Joe Territo, Executive Vice President of Content and Communications for EnsembleIQ, started as a reporter, an early career which then led to years of helping a traditional news media outfit grow into a digital media company. After that, it was a pointed interest in business intelligence – and seeking new challenges – that led him (in the pre-COVID days of 2019) to EnsembleIQ and to its CEO, Jennifer Litterick. Once there, he expanded beyond his original focus on pure content strategy to a broader mandate that included PR and marketing oversight, enabling him to have a more cohesive impact on the business.
THE MISSION
Territo says EnsembleIQ exists to deliver true business intelligence and connections to the communities it serves in the retail, healthcare, and hospitality industries throughout the U.S. and Canada. The company does this most especially through a team of expert editors who are constantly researching, analyzing and delivering insights about those industries, to inform intelligent business decisions.
CULTURE
EnsembleIQ offers a highly collaborative and supportive culture, put in place to support what is now a team of mostly remote employees. Candidates who join the company very quickly grasp how this camaraderie occurs in a remote setting. The approach is purpose-driven, flowing from a clear vision by the company to help customers connect with the industries they serve.
This all happens thanks to a robust people team process, which had to lean into exceptional dynamism when the aforementioned pandemic hit our shores.
“We had to move to a mostly remote work plan, but we were intent on keeping our commitment to supporting employee collaboration,” Territo told us. “A lot of my colleagues have familiarity with different ways of communicating digitally, which sounds simple but using those tools in the right way takes some training and learning-by-doing. When the pandemic started, there was a huge, necessary shift in how we interacted with each other. We shifted to a model where whenever possible, people meet through Google Meet, and do it face-to-face on camera. We didn’t want to shift collaboration into the world of emails alone.”
EnsembleIQ provided training on the use of Google Suite, and that meant imparting essential knowledge about using the right tool for the right situation. “In other words,” Territo says, “Use chat for simple answers to simple questions, and face-to-face Google Meets for other stuff rather than phone calls or e-mails. We make sure the larger teams have monthly all team Google Meets for sharing best practices. And we hold quarterly Google Meets just for leaders to connect socially.”
The cool part is that it soon became clear to Territo that some collaboration is in fact much easier in the virtual world than in the face-to-face real world. There’s no need to schedule a physical meeting in physical reality, for instance.
“It’s just become so accepted that people can spend time with each other virtually on-the-fly,” he continued. “It actually sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s turned out to be true. We’re interacting with each other more and with a greater comfort level in this virtual environment, then we may have been in a physical environment.”
DELIVERING TO A MODERN AUDIENCE
Territo reminds us of the importance of effectively visualized reportage in today’s marketplace. EnsembleIQ editors have access to a fabulous database of imagery that can make otherwise dry text instantly attractive. On top of digital articles, the company is also relying on more podcasts and video programs than they ever did pre-COVID. Wherever and however people consume their media, Territo wants to make sure that those options are an available means for the dissemination of business intelligence.
And business intelligence, rather than simple business news, is what EnsembleIQ seeks to deliver.
“We get down to ‘Here’s what it means for your business,’ right?” he says. “We’re not going to simply report that a merger happened. Instead, we want to tell you how that news is likely to impact your business. Or what you might learn from it to affect your business in the future.”
As part of this focus, EnsembleIQ has recently launched a new paid subscription product called Retail Leader Pro, which pairs an editor with a professional analyst who came from an analysis firm.
CAREER GROWTH
“Editors who are focused on career growth and opportunities to nurture and expand their own skill set, or excited to gain expertise communicating across new formats, can really up their game in that regard at EnsembleIQ,” Territo says. “But they’ll also get opportunities to dig a little deeper, spend a little bit more time on understanding an event that occurs, in order to deliver to their audience something that’s uniquely theirs.”
EnsembleIQ regularly provides editors with training in new technologies and tactics to drive audience growth and engagement. This includes virtual meetings when the training materials are presented, and then making recordings of those meetings and training documents available on-demand as a long-term reference.
EnsembleIQ has provided its editors training over the last three years in:
- Digital Fundamentals (allowing them to become more sophisticated in the area)
- SEO Best Practices (so that essential info is prominent and easy for users to find)
- Digital Newsletter Design (including how to thoughtfully deploy links back to the product)
- Digital Image Rights (assuring the company has properly secured rights to all images it publishes digitally)
- Internal Linking (assuring audience members are effectively exposed to the wealth of content the brand provides on the topic of interest to them)
- Audio/Video Content Creation (the foundation for a recent burst of podcast and video program launches)
- Event Editorial Coverage (how to leverage event speakers and agendas to create compelling editorial content that also leads to attendee registrations)
EnsembleIQ further has established and regularly reevaluates career path opportunities for its editors, with cohesive and consistent job profiles for opportunities from associate editor to editor and managing editor up to editor-in-chief and content director. All new opportunities are shared internally so current team members have opportunities to learn about, consider and potentially apply for them.
DIVERSITY
Territo says he’s never been part of a company that takes diversity, equity, and inclusion as seriously as EnsembleIQ does.
“We don’t only talk about it. We really do live it,” he says. “We’ve got a DE&I council that provides programming to educate members of our team on how to understand cultural and perspective differences most effectively.”
Territo says the company’s DE&I focus isn’t just about who the company brings on board, but how everyone learns to interact with one another.
“We really explore that in delivering our business intelligence to the communities, because the insights that we provide to these professional communities aren’t only around buying and selling,” he says. “They’re also about ‘How do you market your product or your business in a way that you can grow and thrive?’ and so much of that growth emerges when you’re smarter about being more inclusive.”
THE FUTURE
“Learning how to identify what type of communication is best in what scenario is why our editors also receive training in the use of different metrics, so they can make decisions based on how they see their audience interacting with the content they produce,” he adds.
The fact is, certain methods are more effective at marketing certain webinars. News items that were shared in a newsletter on Monday might be appropriate to share again on Thursday if they didn’t deliver enough penetration. The business of business intelligence is a living, moving thing.
“Learning how to identify patterns in ways that your audience reacts to has become a very essential part of the job,” Territo says. “That informs when I use the tools that I have in my bag most effectively to achieve my desired result.”
He says, in summation and as advice to those just starting out, that stepping out of your comfort zone is always worth it. The opportunity to look into a new area of professional development is definitely worth taking.
“I’d say almost 100% of the time when I’m asked to do something that I haven’t done before, it doesn’t take too much time for that to become the most exciting part of the work that I do.”
