First ever Messaging Matters Show with Disha Pegu

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and i think we're alive it's uh it's a learning method they're trying to

figure out uh you know so i think i did the intro twice i don't know if everybody saw it twice but anyway

um thank you for showing up today uh those of you who are watching

live or on delay or later this is the messaging matters show and

it is a new show a project of copy flat media uh something i've been wanting to do for a

while and it's very similar to gonna be somewhat similar to the the old copy chat show but with some different uh a

different a little bit of different format um the topic's gonna be somewhere but

focus more on messaging in business various types of businesses that kind of

kind of messaging that you um that you portray to your to your

customers and future customers so that kind of takes in like copywriting content marketing two things

storytelling things that i like to talk about um and um so

i expect to have some guests on and i expect to do some solo shows uh as

we go and as you can see today i am joined by disha pagoo

do i say your name right um yeah who's a community manager at out of ring

and um so over the last year or so i've had a chance to get to know desha and

um i think she's a breath of fresh air to our the web community because um she kind of comes to us not really

from the web agency side of things so she brings her understanding of

marketing and community managing management and even project management that's something i've learned about you

in the last couple weeks like really interesting i go back and look at the linkedin profiles like she's been a community manager before so she has a

lot of skills that she brings to uh the table uh for adriene and uh so bishop if you

would feel free to tell tell us a little bit about yourself okay hi todd i'm very

i'm very happy to be in this show um i mean we tell we talk so much uh almost

every day right so i think it was long due to do our official chad

yeah yeah and now um one thing uh you're the community manager for outer

rim and in a minute i want you to tell us what that means what that means but i want you to talk about the fact that you

reside in barcelona spain and i am extremely jealous of that and i know you

go spelunking on the weekends yes it's it's been i have been in barcelona for it's it's almost it's my

fourth year actually this year so it's time goes like this i didn't even realize when i

finished like almost four years here and this city has so much to

offer you you know there is a you can you can do something every day for every kind of taste

i mean i write i mean in my first year i moved here in like

the last months of 2018 so in my first year which was 2019 just

before the pandemic hit us i was i was like i came home only to like sleep i was out

the whole day i was in university at that time because i initially came to barcelona to

do my um masters so it's like a new exploration we're

making new friends getting to know the people and it was not my first time in barcelona by the way i came here twice

as a tourist already and i every time i visited barcelona i knew that i i this

is this is my place i mean i i had this i had this like calling

so yeah and uh loving so far let's see how long i will stay here but um

it has been so great do you have did you finish your master's degree yeah yeah long back yeah

so what is your bachelor's and your master's in yeah so this is another interesting part about

myself because my bachelor is completely outside of marketing business whatever

my bachelor is in sociology i mean i had a major in sociology which is like nothing related to what i'm doing right

now so yeah that's uh that's um actually it's very very it has been

very surprising that during my um bachelor days i got internship

opportunities which were in marketing uh somehow it just fell into my lab and

i accepted and that's where i knew that okay i'm doing market sociology but i knew that i'm going to build a career in

business and marketing yeah like in the future i already knew that so after i um

graduated then i looked i was i was willing to do a bachelor's pro master's from abroad i

mean i i wanted to just go abroad for another masters so i chose barcelona

and i have a master's in it's in marketing and communications okay okay

so now did you do your bachelor's in um the uae uh yes i i i mean um

i i had this exchange programs uh all all like all throughout my bachelor so i did

a exchange program in india then i went to a us so it was all all the semesters for all

the years were um like sort of in different countries and i made sure that happened because i

really wanted to make the most out of my student life because i was not sure that if i was going to do a masters or not at

that point so yeah so i i would say that sociology is

actually a very good degree to have to go into business and marketing especially if you're doing the marketing side of things because right um it's it

really studied its study of people really it's very similar to psychology in that regard and i don't think people realize

especially in the marketing side of it how much of those two subjects you need to know something about

so i think you're actually well equipped from an educational standpoint to do what you're doing now

yeah that's my personal opinion so um that's that's really interesting um

so that is an interesting thing about about you aside now tell us what being the community manager for aydah rheem

involves first of all tell for those who don't know what adarim is and then tell

us what it means for you to be the community manager well uh we are

just to keep it like really brief we are a project management platform for design

