Interviews

Martech Interview with the Co-Founder and CCO, Knotch – Aron Tzimas

Aron Tzimas from Knotch explains the art of content marketing and how AI is enhancing the crucial functions of digital marketing and martech.

 

Technology is removing the barrier between web analytics and content marketing, and allowing insights to drive creativity and to drive action

1. Can you tell us about your role at Knotch?
I’m the Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer at Knotch, where I oversee the product, engineering and marketing, essentially anything that is seen externally. When someone interacts with our company, whether it be a product experience, or they have seen a piece of our content we’ve created, it’s vital to us that they have the same experience and receive the same message. Everything’s connected.

2. Can you tell us about your journey into this market?
Our mission is to give brands and consumers a voice online. On the brand side, we provide them with content intelligence that makes brands smarter through data, while also allowing marketers to create the best content in the world. That part is key as content is a brand’s voice online. On the consumer side, we do this through our Knotch feedback unit that lives on content, giving consumers a way to directly engage and communicate with brands.

3. How do you think technology is upgrading the marketing sector?
Technology is helping creatives and marketers inform their decisions and inform the way they work.

Technology is removing the barrier between web analytics and content marketing, and allowing insights to drive creativity and to drive action.

4. How has the data driven approach enhanced marketing as a whole?
Marketing is the intersection of data and creativity, so having great, insightful data and intelligence gets you halfway there It’s also super helpful as data takes away all the guesswork, focus groups, or even tedious research that marketers do, allowing marketers to spend more time creating great content and really bringing to life the idea of working smarter, not harder.

5. Can you explain how your Content Intelligence Platform empowers content marketing brands and professionals?
Our Content Intelligence Platform is truly a data-driven insight powerhouse. Our unique, holistic data set captures qualitative, quantitative, and contextual data from both paid and owned content channels. This means we can provide marketers with unparalleled insights. On top of that, our Content Intelligence Platform is built for marketers, by marketers. It speaks their language, and surfaces the details they care about. In fact we even designed our UI, called Content UI, around the core principles that matter most to marketers: it’s human, insightful and effective. Everything we do is about empowering marketers.

6. Can you share some tips that can help our audience and the creation of their content planning strategies?
Obviously, I would say use Knotch and use Blueprint, our brand new competitive content analysis & market intelligence product. Apart from using our Content Intelligence Platform, I think the most important thing you can do is to create goals for your content and measure everything. One of the most common questions we get asked is, “Was our content successful?” and the answer always comes down to what it is they set out to achieve with that particular content piece or campaign. And the only way you’re going to know if content is successful is by measuring it. The other tip I would offer is to consume as much content as possible, and stay up-to-date on current trends. You can then make your content engaging and provide relevant information to your audience. Engaging content can be either useful or emotive, but just creating unique content in itself is the key. The best way to create unique content is by knowing what content is out there, and then making the leap to create something new.

7. How do you predict AI will play a role in the future of content marketing, and how do you prepare for an AI centric world?
AI is really just an assistant. However, it also plays a role in creativity.

Content marketing is a very creative art, and AI can assist with content planning and help predict trends in the market.

I like to think of it as this: To connect with people, you need to be a person to create for others. What AI can do is supply marketing teams with the information they need to execute faster and in a more targeted way than in the past. I think we need to embrace the AI centric world, as at the end of the day it will allow marketers to be more efficient, create better content and hopefully also do a lot of the tedious work for us.

8. What advice would you like to give to other startups?
The best advice I can give is to invest in people. We always refer to ourselves as a bunch of misfit nerds. So it’s embracing diversity, it’s making sure that your company is a place people actually enjoy working and where everyone is set up to succeed. Allow people to be themselves. If you give people the ability to succeed in their way, then all of the other stuff that is important to a company like productivity, goals, leads, etc will follow.

9. Can you tell us about your team and how they support you?
I would flip the question and say my job is to support my team, not the other way around. If I’m judging myself on performance, I look at how my team’s performing. My role is to make sure everyone who works with me has all the necessary tools, creative sparks, and freedom to execute and work the way they need to. It’s more about how I can support my team than it is how they support me.

10. What are some major developments you are currently planning?
Right now, we’re focusing our efforts on the automation of insights, trend predictions and building the dashboard of the future for content marketers. This sparks the real question that maybe this isn’t a dashboard at all. I’ll leave it at that.

11. What work related hack do you follow to ensure maximum productivity?
My favorite hack by far in this work from home COVID reality is when I recorded a video of myself looking focused on a conversation, nodding frequently, and then using that as my Zoom background in unnecessary meetings. It means I can be ‘present’ in meetings, but also focus more on the things that I love to do, which, funnily enough, isn’t going to meetings.

12. What movie inspires you the most?
Harry Potter. I watch it more often than I’d like to repeat on record (usually watched in parallel with reading the books), and it always leaves me feeling like there’s a little more wonder to the world than what we’re led to believe. It also allows me to be more imaginative, creative and a little mischievous in everything I do. Chief Manager of Mischief would by my ideal job title. Chief Creative Officer is also a made up title, and one that says a lot less about me.

13. What applications do you use on your phone?
I’m super boring. The most used apps on my phone are Mail, Messages, Slack, Twitter, Spotify and Settings (I spend way too much time in the settings app). However, the Camera app is my favorite. Seriously! The camera app literally is the reason why the iPhone is what it is today.

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Aron Tzimas is the Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer at Knotch, a content intelligence platform enabling companies like Amazon, Facebook, Walmart, Bank of America, Salesforce and others to plan for breakthrough content, as well as measure and optimize it across channels. A regular thought leadership contributor to the trade media and industry at-large, Aron has been named as the winner of Young Glory award among others. Aron is also the Co-Founder and the creative mastermind behind the worldwide acclaimed bakeries Supermoon Bakehouse and Mr. Holmes Bakehouse which popularized the worldwide phenomenon hybrid pastry known as the ‘Cruffin’ (Croissant Muffin) with locations in New York, San Francisco, LA and Seoul.
Prior to his design endeavors in the United States, Aron started and launched Gram Magazine in Australia before starting co-founding his own Creative Agency.


Knotch is a SaaS platform that helps brands connect their content to desired business outcomes. Our data-driven approach to content research, holistic data collection, analysis, and optimization is empowering the world’s most notable brands to fully understand their content. From content leaders and CMOs, to communication directors and brand managers, Knotch makes them smarter through actionable insights. That’s why brands including Ford, JPMorgan Chase, and Salesforce trust the Knotch Content Intelligence Platform to power their content strategy.

https://knotch.com/

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