Senior Content Strategist earning $150,000/year

Welcome to another post in the $100k Club series. You can see the full series here. This is "My Morning Routine" for content marketing folks making six figures. The goal is to shed light on the skills and habits that enable people to achieve lucrative jobs and help get more people in this club.

These will be anonymous and updated regularly. If you make more than $100k/year and want to contribute, email me.

For more info on content marketing salaries, check out our salary report.

If you'd like to see more info on salary by job title, check out these resources: Content Marketing Manager Salary, Content Strategist Salary, Head of Content Salary, and Content Director Salary.

What was your first full-time job in content? What was the salary?

Non-Profit Marketing Program Manager making $32,000/year.

List out your income by year for as long as you've been working in content marketing.

How much do you earn today? What's your job title?

I'm a Senior Content Strategist making $150,000/year.

What's the single biggest salary jump you've made? (either from job-hopping or a promotion/raise)

I went from $75k a year to $130k a year. I accepted a new role at a new company, but the biggest differentiator was moving from agency to in-house.

What is your most valuable skill?

Proactive empathy. I bring big ideas to life and help create new categories. To do this you have to connect a lot of moving parts through transparency and empathy. Content Marketing trains you to connect the dots, no matter how far apart they are. Building a campaign is one thing; building a campaign that works requires proactive empathy.

What's the best book you've ever read on writing, marketing, sales, business or productivity? (Feel free to suggest more than one!)

• Contagious by Jonah Berger
• Daring Greatly by Brene Brown
• The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

Have you had a career mentor/coach? If so, how did you find them and what have you learned from them?

Yes and no. I haven't had a formal mentor, but I had an excellent boss and some truly wonderful content marketing professionals. I met both categories through the agency and have learned more than I can say from them. While I believe a mentor would be helpful, having a group of peers and/or senior peers to learn from and experiment with has been essential to my growth. In particular, they armed me with confidence and curiosity. Key ingredients to big, bold campaigns.

What skills or habits help you thrive at work?

• Ask for feedback early and often.
• Set a daily 1:1 / check-in with yourself first thing in the morning and (if you can) last thing before you sign off for the evening.
• Be curious.
• Just start. (Somewhere is better than nowhere! Start with the easy things first.)
• Spending time organizing is always time well spent. When you organize your notes, you're organizing your thoughts. Big ideas have a way of showing up when you're tidying up your processes.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to join the $100k club?

Ask for it. Know that your work has value, and learn how to communicate that value. As a woman, this was particularly difficult for me. I practiced my pitches for raises or interviews or anything else with peers until I was able to clearly communicate how essential content marketing is to an org, an industry, and the bottom line.

Where do you live? What is your gender and ethnicity? (optional)

I'm a female living in San Francisco, CA.

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