Automation Ladies
The podcast where girls talk industrial automation!
We interview people from all walks of life in the Industrial Automation industry. Through a personal narrative/conversational framework we talk about PLCs, SCADA, IIoT, Machine Vision, Industrial Robots, Pneumatics, Control Systems, Process Automation, Factory Automation, Systems Integration, Entrepreneurship, Career Stories, Personal Journeys, Company Culture, and any other interesting and timely topic we want to discuss.
Co-Hosted by Nikki Gonzales and Ali G - find them on LinkedIn.
Automation Ladies
Insights on Effective Social Media in the Industrial Sector with Susan Wilson
If you know us ladies, you know we love to network, both in-person and online, especially through social media. Join us, as we delve into the wonders and the transformations of social media with Susan Wilson from Inductive Automation.
Sparked by her husband's career as a toolmaker machinist, hear how Susan discovered a passion for digital strategy, taking on a unique role that focuses exclusively on social media in a traditionally broad marketing field.
We also take a nostalgic trip back with Susan to the early days of social media, revisiting platforms like MySpace, and explore how social media platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube are assisting to drive successful business results in the industrial automation industry!
Huge thank you to Inductive Automation for sponsoring this episode!
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Co-Hosts are Alicia Gilpin Director of Engineering at Process and Controls Engineering LLC, Nikki Gonzales Head of Partnerships at Quotebeam, and Courtney Fernandez Robot Master at FAST One Solutions.
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Audio Editing by Laura Marsilio | Music by ...
Welcome to another episode of Automation Ladies. Today our guest is Susan Wilson. We are pre-recording this episode. I'm actually at a co-working space in San Francisco taking a little break from my week-long quote beam offsite meeting with the whole team here. We do that about once a year and I coincidentally forgot that I'm in Pacific time and showed up late to my own recording. So thank you Susan, thank you Allie, for your patience with me and we'll make this a short and sweet episode today.
Speaker 1:But we've been wanting to, you know, catch up with Susan since we met her in person at ICC in Folsom last year and I again, you know, just with my kind of quick thinking, was thinking that she's also here on the West Coast. But inductive automation, like many companies nowadays, have the opportunity for remote work. So Susan is back on the East Coast and we get to get here together, have a little conversation, catch up, see what's new and hear Susan's story. She does not come from this industry originally, if I remember correctly, and I was really interested in hearing her backstory and how she came to be in. You know, remember correctly, and I was really interested in hearing her backstory and how she came to be in, you know, marketing and social media and industrial automation, and that's why we invited her on the show.
Speaker 1:And you know we have a backlog. We're booked out a couple of months, which is a wonderful problem to have, but it also makes some of these conversations like I feel like I've been waiting forever to have them. So thank you so much for joining us, susan. How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm good, how are you? So thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1:Susan, how are you? I'm good. How are you? Apparently, my internet is lagging a lot, so other than that, I'm fabulous. I'm actually having a really great time here with my team that I hardly ever get to work with in person, so Allie's with us as well. Allie, do you want to say hi, what's up? What's going on with you this week?
Speaker 3:Hi everybody, it's raining in Seattle, which is to be expected. Hi everybody, it's raining in Seattle, which is to be expected. But yeah, we're all in the same time zone, which is strange. Well, you said, you and I are, but Susan's not. Well, courtney is.
Speaker 1:I don't know where Courtney went, but yeah, oh yeah, automation ladies are all in the same time zone, which is not common at all, so Susan, you're not in Sacramento, no.
Speaker 3:I'm actually fully remote from the Buffalo, new York area actually, oh cool, yeah, like the furthest time zone possible in the US Away from this one. Okay, actually, no, hawaii's far, maybe just as far right, like Pacific. It's like three hours difference for Hawaii and then another three hours for East Coast.
Speaker 1:So let's get into this. Susan, since we don't have a lot of time, I will try not to spend your episode on our housekeeping stuff. Can you tell us? I guess our standard first question is tell us your story. How the heck did you get to be doing what you're doing and how did you get to be the one to you know? Bring us to ICC last year? I really want to hear this. How did you find out? Did you even know about industrial automation before you came? And with that I'll let you talk and tell us who you are, where you came from.
Speaker 2:Sure. So I actually have a degree in graphic design. That's what I actually went to school for, because back in the yesteryear, when I went to college, social media wasn't a job at that point. Like it just straight up didn't exist. It wasn't until after I graduated that you could even make a Facebook business page Like that's how long ago that was.
