pretty regularly where they just pick one of the classics, not national treasure, like some of the older like archive things and put it on and everybody just watches it. There's a reaction on the chat, on the side chat on Zoom and you know, I think that I think it's really cool to see ways that people are getting together beyond just your average like I think right when COVID started, like everyone was having a Zoom half the hour with no agenda as opposed to having like something to demonstrate, something to discuss, something to like all watch together. It's really cool to see how people can be creative in terms of team building as this continues. Yeah, definitely. And so since we are comms, our connections aren't just internal. So like we have our agencies that we work with and we rely on journalists so heavily and I know I loved going to events and having cocktails with journalists or going for like a morning run and you know, we're sitting down in the media room and just like seeing how someone's grandkids are doing. But I haven't really been able to do that with my journalist friends since we've been remote. How are you guys still keeping those relationships, those very important relationships going? So one of the ways, you know, I think for me it's been a much heavier reliance on Twitter than ever before to just really like stay in touch, engage, understand what people are covering, what people are interested in, what people are talking about. And then another thing that my team and I have done as well is like, you know, because we're not able to like grab coffee with anybody or anything like that, like we will usually reach out and see what they're working on, see how we can help, even if we're not connecting them to somebody at Zapier, if we can just think of a source they could talk to, we usually put that offer out there. I think the general theme since COVID is just really shifting to be helpful in any way, shape, or form, whether it's to our readers, you know, our users or even to journalists. Yeah, big, big plus one to all of that. I feel like I've had the most heartfelt conversations with journalists since all of this has started where we're really, how are you doing, truly asking the question, not just like, good, how are you? Okay, should we get started on this interview? But to your point about building relationships with journalists remotely, that has been something that I've done for my entire career. So I started out in, I started out in Ottawa, Canada, which is where I went to school. And that was where I started doing public relations. But after I moved to San Francisco, I've since traveled a lot. And so I primarily work with US based media, but I was living in Canada or where I am right now, I'm in a smaller town in Charlottesville, Virginia. There's not a whole lot of journalists here that focus on tech. And so I have always had to focus on remote relationships with journalists. And I totally agree with what you said, Steph, like Twitter is the way to go. I have a lot of people that I follow on Twitter. And then I also have private lists of reporters on Twitter that I'm particularly interested in their work, or either I haven't connected with them before, I have connected with them before, just so that I'm engaging with them and not just relying on my feed to see their work. And then I completely agree with, I email them not always pitches, just, Hey, I saw that you were doing this. And there's this other person that's doing something similar. Can I connect you? And offering to help with no benefit at all to yourself is something that has built a lot of great relationships for me. And then ultimately, you know, it I think it's better than always being the one that's reaching out and just pitching to truly build that relationship to offer to help, even if it's even if it's of no benefit to you. Yeah, I definitely agree. I know one thing that I did yesterday, when, you know, incomes were very organized, we have our to do list for our to do lists and everything. And I started looking through all the journalists that I haven't spoken with in the last couple months. And I just made a list of everybody that I wanted to reach out and say, like, how are you doing? How's your family doing? You know, how's your dog? Like, how's your parents? And so it's my goal to get that done in the next couple of weeks. So just to friendly, I don't even have any agenda. I just want to see how they're doing and let them know that I care. And I think that that's that's important. I think that goes a long way. I learned a while back when I was also doing a little bit of analyst relationship building is it's about the relationships. It's not about what you can get from each other. It's more about building those trusted relationships for years and years down the line. It's funny, Darren Murph, when he was a reporter and gadget, I used to pitch him back in the day. And so when we start working at GitLab, we have this established relationship already. And that's kind of grown. And so it's really amazing to see that I mean, a lot of these guys become your friends. 100%. And speaking with still connecting with people remotely, a lot of us run teams, a lot of us have agencies, things like that. And so now, you know, we prep spokespeople for media interviews, things like that. For people that traditionally are used to doing like media training in person and coaching and collaboration in person. How do you adjust that for remote? Yeah, so I'm again coming at this from the perspective that this has pretty much been all remote for me for most of my career. But I will say that something that I've done, I jump on a lot of video calls to prep people at Buffer, whether that's they're doing TV or radio or if they're doing something live, making sure that they're ready for what the experience is like to be asked a lot of questions in quick succession. So we can do that on video. And so I'll often do that there. A lot of my prep in terms of creating documents asynchronously is still the same. So that part has been good. And then I just have a lot of guidelines in advance. So I've really leveraged our internal Wiki, we use notion for that to really write down guidelines for how to communicate with reporters, best practices that they can keep in mind. And then I will create documents for them or and or jump on calls. Usually there's always a document, but not always a call it depends on if the person is more or less media trained to sort of go over things. Something that I've seen work really well to it depends what kind of interview they're doing, but is having whoever else is in the room with them or in their home with them, take a video of them, answer those questions, and then watch themselves as afterwards, which is usually very uncomfortable for a lot of people. But it really quickly lets them know, okay, what am I doing? What are my speaking catches? Do I say I'm an a lot or am I slouching or am I looking at my notes too often? So that kind of critique, that kind of self critique that can be you can use a family member for you can set it up on your laptop and then just go and revise it has worked really well for me in the past