for web designers and web agencies and solo entrepreneurs like of course like

the web design has its demand of its own right it's it's very apparent like

web design projects are nothing like like the other project management so there needs to be

a dedicated platform with that that's that is what the philosophy of our founder

that's our team was created like a vital video our founder vito was

a web designer himself and he knows everything from inside you know he is so

i think he's very right at saying like why web designers meet a dedicated

project management platform i mean i do i'm not even a web designer but the more i am in this community i'm i'm in this

space i i totally um acknowledge the fact that it is required

you know so i have been a project manager myself in a translation agency here in

barcelona and um even we had our own dedicated platform

for the translators and everything so yeah i would say

most agencies need a project manager but if you can't have a manager a

platform is good so there are a lot of project management platforms on the internet

and they do different things and so what would make um out of rheem

um better for an agency than say a sauna or

um web teamwork i think is one of them there's a lot of out there that are used by different agencies what why would

adaring what would be the benefit of using that over one of the other ones that are already out there on the uh

you know on the market yeah um to go to your first point like yes you

you do need a project manager but to make the life of the project manager easier there is atari in project manager

we have we do have web agencies that use our platform they have a project manager who is using atari

so there since it's it's a full full-blown

platform so there are like a lot of feature but i think the most interesting feature which makes saturn really stand

out it's um the fact that

the request made from your clients lends up directly to your website

that feature i think asana or trello will not have uh trello is mostly like a

task management i mean you put up the task you see how it's flowing and and and it's there what about the others

aspects like okay if you're if you're like if you're just starting off as a

web designer or your agency is um just scaling like in the beginning part okay

it's easy to manage your inbox all the time and see the requests but what if you are a

a big agency who get like 500 requests

every day imagine the horror of going into your inbox and seeing the 500 requests

so we have taken the consideration into these uh factors that

goes into our webman web design projects and there is a solution for everything i

think there is a solution for like every like headache [Music]

yeah except for the client writing their own content but that's another story on the other hand

um so you're a community manager for aderine what does that entail what day to day

what does that entail for you right um well for attorney msi i always say like

at the room where we are still at a startup phase we are scaling very

fast but we are still at the start of this so the titles of the people are just are not very

fixated so you see yeah yeah it's very fluid our roles and responsibilities floats

you know right so i i'm responsible to um

build uh keep building the relationship with our potential customers

and the existing ones and uh like echo our

the company idea across the social media that's my primary duties but of course i

do other other things as well you know like um sometimes i do social support uh

sometimes i'm helping my other colleague with his emails and

there are like i i mean community manager i'm more like if i have to put holistically i'm like the marketing

assistant but then yes the community managed management is like my primary primary

duty so in and so you said kind of what i was

going down anyway um the whole idea of um

communicating the the message about a rheem across the social channels

and in the community and i guess the primary community is the facebook group is that right they actually did a social

there was a social uh group on the adering website for a while and i guess it

wasn't used i remember they did that and it seems that everything seems to have just dropped and gone to the facebook

group now and that seems to be and it seems to be working pretty well for and i can tell you do a good job of keeping

people engaged and doing something every but so what would be the core things you're

trying to communicate the what is the message about a ream in the facebook group and across the social

channels where are you trying to communicate yeah right uh this is a question that we as a

team behind atari also um question a lot you know

the the question that what is atari trying to tell what is time to convey is still

like ongoing discussion even for the team you know because um we don't have like a product

marketing team in place uh so far so

so the team so the marketing team like including me we are just trying to float

between product placement uh kind relationships

and to tell them basically that yes you we acknowledge that you are a

web designer or you are you are a web agency web design agency you have certain problems we know them and we

might have a solution for that you know but that's that's a plain way to put it but in the messaging that goes

on on socials or the newsletters or wherever you cannot put it that black

like blatantly you know like it there's a lot of nurturing process and because we're dealing with people's we we don't

see them as like plain buyers or like a

goat you know there is a lot of emotional connect and we do which is very uh which has to be

spontaneous of course i mean if you don't connect to your audience in the most natural way

i i think it will not work so and i agree with that so you're

trying to be um i guess nurturing and soft selling i suppose

um what are some things you think about or that you do to try to do that in a nurturing