Speaker 2:So I did do graphic design for several years and then pretty much everywhere that I worked kind of youngest person at the company ends up doing the social media everywhere you go. So almost every job they would ask me to usually take over their Facebook. But then I actually worked for nonprofits for a little while and they had occasionally an Instagram or a YouTube. So I got to kind of branch out, try a little bit of everything some LinkedIn stuff like that. So it just sort of became more and more of my job as time went on and then I finally decided that I wanted to try something really different and my husband is a toolmaker machinist so he doesn't do any automation work, but it's still kind of in that same sort of realm and so I was thinking you know, maybe that's where I want to look for something. So I actually was just browsing LinkedIn jobs and inductive automation was one of the ones that came up and they gave me a chance and it seems like it's working out.
Speaker 1:So were they hiring specifically for a social media manager, or what was the position?
Speaker 2:Yeah, social media communication specialist specifically, but yeah, basically a social media manager.
Speaker 1:Because our industry has a tendency oftentimes to lump marketing roles together that maybe in other industries would be separate domains, like multiple people. So I'm curious how much they rolled into that title versus understanding that there's a value in just what you know, not just, but like in the social media marketing space, to have that be a standalone competency.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so funny enough those nonprofit jobs I had. I was the marketing catch-all lady, like I did literally everything in marketing that you could think of, so that was something else. When I applied to the job at IA, I was like there's no way that this job description really is true, that it's like just social media. And it is Surprise it actually is. That is specifically my job is just social media.
Speaker 1:That's fascinating. And how did you find? Or I guess, coming into the industrial automation industry I'm sure there was plenty for you to learn. Like I know, when I worked with one of my previous companies, when I was in sales, there was one of the marketing people in Germany that handled social media. But she told me that she struggled because she didn't really know the business, she didn't really know the applications. You know she knew what days social media trends were happening, but how to tie that to the product, the applications, that sort of thing was a struggle. How did you find the process of kind of learning what the information is, what the industry does, what content to put out there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there was definitely a learning curve because I didn't know any of that.
Speaker 2:But thankfully, I actually work really closely with the marketing team and with a lot of our writers, so there's tons of instances where I will send a message and say I have no idea what I'm talking about, but I know I want to post this and so they'll help me write something and we can, you know, tailor it per platform with hashtags or without things like that. But I can even reach out to people like Travis and ask you know, can you explain this to me in two or three sentences? I don't know what this means or what this is supposed to entail, and everybody's really helpful. So I am definitely learning a lot Like I watch a lot of our videos, I seek things out on YouTube, but we are all really good at helping each other so that we're all effectively communicating, which is another blessing that I haven't always had at every job. So it's really nice to be able to just say I need you to tell me what a PLC is today, because I don't know, and then, going forward, you kind of understand more of what you're missing.
Speaker 3:IA is notorious for not notorious because that's like a negative connotation but they are amazing at training and Inductive university is world renowned and people from everywhere have used that. So I can't imagine that they don't have like a really solid way of explaining internally what's going on when they can so brilliantly explain in layman's terms, like how SCADA works and how to connect all this stuff together and how to use the different you know ignition and other platforms that inductive automation produces. So I'm sure it's been fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I actually I did complete inductive university. I'm still working. That's awesome. To kind of take it a step further, they did actually let me sign up for the core certification training and shout out to our trainer, bobby I went through the whole week of that and I actually passed. I am actually core certified. That's amazing. Yeah, hell, yeah.
Speaker 3:I will say um, for people you can do moonlighting like screens and like all kinds of stuff on the side.
Speaker 2:No, no, I'm not quite that good, but I will say that who used to make their own MySpace pages where you had your own HTML and stuff? Yeah, I thought perspective was a million here with that little bit of web background like vision still stumps me, but perspective, I have a pretty good grasp of that.
Speaker 1:Awesome me. But perspective, I have a pretty good grasp of that. Awesome, that's so cool. What music did you have on your MySpace page? Somebody actually reminded me of this. I didn't remember at all. I was at my house and they were like oh, I always think of this song, I always think of you when I hear this song. Because it was playing on your MySpace page and I was like that was so long.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I couldn't tell you exactly what it was but it's crazy Like what first impressions people remember about you. Yeah, I can't remember exactly what it was, but I'm sure it was probably some sort of emo song, my chemical romance, something like that.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, what years was that? That was like 2002 or three, so like when was Facebook? So like 2005 and then it died.
Speaker 1:No, not you're close. Yeah, myspace died around 2005, right.
Speaker 2:I had a MySpace until 2007, but it was starting to trail off at that point. That was like a year or two into when you could sign up for Facebook. So I had Facebook, I think at the start of 2007,. I think that's when they first opened it to all my colleges.
