Maja Žikić is blogger, writer, SEO & content strategist currently living in Ruma, Serbia. Ag and FoodTech startups are booming industry, and Maja is in the middle of it, building content and SEO strategy for Pragmatic, an online marketplace for buying and selling precision agriculture products and services.
Hello Maja, could you introduce yourself for those who don’t already know who you are?
Yes! It’s great to be talking with you!
My background is in English literature — writing and storytelling have always been a huge part of my life. I launched my first blog almost five years ago, after a book club, and I quickly realized that I’d like to pursue a career in writing. I’ve never looked back since.
I have worked for several years in the technology sector, before joining InoSens, a boutique consultancy in Novi Sad. Here, I’m in charge of marketing and business development. Through business accelerators such as KATANA, we work in an innovation support ecosystem to help various types of companies in the Agri sector in the agricultural sector to help them shape products and launch them to the market.
We’ve recently launched the Pragmatic Marketplace, a one-stop shop for precision agriculture products and services. Our mission with Pragmatic is to connect all the key players in forming an EU wide ecosystem — from farmers to consultants, to startups, and entrepreneurs — in one place where they can collaborate, and drive the AgTech revolution.
It is free to join and features AgTech companies from all over the continent: you can find information on Twitter via the #GoPragmatic hashtag.
You may now be wondering what is the one thing that connects my background with AgTech. The answer is simple, AgTech is presently one of the toughest emerging markets to serve, fresh questions crop up, and I see the blog as the perfect medium to share answers.
Would you say you are avid writer and reader, and what books could you recommend for us that you’ve read in the past year or so?
If you want to understand advertising, marketing, media and communications, it’s best to begin with the fundamentals That’s where Lazar Dzamic comes in. Speaking with a timeless authority, he did the marketing community a favor by issuing an updated edition of his Advertising pAGE in 2016 (the first edition was published in 1999).
Dzamic demonstrates that the origins of marketing lie in storytelling. “The story saved us. Thanks be to the story,” he writes. Stories are gravity-control mechanisms, allowing us to soar to the stars, or plunge into the abyss, for example. This first medium can be considered as both an elixir and a poison, he argues, depending on circumstances and the skills of a storyteller. As a matter of fact, we won the lottery of evolution simply because we believed in the same stories, the same fantasies.
The next book I can strongly recommend is Hacking Growth by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown, published earlier this year. It’s a growth hacker’s reference manual.
One of my favorite chapters in this book is “Testing at high tempo”. In this section, the authors say that learning more by learning faster is also the goal—and the great benefit—of the high-tempo growth hacking process.
For me, this was a light-bulb moment. Perhaps it will be for you, too.
The best way to control your online voice is to create your own content, and the best way for this content to be published is to have your own blog. But, your voice was also heard at WordCamps and WordPress meetups. Was the WordPress community receptive to your voice and work, and have you had the chance to learn something new from the people in the community?
The WordPress community is incredibly robust and that has empowered me to pursue my own goals. In no other ecosystem have I seen such outstanding people with a wide range of backgrounds, skills, ideas, interests, and experiences, with a shared drive of always striving to do better.
WordPress helped me build my online presence. It helped me create a career. However, it’s the community involvement that has really shaped who I am today, and I’d like to give back to the community. The biggest lesson I’ve learned from people in the community: the possibilities are endless for what you can learn and experience, so don’t be afraid to get involved and don’t forget to share. There’s always someone out there who will value what they can learn from you.
Why is having consistent content so important? Will this help with how people perceive us, or our company?
It may sound cliché, but it’s true. At its core, content marketing is about getting to know your customers and delighting them with content that you know will address their specific needs within their worldview. To do this, you can’t just gather some basic information about your customers, for instance, you won’t learn much about your (potential) customers just by looking at what they are tweeting. You have to take a deep dive into their problems. I’d say on a weekly or monthly basis. Only then will you be able to create compelling content that converts. Once the momentum is reached, you have to maintain it through consistency in both approach and execution across all meaningful channels.
For example, Pragmatic is centered around people, and one thing we do at Pragmatic to achieve this consistency of interactions is talk to our customers, interview them, write up their experiences with them as study cases. Now, these conversations are not just another activity in our content editorial calendar, they’ve also shaped our vision of where we want to see Pragmatic in the future.
Did you get your ticket?
If you haven’t already, get your ticket for WordCamp Zagreb today. Tickets are priced at 20€ (around 150 HRK) which will give you entrance to the conference, (first) access to workshops on Friday and to Contributor day on Sunday. You will also get the drinks, lunch, incredible t-shirt and other cool swag from our sponsors.