soft way instead of you know what what kind of like you do good job of like asking questions on the facebook group

you know or or bringing up a pain point which will get you know reaction from people

um and then you've then you have then you have diesha's words that she has learned

about being a community manager and i keep telling you that's an article right you're gonna make an article right yeah

yeah but but what are you what and i don't know if i'm asking this

question correctly but what are some things you do to

to facilitate that process the nurturing the soft selling in in in the facebook

group setting on twitter uh i know you're active on twitter as well yeah um yeah so to just go to the

beginning i was introduced very suddenly to the itarian community like a sudden right i i remember you

messaging me like what happened there was this former manager where she got it like i was

telling you she she just left the job and i'm the new one now so so that that

it to see from that perspective i had to i was like totally unknown i was just like

for me i was just thrown into the community right so i was getting to know the people that the perimeter are these

is this community like a rowdy group of people or they're friendly so it took me around like three months just to know

the people right which is very normal because there are like thousands 10 20 thousands of

people together everywhere in the community right not only in the facebook but across across

our resources like platforms so i got to know fortunately that the

community at atarim are very friendly they're very warm they're very helpful i have asked

rather than helping them i have asked help from them to do my job better a lot

of times you know so it's like a constant give-and-take process it's an education

because given my background i have no idea about like wordpress in general i know what is

wordpress i know the basics but i don't know the deep things that are going on in the other communities sometimes i'm

looking at other communities i'm like oh my god i have no idea about this you know so i i have to put this human touch

in my community i mean if you have to go to the technical parts of wordpress or

your sales or whatever there are like countless resources but then

my my initial mentor when i joined this job with nicole she's an amazing lady

so cool and i i love her she has helped me so much to do my job so she was with me teaching me

guiding me for the first month on this job and about agency world about

how is this how is the community how are the people in the agency how how is that italy life looks like you know so she

always told me disha try to make the day light for everyone as a

community manager everyone is busy i know agency owners are like super busy but

your job is a community manager is like a cheerleader you know pictures

cheer for them even if you're failing at something okay there is something better coming up

so you're that person who is like lifting lifting the community up

yeah that's a that's a good point you know and nicole does a fantastic job of doing that i kind of see myself as a

cheerleader as well um cheering people on yeah yeah and um so that's really

good advice i'm glad you got in touch with her early on and she was able to give that to you um how do you

first of all are you a part of other wordpress communities uh yes i am actually

i i am a part i am part of a lot of communities yes

yeah in facebook itself it's like countless you know i'm also part of the elementor

group which is like yeah yeah yeah yeah so you know you said you're trying to

bring the human touch to my community yeah so how does that look what is it you're

trying to do i mean how does bringing the human touch look for you to bring it to the community right um it's tricky

because i cannot be pretentious at this task i sit down at my desk in the

morning and i think about a piece of content um

i i of course i if i go to the like how i plan my

daily tasks and of course i have those content pillars and content buckets but that's there

what you put into your content bucket has to come from you very naturally i think because it's all about me you know if i

don't be authentic i don't feel good doing my job you know if i if i if i am feeling

uh [Music] suppose like for example today i don't feel good

i have to tell that to my community you know like what do you do to lift your day up when you're feeling low and i

have posted that so many times i cannot feel low behind my desk and

acting to be cheerful in the community like it's a wonderful day but actually actually i'm not feeling so good i i

don't think that's that's uh that that's the way any community community manager should be because

it's not uh it's not building authentic relationships right so yeah i know we you and i both were

talking about the weather we had in the last 24 hours and you had a lot of

a lot of weather problems there in barcelona and of course here in arkansas we got hammered last night with multiple

tornadoes right and i didn't really do anything last night nothing i mean whenever you're

watching the weather for almost three hours you know making sure you're not gonna get hit by a tornado you don't tend to

do anything else so and then i woke up this morning and then you know we you know it's just but

those things happen right yeah people get cancer uh people lose uh

parents they lose spouses they lose children yeah pets die exactly these things are

they're they're parts of what make us human and and connect to each other yeah and i

think if i don't have the if i don't feel uh comfortable sharing

what what's going on on if my pet died and i don't feel comfortable sharing it

with my community i think there is something missing uh in the link in the relationship with