Speaker 1:You had to have a dot edu email to sign up but you have to be on one of the college networks that was like officially active on Facebook and I remember that when I got my college email it was like that was a rite of passage, Like you now got to get a Facebook page and you got to university like network, and I started my first Facebook group. It was a music fan group for a band called Bell and Sebastian that I still love, but yeah, I guess MySpace pivoted to like pretty much. It still exists. I looked it up like not that long ago but it seems to be more of a display or like a thing for bands right to showcase their music and yeah.
Speaker 1:I guess it was also fairly like tied into the music scene. That's how I met my husband. Actually, I'm gonna tell a little story. This is not about me, but we met at a show and then we connected on MySpace, and then we connected on myspace and then we met on another show and like at another show and that's I literally have to credit part of my marriage to myspace very much a product, oh my god we are using it, though, now as like a way to almost self-segregate the generations, because, like what the hell is snapchat?
Speaker 3:like what I'm not ever going to get that? And then I think, as we keep going, there's going to be more apps and just some different way that just like, right now, minecraft. Like what minecraft is now a way that kids communicate with each other, and so every generation just keeps getting another way, because they don't want to talk on the same channels as us. They're like, oh, and we know you're listening on those channels, yeah, so we want accounts where you don't have accounts, and so we just keep separating ourselves, and now only millennials and older have Facebook.
Speaker 1:Well, facebook is where I communicate with my grandma and like. See kid pictures of my little like and Gen Z's like ew, susan, so you live in this world. What social media channels are relevant for the industrial automation industry and what types of you know audiences are you talking to on these different channels?
Speaker 2:So obviously, like for IA, linkedin, so for us LinkedIn is obviously our biggest platform. Like that's where the majority of our audience is, that's where most of our interactions are and a lot of the people that follow us there. I only have so much demographic info that the platform provides, but I think a healthy guess is probably that it's mostly integrators and a decent amount of our end users. But then we have, you know, facebook and Instagram as well, and it's kind of a mixed audience on Facebook, but Instagram is a lot of our employees, like there's still integrators and other folks on there too, but that's more of a recruitment type tool for us and just sort of externalizing what we do, kind of thing. And then YouTube for us is just like really educational. That's where we put basically all the videos that we make, but a lot of them are educational in nature.
Speaker 2:And then I will always call it Twitter. I cannot call it X, but we have that and that's also a lot of integrators and a lot of people who are just sort of in the automation space in general. That I can't quite gauge exactly what their role is in relation to us, but you can definitely tell from their profiles that it's something automation related or they're trying to get into it. Yeah yeah, we actually have a fair number of college students across everything too.
Speaker 1:It's interesting that you mentioned, you know, a recruitment tool, right? So not all social media is going to target the same audiences, but it's also not going to be targeted with the same side of your business. Let's say, and recruiting really is, recruiting is selling your company to talent. So recruit your internal or external recruiters, or however HR you you know, grow your team and attract talent needs marketing resources as well uh-oh and she's gone.
Speaker 3:Um, at least we're still here and it's still recording. Kind of to the point where you said that, like you use instagram more for recruiting, is there like other pockets left where you see benefit in just using it for just one application? Um, because, like, yeah, we're not using social media for the same thing across the board, right, so you're doing some recruiting in some spaces, you're just connecting your own people together, doing community, versus like trying to bring in new people or just attract even new people to know what your product even is. There's just like various applications that are being used or done on social media. So, I guess, is there anything you can share? Or is that like IP secret sauce? Cause, like that that could also be secret sauce.
Speaker 2:It's not secret sauce, it's from my brain, so it's fine. Um, so really it was just kind of figuring out who was on each platform and there's still going to be a lot of crossover. There's days that you'll definitely see me post the same thing everywhere, but I might word it differently or it might just be suitable for all audiences. But then there's also things that we do keep kind of exclusive to certain platforms. Like we have weekly employee highlights, where each week it's a completely different random person in the company and those are just on Facebook and Instagram. You don't see those on our LinkedIn. We keep that exclusive so that, a you're the reason to follow us on Instagram and, b it just fits that audience a little bit better.
Speaker 2:But we do still highlight employees, like promotions and things like that we put on LinkedIn. So it's just kind of figuring out what sort of speaks to the audience the best, and sometimes that's all the platforms and sometimes it's not. What about TikTok work and the algorithm? As far as I know and I assume it's still the same because I do my homework like once a month on it it wants you to have such a regular upload schedule that you really almost need a person who's specifically dedicated to short form video, and obviously that's a little hard when I'm not in the office physically Sure.
Speaker 2:So even in general, it's kind of what is your goal on that platform. So if it's TikTok is for college kids and that's educational content, then really you should be making all of your videos to talk to that audience. So then it's even more niche than you know, for example, what we put on YouTube. So it's one of those. We haven't completely written off TikTok but to really do it correctly, it's just not something we're doing right now because we don't want to shortchange anybody and, you know, put out something subpar or have a really inconsistent schedule on it. So you know, if anyone's looking for short form content, stick to our YouTube. That's a good answer.
