Hot Olive Agency
I help brands leverage organic content on social media, email, and more.
🌎 Reuse, repair, & repurpose your flopped content
Reuse, Repair, Repurpose Your Flopped Content I grew up in the suburbs, where the closest thing to nature was a 5-foot-thick privacy border and a neighbor’s basset hound who bayed like a broken horn. Now my dream is a backyard hobby farm — chickens, sheep, and a fig tree. I scroll Zillow listings for homes with prebuilt garden beds like some people browse designer bags. (If there’s a chicken coop, I immediately text my fiancé: “It’s perfect.” Never mind the house needs to be gutted.) To...
🤫 Let's play the quiet game
"Better to stay silent and be thought a fool than to speak and prove it." There’s a lot of quotes and advice out there saying this same thing. Until recently, I thought that wisdom was only for that person. You know the one: They take over every meeting, toss out a question only to ignore your answer and yank the conversation back to themselves. But now I think: Maybe that advice is actually for all of us. Not because we’re rude, but because we’re nervous. 🫣 Here are three small changes to...
Brilliant, but useless: Why AI needs YOU
Ever met someone so smart… they were kinda dumb? I lived with a girl who I was convinced would burn the house down. She’d leave her flat iron on high, sitting on a towel. 🫣 One of the smartest, most creative people I know — just not blessed in the common sense department. That’s how I want you to think about AI. It’s like working with someone who has a genius-level IQ, a photographic memory, and 24/7 availability—but who’s never held a real job or lived outside their parents’ house. They’ve...
Steal my conference notes from Social Media Marketing World
It was February 2020 the first time I attended Social Media Marketing World. I flew out with my boss, both of us wanting to do something revolutionary in—wait for it—plumbing. Me and my manager, Shera, in our first Social Media Marketing World 2020. We were there to hustle—taking notes, answering emails between sessions, meeting with the California office, and absorbing as much as we possibly could. By the time I flew home, I was exhausted—then COVID hit. I’ve now attended SMMW four times...
Website metrics tell you who's dropping by
You remember when people used to just stop by because they were “in the neighborhood”? This is my childhood best friend, Joy. She’s one of those friends who’s always welcome to just come on by — whether we’ve got something on the calendar or not. Last time we had an impromptu hangout, she said this, and I couldn’t agree more: “Our generation has lost the recipes. We don't just drop by anymore.” And she has a point. Growing up, my incredibly Southern grandmother kept a cake at all times that...
Email metrics down? Time to clean your list...
My fiancé and I had 300+ people on the first draft of our wedding guest list. I know. We’re insane. It gets worse: two of those 300 were people we met once at another wedding. We thought they were cool, so… onto the list they went. No second thought. Just pure vibes. That’s exactly how a lot of people build their email lists. Every customer, coworker, business contact, and second cousin? Add 'em — the more the merrier, right? But then comes the quote from the caterer. You know what came next:...
Social media metrics live a double-life
Social Media Reporting: Organic vs. Paid Metrics Are Homographs Go back to school with me. Do you remember “homographs, homophones, and homonyms”? A homograph is a word spelled the same but with different meanings. Like: A "windy" road vs it's "windy" today. Both are spelled “wind” but the difference is the long/short vowel sound. Social media metrics are homographs... When reporting social media metrics, be clear which numbers you’re tracking: Organic or Paid. While some metrics have the...
Bad at math; great at data analysis
You know that scene in New Girl when Nick Miller says “I’m not confident I know how to read, I just memorized a lot of words.” I used to think that way about math. I wasn’t confident about what I was doing, I had just memorized which operation to do with which problems. My entire life, despite year-round tutoring, I couldn’t get higher than a C+. Then I went to college… I took “The Nature of Math” — it was billed as “the math class for kids who aren’t good at math with a great professor”, and...
Why people linger after events
This week, I am trying a new format of the newsletter. You'll find 2 new sections in this email. I'd love to know what you think - hit reply. The secret sauce of event marketing is the energy you bring. My favorite moment of a live event is in the after-hours magic. I’ve peeled off with “my people,” deep in conversation, lingering even after we’ve been kicked out of the space. That’s what makes in-person events different. That doesn’t happen in a webinar. That energy, the kind that makes...
They Didn’t Reject the Event—They Rejected the Name
Case Study: Kindred Speed Dating ➡️ Kindred Social What does it take to run a successful event? For my friend Derick, pounding the pavement, partnerships, and pleading worked…kinda. Derick is a co-founder of a new dating platform, Kindred Speed Dating. He is also THE most social person I know. Throughout the years, his friends have become my friends. He knows how to convince people to attend an event, then get them talking to strangers. (He accidentally started an unofficial pickleball...
I help brands leverage organic content on social media, email, and more.