your community right yeah yeah so and i also make sure that i i give the

platform to uh the community as well to to feel free

to talk about how they are feeling how they are doing in the business i think that's uh ultimately that's the main

purpose behind having a community to encourage the community communicate with

themselves right because i know that some people in the community are they they come across as shy if they have a

problem there they are kind of thinking if i should post will i

come across as someone stupid if i post this no but if you know that your community

manager who's managing this community is super friendly she's very fun of course

my question is safe out there you know she is friendly and fun yeah

and then i i don't tolerate bullying i don't tolerate hate speech you know so if someone is putting that in i i'm

there to stop it you know like hey don't do this in my in my watch

she's gonna put you in timeout folks yeah so i i think that that's definitely

something to to um to help with the human connection element for

sure and that's an important part of communication of your organization as whole that yeah

we're at a marine and we're a team or a company but there's human beings behind this company yeah right you know we have

different people so let's talk about we have a few minutes left let's talk about the agency com summit which is coming up

at the end of april which is really interesting because that week uh is the interim

web agency summit and at the very end of the week on the weekend here in conway we you've heard of your foes folks we

are having tote suck days and um so toad suck days

and uh so i've got a busy week that week and you first got the web agency summit and then that weekend the toad sucked

days um but i'm gonna be a part of that uh as all just like the third one and

i'm gonna be moderating a session with rob cairns and uh but there's a tons of sessions with incredible people speaking

right um and i know it's your first time but let's talk about the web agency summit

what are you looking forward to well as a new newbie to the entire summit i'm

looking forward to like literally every session i i i almost

know all the sessions by heart so far so yeah so whenever i screen those

sessions i'm like wow this is amazing this is amazing everything is so amazing like everyone has so many things to say

and their stories themselves you know like since i'm dating so closely with all the speakers i i of course know

their bio like who are they what's their journey being so there it's like incredible journey and

it's so amazing yeah yeah and and um you've got a really good group this year

and you know every year you do but yeah one of the things that i know you are intentional about is trying to be a

little bit more diverse this year yeah and you told me something maybe a week ago or so that you actually had more

women than you do men this time at the agency summit

yes um yeah that's i think it comes from

a organizer who's also a woman so yes this is like a project but but

it's it's not only from me actually as a teammate as well like the whole company we wanted to uh bring out more

females um in the summit this year uh because um because it's it's more

i mean you you have to i mean there are male speakers everywhere like men men

speakers men agency owners are everywhere and women agency owners are really um

i don't know i think they are a bit a bit of underrepresent represented

i mean of course there are there are amazing ladies but what about the ones who are

like me who are like new new ones the new you know they have to uh

given the voice and it's not only about uh women agency owners but like

copywriters or anything you know like email marketers or yeah you have some

ancillary type um speakers people that are really they're not agency owners yeah they might not be

developers but they work with agency owners and other roles and that's i think

that's fantastic i like the fact that you open that that up because it one of the things that can

happen in the web agency community is it we can we tend to get in our own little

silo and not get outside and hear from perspectives from other uh other

marketers really i mean we're you know we're all marketers right um in the in the digital space in

general but you know when you get to hear from a copywriter who might have a different perspective on something yeah

or you know a consultant you know somebody like nicole who she's not really an

agency owner but she's more like a coach and consultant for easy owners and she

wants the agency like inside out right she knows it so well yeah yeah and we we do have agency

owners but their talk is like we have um

a speaker we have amber jacobs who is an agency owner she has been her she has

her own web design agency for like over a decade but her talk is nothing about agencies it's about fighting the hashtag

working moms so you know well but you know that's the thing you realize about being an agency owner

whether you're a man or woman or in the united states or in barcelona or you know wherever uh india um there's so

many aspects you know we we're we are human beings and there's so many parts of our life including the pressures of

being a mom the pressures of being a mompreneur right yeah you know and that's probably partly what she's

talking about um mental health and and self-care taking

care of yourself is a major part of it i don't know if you have anybody addressing that but that's you know

that's an area that now personally the way i deal with that is just pet cats but yeah um you know