too. Definitely agree with all of that. I think that I think that many things when you are remote don't change like you really want to make sure that your spokesperson as Haley said is really well prepped. I've become a much bigger stickler on prep notes, prep docs, briefing notes, all those things since going remote because if you're working with a spokesperson who's in a very different time zone, you just really want to make sure that going into it everything is very clear. Expectations are set in the goal that they know the goal of the call before going in. I think another thing as well is setting the expectation that you know if you're going to join this interview for example that you will be giving them some feedback at the end of it. The feedback this time around may not necessarily be a call it might be like a DM through Slack or something like that but I think just having a continual feedback loop and maintaining that sort of transparency and feedback is really important especially when remote. One final thing on prepping spokespeople while in a remote setting it's actually a really great opportunity to develop a slightly more introverted spokesperson. I think you know doing something like a zoom call feels much less scary than pushing them in front of like a you know like a broadcast interview right away it's a really good first step for people that you're trying to develop because it probably feels a lot like joining a meeting right now or just like an all-hands call so you know that that may be one way to take advantage of developing a spokesperson if you are someone in comms with the company that's just you know turned on to something like zoom or video conferencing. Yeah I know plus one two to all of that and I know all of us have had a huge opportunity to be spokespeople right now because we all come from remote companies and we all have a lot of amazing best practices to share but you know we talked about this a little earlier you know between a global pandemic and economic uncertainty and you know a huge light has been shined on racial injustice just in the first half of this year you know as a brand we really want to be thoughtful about the conversations that we're joining and we want to be able to provide you know tips that are like human first and empathetic and so as you're determining which interviews to engage with or what to promote or messaging for your spokespeople and what they should say you know how do you ensure that you're being thoughtful to the conversation and you're adding to it instead of being opportunistic. I think that one of the ways that communicators can really make a difference here is to um with everything going on know the issues like really take the time to understand what the conversation is what both both are all the many sides of the conversation entail um you know if you if you ever really needed a reason to pause and learn what it is that's what the discourse you're seeing in the news is now is the time the reason that you know brands like Patagonia and Ben and Jerry's um have such great activism tied to their brand is because they know these issues they know that this is the part of who they present externally and this is a really good time to really reflect on that you know within your own brands and think about how much of that activism stands really makes sense for us right now like is there a way for us to be a part of this and how deep do we go um but I but it always has to get back with you know a deeper understanding of what it is you're going to say as a communicator it's so easy to just really come up with something that sounds pretty um and sounds like the right words but you really have to have the actions to back it up we're going to start to see a lot of demand to make sure that action is backed up not just from external audiences but people working inside your company too yeah I fully agree um I think know the issues is probably the best way that you can say that and I think too if you are in a situation where your team is you know your team is all on the same perspective maybe everyone that's making this decision doesn't have kids or everyone that's making this decision is white bring in people on your team who are more involved in this conversation or who are more impacted to help with that statement I saw a lot of companies putting out black lives matter statements without talking to any of the black employees at their company and I think that's a huge problem and you are going to get called out for it so I think it makes more sense to pause and instead of worrying about timeliness I know this is something that we worry about a lot in comms really make sure that you're getting the messaging right that you're bringing in the right people before you move forward and I couldn't agree more with the action part that you said Steph because I think I have seen a lot of companies just say that they are going to take a stance and then you do get called out if you're not taking action or if you have done something in the past so it's almost worse that you've put out a statement and then now you're getting all of this backlash so pause and consider and then also for a lot of us in comms we might have sort of an internal comms area as well that you are able to make an impact in so if there's something internally that you can be doing differently in the company to change things so that when you're putting out a statement and when you're saying things there truly is action happening on on the back end and that your employees feel that while you're saying that so they know that you that you really mean what you're saying and you're not just putting out a statement I think that is really important as well. Yeah I definitely agree I know when the pandemic first hit more in China and Italy and that area we were initially asked by reporters about remote work and we didn't feel that it was an appropriate time for us to get to join in the conversation but as soon as it became more of a global issue and it really affected the tech industry and more and more companies were moving to remote we felt that it was very appropriate for us to add to the conversation because we actually had concrete advice to add and that really goes back to having strong company values so I know at GitLab our values are credit you know collaboration and diversity and transparency and you know iteration and results and if it doesn't tie back to one of those values and helps from an internal or an external standpoint audience why are we doing it and that has kind of been my barometer for putting communications together and I think that it's really important that as a brand you're authentic because consumers now whether it's a B2B consumer a B2C consumer can really feel it. Yeah I definitely agree with that. Well I want to thank you both for being here this has been a wonderful conversation and a wonderful end to our to our first series so again this is our weekly universal remote webcast with Steph Donnelly, Head of Communications for Zapier and Haley Griffiths for Head of Public Relations for Buffer. I'm Natasha Woods, Director of Corporate Communications at GitLab and we we hope you enjoyed this.