Speaker 3:Hi, nikki, hi again.
Speaker 1:I'm going to stay out the conversation from now on. Allie, if you don't mind, just try to finish it off, because I'm afraid that this is going to drop off again. At least you guys. I wasn't sure if the studio shut down or not while I wasn't here, so before industrial automation.
Speaker 3:You know how did you get to graphic design? How did you pick that?
Speaker 2:So my high school actually had vocational options and graphic design and traditional print on a big printing press was actually one of those options and I really loved the graphic design and I really hated the printing presses. So when I was looking for a college major, I was like, well, I know what I don't want to do. But yeah, graphic design is such an easy option to find at so many colleges and universities that it was pretty easy to find a program to get into.
Speaker 3:So that's what I went with. So I've always not liked doing the screens because, like I've done PLC programming and the screens and the SCADA, and then SCADA has screens and historian and like to me there's just so much to be taken for granted by the engineer types when they make these graphic interfaces. Can someone with graphic design and just graphic, you know, user interface design, the sense of like that something looks annoying, um, or like you know things are out of order or just don't flow good, like that's taken for granted and do you think that that helps you in what you do now? Uh, just even basically understand, like what's going on, uh, in, in a lot of cases, especially because that's hugely what I guess I guess it's. Is it just a coincidence that, like your graphic designer who ended up doing the social media for inductive automation, which made ignition, which is like one of the most famous ways to create graphic interfaces, user interfaces, long winded question I think I got it though.
Speaker 2:So I guess you could say that the graphic design actually really helps me extensively with my job, because obviously not only am I working with marketing to make our social media graphics, but, like you said, there's a lot of screens and people send us screens, people tag us in their posts and stuff, and it is easier for me at a glance initially to A understand what's going on but B generally speaking obviously I'm not a full expert on it but generally speaking, understand if it looks like a really functional project and if it's something that we want to reshare to our other social medias and things like that.
Speaker 2:Because I think, honestly, one of the easiest ways that people can get really good at basic graphic design is to look up and I believe it's called the ISA 95 standards, but it's the things like hierarchy, typography, color and making sure that they're really accessible and universal for people. Because maybe you love a certain set of colors pink and purple, for example but if somebody is colorblind and they struggle with those colors, then you need to make sure there's enough contrast or you need to make sure there's other aspects of the display that are going to relay that information, or you maybe just need to change your colors. So I think that's definitely like part of my background, makes that pretty natural for me. But I think that's something that somebody who's newer to it or struggling with it that's a really key starting point Like even starting designing something in pure black and white and shades of gray will tell you if it's a good layout, if it's a good hierarchy, if somebody could at a glance determine what they're looking at and what needs to be done or taken care of.
Speaker 3:Great. I guess some of our closing questions are like how can people contact you? And like, if they want to, you know, ask you about you know you, or inductive automation, and or I don't know if you guys are hiring more people in marketing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm easy enough to find on LinkedIn and I'm very participatory on there, so that's honestly a really good way to find me. It's just Susan Wilson, nothing complicated. I also post a lot and tag IA, so you'll probably see me pop up in your feed if you follow IA. And then I believe right now we are hiring for a couple of positions. I don't think we're hiring anybody in marketing right now, but honestly, follow our career page and follow our LinkedIn because our HR team is on it when they are posting jobs. So there's a lot of times a job will go up and fill so fast you might never know it was there if you're not keeping track.
Speaker 3:And when is the next ICC?
Speaker 2:The next. Oh my gosh, I should know this off the top of my head.
Speaker 3:So we can, we can, we can post it afterwards and figure it out.
Speaker 2:Sure, I think it's September 17th to 19th. I might be a day or two off, but it is definitely during that week, if I am wrong. Okay.
Speaker 3:And it's always in Sacramento, or does it move around?
Speaker 2:This year it's going to be in Folsom again, the Harris Center, same place as it was. Okay, Okay.
Speaker 3:Yep, cool. Are they going to have a band again?
Speaker 2:I actually don't know the answer to that.
Speaker 3:Or is that secret?
Speaker 2:I mean, I can tell you it's tradition at this point for the department of funk to record a music video, and I cannot 100 promise because I'm not part of that planning, but I would say the odds are very, very good. That's probably going to be a thing again and if it's not, they're pretty good. If it's not a thing, then we'll just uh link to all of their previous recordings and you'll just have to forgive me on that one okay, well, fingers crossed, but okay thank you, susan, and I'm sorry we had some technical difficulties.
Speaker 1:We appreciate your patience not a problem.
Speaker 2:Thank you guys. Bye, have a great day.
