Intended impact: Drive people to Abstract’s website and position the Abstract brand as a visionary in design. Additionally, this series is meant to highlight voices in the design community and build rapport with the audience. 

Additional impact: This series established credibility with our audience so much so that other design thought leaders in the space reached out to work with Abstract. The blog series also informs trends in the industry that influences content across the organization. The series has generated over 10k pageviews.

While creating, scheduling and publishing content for Abstract’s social media, I noticed tweets and social posts that were relevant to our audience and product. I started by posting these in Slack with my thoughts. To cut down on noise in Slack, I created a weekly report that I would share each week and gathered posts that are relevant to the business and to design leadership in the industry.

People on the Abstract team were excited about the weekly report and it was being used by sales, marketing, and product to inform their tactics. After the success internally, I decided it could be helpful to others, so I made it a monthly series on the blog with an industry news reporting slant.

The series has been featured on popular industry newsletters like Sidebar, Hey Designer, and UX Weekly and has driven over 10k pageviews. The series has also allowed me to amplify voices in the design community. I have a unique talent for seeing who’s up and coming and boosting them. This is especially important in a time when the design community is looking to highlight more diverse voices.

This series encouraged our team to think of themselves as thought leaders as well, which led to team members volunteering to contribute to other editorial content.

Examples:

• Ideas and topics surfaced in Abstract Overheard helped draft a talk proposal for a thought leader at our organization

• Abstract Overheard helped us build relationships with subject matter experts for larger pieces on our blog like our call and response posts including: 

  • What advice design leaders would give their younger selves

  • What is the future of product design in the 2020s?

  • How to prove the value of Design to your CEO

Additionally, we’ve been able to repurpose this content and themes in other places like our monthly newsletter, The Commit, and the By Design podcast.