The content strategy toolbox with Ron Abraham Jr.
By Will Shoukri
Welcome back to another week perched here in the Owl’s Nest, your home for tips and tricks from media professionals to media students! This week I had the absolute pleasure of interviewing social media sensation, co-founder of Domin8 Digital, and worldwide sensation Ron Abraham Jr.
Ron started his career as a business marketing student. Over his four years of university, he dipped his toe into just about every pool digital marketing had to offer. After his graduation, he worked as a freelance marketer and content strategist before landing (or rather creating) his white whale, Domin8 Digital, a multi-service digital marketing firm.
I realized very quickly during my interview with Ron that he was a special talent. He truly had expertise in every branch of digital marketing there was. Taking a “jack of all trades” approach to his career had left him full of valuable information for me to swoop in and take (see what I did there?).
Since Ron has such a diverse toolbox, I figured that would be our focus for the day;
The Content Strategist Toolbox
I started by asking him about what skills a content strategist should have. Ron had an answer immediately: data, data, data.
“You need to have a data-driven mind, understand data, and understand the bigger picture. Data analytics would probably be that number one skills”
Understanding data can be a daunting task for a lot of students, luckily Guelph-Humber happens to have a wealth of professors who will clear the muddy waters. Ron went on to list a series of tools that you don’t need a professor for, though.
“Be familiar with your tools, have the technical knowledge of photoshop, video tools, all the different tools you can use.”
This is huge advice and something that we can all do individually. Learn Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere Pro. Get comfortable with creating content, and better yet, get good at it! Familiarize yourself with industry programs, check out Hootsuite, Meta for Developers, Youtube Studio. This is something you are in control of and have the power to become a passing expert in.
Ron went on to mention how a deep understanding of marketing and psychology are key as well.
“You need to be able to understand your audience; know what they want and need.”
I next asked Ron what he thought the most important goal for a content stratagist was. He started his answer by clarifying that a content strategist has different goals on different days; it all depended on what they were doing. At the end of his answer though, he added a sentence that I thought just might have been the most valuable piece of information he said all day;
“The ultimate goal, is to understand the business and the brand.”
He may have said it like it was just an extra at the end of his sentence, but to me, that comment is everything. If you don’t take anything else away from this interview, take this; I’m even gonna raise the font for it.
Your ultimate goal should be to understand the business, and your brand!
This is applicable from now to the end of your career. As a media student, your ultimate goal should be to gather a thorough understanding of the industry you are trying to break into. As a content strategist, your ultimate goal should be to have a complete understanding of your brand; who it is, what it is, and why it is.
Those were the highlights of my conversation with Ron Abraham Jr. Please check him out @dj_stallion767 on Instagram and @DjStallion767 on X. You can check out his company at domin8.digital/ and I would strongly recommend connecting on LinkedIn!
Join me next week as I interview award-winning photographer and marketing director Huy Tran. This was the Owl’s Nest, Guelph-Humber’s top-ranked Media Studies blog. I’m Will Shoukri, and I’ll see you next week.