yeah don't don't bury yourself under so much of work that you are forgetting

yourself right exactly yeah and uh so it may be posting the occasional gif

like our friend davinder yeah or listening to music

or going for a walk or a hike uh you know certain kinds of exercise i

know our friend michelle likes to take her picture her camera and take some amazing pictures out in nature so

everybody's got a different way of dealing with that and it's it's a crucial and important uh part of being a

you know web agency owner so yeah right actually we we have i i am looking

forward to this uh session which is like kind of connected to the the thing that you just said is by lee drozak uh she's

going to talk about how to build a portable business you know so that's very interesting and she's she has been

a business owner uh who has been running her business from her tiny uh van i

think she has been living in a van or a cabin i'm not so i'm not sure lee i'm sorry if i'm wrong about this but she's

talking she's all about talking how to take your business wherever you want to move because that's uh what if

some people are travelers or like they are just from here to there you know so yeah i've

known people to do that no no people were wanting to do that and haven't been able to yet and you know and there's a

lot of places in the world i'd like to go visit and uh yeah you know canada and india are on that and in uk

and um now in barcelona so i can go see you you know there's uh taking care of

yourself right i mean you travel and you take care of yourself and you don't even have to worry about running your

business because it's traveling with you you know yeah yeah yeah it's uh

it's so anyway yeah i think that that you have a it's not just a diversity of

like the speakers but topics topics yes exactly

so what do you want people to know about the web agency summit as we uh close here i know it's a couple weeks away

i know you can sign up now and i think registration is free so there's no cost for that

yeah um i i mean i i'm talking from the point of

view of someone who's very excited to attend the summit for the first time

like leave community manager leave the fact that i'm a part of attorney just put it aside i'm just excited myself to

attend the summit from a perspective of someone who's getting to know this for the first time

i mean it's so important for my career to learn from these people and i think

no matter what point of career you're at you will have something to take away from the speakers you know

yeah there's a lot of good speakers a lot of great topics um and then the thing that i always like about all

the summits but especially the the web agency one is that um we have these um

virtual tents i guess that we all jump into and i've met so many people

over the last three years just by hopping in those things i've talked to people from companies that i probably

never want to talk to people from even though i might use their product and you know you just make you can make

connections that way it is difficult juggling what you're having to do for the week

with going to a summit so it's probably better to take a look at the times and the ones you absolutely

want to go to i think you guys have a package where people can uh pay money and get all the summits when it's all

yeah is that correct yes yes that's the area you can buy it uh during the summit or even after you

know yeah the networking notes i think you're you you're talking about the network

yeah that's amazing because this year it's it's it's been hosted by post status lindsay lindsay miller uh from poster

she we are working very closely in organizing this thing and it's going to be so much fun this year we have even

like more people joining in the networking lounge yeah i think that's a really cool idea

and there's so many people in post status that you know they kind of facilitate that and um i'm i'm a member

of post status as well and so uh i'm excited to check that out whenever the time comes and

so hey uh deesha i really appreciate you coming on the first ever messaging matters show uh and talking about

messaging as it relates to the web agency world and a community manager

so glad i'm so glad i have such i have so much fun every time i talk to you

so and this this shouldn't be the last uh force and last we should do something

more you know like yeah yeah well you know we'll see uh there may be something else we can do and i'll keep that in

mind certainly if you guys decide to start something like this and you want me to come on just to tell stories the whole

time then yeah you know i like the storytelling so yeah

but i've enjoyed it yeah you spoke at the summit as well right last year yeah i uh i think last

year was a pre-recorded one so i can't remember um you know

this year i was like you know what i'm gonna step back and encourage other people to apply i know

encourage about three people as far as i know one of them has a session and i'm excited for her

yeah she is a very very sharp lady and so um she usually is over my head which

she's very she's very smart so uh some of the people who want to geek out about some extra technical stuff might check

that session out because um she's very sharp lady so i'm excited about that i was hoping

maybe a couple others would would apply but i think a lot of people have heard from me over the last couple years i was like

you know let's let somebody else talk so yeah yeah those who didn't apply i will push

them next year yeah yeah yeah we'll have to uh we'll push that next year as well and i and i still

got to be involved by moderating rob sessions so it worked out um for the best so i'm

excited about that so yeah thanks for coming on i appreciate it very much it's a pleasure to