5 From 5 Fold: Five questions with Kevin Bertram, Digital Content Writer
Welcome to this edition of 5 From 5 Fold. Each month, we’ll ask a different member of the 5 Fold Marketing team five questions about themselves, what their job is like, and what they see as the future of marketing.
Read other 5 From 5 Fold features!
Scott • Bijo • John • Tori • Drew
It’s been a year since I started working here. In that time, I’ve sat down with every member of our core team and asked them questions about their background, experience, work, and field. It’s only fair that I also answer some of them for myself!
My name is Kevin Bertram. I’m the Digital Content Writer and Associate Project Manager for 5 Fold Marketing. Here we go!
1. Where did you grow up, and where did you go to college? What did you study there?
I was born and raised in Phoenix, in the northwest Valley. For college, I headed two hours north to attend Northern Arizona University (NAU), in Flagstaff, Arizona. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this state, Phoenix and Flagstaff couldn’t be more different: while the former is a hot, desert climate, the latter is situated at 7,000 feet amongst pine trees and winter snowfall. It was quite an adjustment!
I graduated from NAU in 2009 with degrees in Journalism and U.S. History. Just this past December, I finished my master’s degree in U.S. History. My thesis was on early pre-statehood Phoenix history.
2. What did you do prior to joining the 5 Fold team?
Before joining 5 Fold, I worked in the marketing department at NAU as a content writer and strategist. I’ve also worked as a journalist, including as the editor-in-chief of the university’s student newspaper.
3. What do you do for 5 Fold? What impact does this have on client campaigns?
As the team’s Digital Content Writer, I develop all the written content for our clients and our company. This extends from website content to video descriptions on YouTube to our department manuals to, well, blog posts like this one! I also edit any content that isn’t produced by me.
Recently, I’ve also taken on some project management tasks. Along with John, I help keep our team moving forward by organizing our work, communication, and more.
4. Why is written content important, and what adaptations are you making to adjust for mobile?
In many ways, the internet we use today was (and is) built around written content. This makes sense: words are an easy way to convey information to both human users and to search engines. However, I think it’s important to look at content holistically, and to understand that written content is only one part of a larger puzzle that includes photography, videos, graphics, and more. A great internet marketing campaign today incorporates all of those elements.
As I’ve written about for this blog before, mobile traffic is making up an increasingly larger slice of overall traffic—in fact, in some of our campaigns, it exceeds desktop traffic by a significant amount. Most marketers and studies agree that mobile users want shorter, more scannable content. I actually think that’s a great practice for both mobile and desktop.
Coming from (at least in part) a journalism background, I learned very early on that headlines matter, as does the inverted pyramid writing method—most important information first, then getting to the minutiae and details. Marketers writing for mobile need to take that even a step farther, thinking about what is not only important but what is essential—and what things are obstacles to the reader getting the information they need.
5. What have you liked about working for 5 Fold Marketing?
One of the reasons I decided to get into marketing was because I love the intersection of writing and strategy. The 5 Fold team embraces an experimental, “Let’s see if this works” attitude. It’s built into the fundamental soul of the company. If I bring a well-researched hypothesis to the table, we’ll discuss it and test it. This kind of openness helps all of us grow as marketing strategists. It strengthens client campaigns, and helps accelerate the growth of 5 Fold as a company.
Of course, I also really like the people work with! We have a lot of fun as a team.
Bonus: Now that you’re one year in, what are you looking forward to in the year ahead?
I’m looking forward to many things, including growing our client campaigns and our company. Slight spoiler: our team is moving in the very near future, and decorating a new office is going to be a lot of fun. More on that in a future blog post!