Being a content writer at Yarno isn’t quite like any content writing job I've ever heard of.
There are a few reasons why I believe that’s so. I mean, of course most content writing roles involve research, synthesising ideas and communicating them – but to be frank, we’ve taken it to another level.
If you think about it, it makes sense that we do things a little differently.
Yarno was built for people who want to learn differently. For those who don’t have time for days-long seminars, or to click through yawn-worthy eLearning modules and powerpoint decks (you know, the ones with that straight-out-of-Windows '95 vibe going on).
People who want learning that fits into their schedule as a simple, enjoyable and valuable part of their day – in the form of a 5 minute daily quiz.
And how do our content specialists fit into the picture?
That polite, unassuming, 5 minutes a day quiz – is where the elusive content specialist’s time is spent.
Yes, a quiz. I can hear you now thinking:”A multiple choice quiz can’t be that special. This lady is nuts. I breezed through my university finals with my "always choose C" strategy"
Well, I am nuts. And your strategy is a load of baloney. Both of which we won't discuss right now.
It is true, though! When skilfully applied, the humble multiple choice quiz can embed knowledge and even help change people's behaviour for the better. Our customers can vouch for that.
So that’s what us band of content specialists do. We take information on a wide variety of topics (whether it’s given from a customer or researched independently) and distil it down into bite-sized quizzes.
And I'm not exaggerating when I say variety. In the last year, our team's written content on…
- Retail
- Corporate sales
- Soft skills
- Radio and Digital Advertising
- Leadership
- Trucking and Transport
- Smallgoods
- Energy
- And more!
I think you get the picture. Honestly, we never write about the same thing twice. Except if it's about trucks. We do write a lot about trucks... If I'm ever stuck at a truckstop trivia night in regional NSW (do these even exist? If not, they should), I'd smash it.
So the day-to-day, what's it like?
8:30am
Some days, I'll start my morning with a slice of Nutella toast.
Other days, I'll start my morning with a customer content WIP. These are weekly catchups with our customers when we're in the process of creating a Yarno campaign. They start with a bit of banter, and then straight into the campaign's Trello board, where the Yarno content specialist works with our customer's Subject Matter Expert to keep them up-to-date with the content progress, and collaborate on questions using their expert knowledge and our expert quizmaster skills.
9:30am and beyond
One to three cups of tea later, I'd get stuck into some quiz writing – and yes, this is the fun part...
There's a certain level of creative artistry (read: suitable jokes, gifs and memes) needed to make a compliance course relevant, factually correct and fun – so I'm sure to chuck on a great playlist and get to work.
We don't only create campaigns for our customers either – we create them for our own team too! The benefit of this is threefold: the team learns something new, we test our new product, and Mark can gloat whenever he hits #1 spot on the leaderboard.
In recent weeks, our newest content writer, Annette, has written 3 (!) campaigns for us to get stuck into:
- Empathetic communication,
- Courageous Feedback, and
- Mental health
And if writing questions, answers and explanations starts to get a little tiring – there's one other element of a Yarno question that deserves it's fair share of attention too...
Images!
Image sourcing and editing is another item of the content writer's bag of tricks. Each Yarno question has a unique image, that can assist or inform the question it sits above, or just look pretty. We even enlist the help of our pal Bruno to illustrate customer characters for some campaigns.
Notable examples include...
This very diligent Woolies Supply Chain employee
This DON account manager, thinking about his charcuterie selection
Some other times throughout the day
Oh dear, the scheduling in this post has gone about as out-the-window as my daily schedule does. Though I guess that means it's an accurate and truthful post, so there's that, right?
In any one week, I could have a few customer campaigns, an internal campaign, maybe a blog post and a learning library article on the go. And the motivation to complete most of those tasks (like any other creative endeavour) don't just appear when you switch on your computer and sit down in your adequately ergonomic desk chair.
So for that, I think it's lucky that we work for an output-based company – one where the 9-5 clock-in, clock-out culture isn't encouraged, and we're recognised for the hard work our brains do as individuals with different types of working habits.
Take Joel, our Head of Content, for example. Joel's usually up in the morning, working away on the train to the office (if he's not working from home). And after a delicious Marlie's lunch, he's often headed home for some dad time with his awesome kiddos (Sawyer, his eldest, has been known to work remotely from our office from time to time. What a 6 year old!). And since he's our resident night-owl and seems to have acclimatised to six hours of sleep, he gets stuck back in to Yarnoing a little later at night.
Others, like our part CSM/part Contenter, Liam, will arrive to the Yarno offices bright and early (really early, like, before my morning alarm) to smash out his work in the quiet of the morning (or maybe he blasts 2000's pop music on the office stereo, we'll never know)
Anywho, what I'm trying to get at is that no two days in the life of a content writer are exactly the same, and that's the beauty of it.
Sounds interesting? Well, we've always got our eyes, ears and hearts open for more content legends to join the team as we grow. Check out our team (and our sweet illustrations) here, and send us a meme, box of doughnuts or your CV. All three is fine too.
