Meet Alyson Shane
If you’re here, you probably had some type of interaction with our Founder, Alyson Shane. Whether you read Starling’s newsletter, follow our social media pages, heard her on a podcast, know her personally, or had a chance to work with her — you know this woman means business.
Not in the traditional sense, though. While she has the traits of a classic type-A person, Alyson puts her whole heart into every part of her life. When you ask her about her interests, you can expect to have at-length conversations about everything she loves, because this woman does her research and cares a lot. The belief that details matter extends through her work, hobbies, and relationships — which leaves everyone in her wake knowing whatever it is, if it involves Alyson, it’s taken care of.
If you’re considering working with our team or just want to read more about one of the marketing powerhouses in Winnipeg, stick around to find out what Alyson is all about, dive into Starling Social’s past, and see where we’re headed in the future.
Personal Life
Alyson embodies the spirit of Wolseley (Winnipeggers, iykyk). She loves to garden, read, and ride her bike around the city to visit local shops, breweries, and The Forks.
She also makes art in her spare time.
“I draw, paint in acrylic and gouache, and I do art journaling where I “freeflow” write out my thoughts, then explore whatever comes out by covering them with paint, collage, and other mixed-media materials. I picked this hobby up during the pandemic, and it’s done wonders for my mental health.”
She’s also a gamer. Alyson worked at EB Games (now GameStop) in her late teens and likes to unwind by playing the latest Zelda title or weird indie games like Night In The Woods, Boyfriend Dungeon, and Untitled Goose Game.
(If you haven’t played that last one, she can’t recommend it enough!)
Work Life
Before starting Starling Social, Alyson worked in Accounts Payable, if you can believe it. That cemented in her mind that she did NOT want to work in accounting. Much to her parents’ disappointment, she quit her “safe” government job to pursue a degree in Rhetoric, Writing & Communications from the University of Winnipeg.
After that she worked at a handful of local marketing agencies around the city (some big, some small) in various roles related to social media content creation, copywriting, and account management.
“While I’m grateful for the time I spent working those jobs, they all taught me a lot about the kind of work environment I wanted to work in (hint: it wasn’t any of those), as well as the kind of work/life balance I wanted to have.”
Starting A Business
A writer at heart, Alyson leveraged her passion and turned it into her marketing superpower.
Starling Social grew out of a handful of copywriting and social media contracts she took on in 2014, but within a year, Alyson had taken on so much work that she realized she needed to start building a team to help her manage the workload.
Fortunately, her boyfriend, (now husband) John, already had over a decade of experience running multiple businesses, so she was able to lean on him for advice and guidance — and still does! She says she’s lucky to be able to “nerd out” about her business with him.
To help with the transition, Alyson read a lot of books and articles about leadership, management, and process. Some of her biggest influences have been “The Marketing Agency Blueprint” by Paul Roetzer (which she actually read while she was working for an agency, which might have been a sign in hindsight), “Start With Why” by Simon Sinek, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie, and “Crossing The Chasm” by Geoffrey A. Moore.
In case you haven’t picked up on it, Alyson loves working on projects that require strategy and research. Social media audits, developing campaigns, and putting together documentation to pass along to the team are her favourite things to do.
“I had a really good manager at my last job before I founded Starling who taught me the importance of having everything written down in advance — this means I’m able to clearly articulate my thoughts and break down complicated concepts quickly and easily so the team can execute them flawlessly.”
After 23 years (and counting) of publishing content online, she still loves researching and staying at the bleeding edge of the industry, so any opportunity to dig into the latest trends, changes to social platforms, and strategies feels more like fun than work.
Favourite Projects (So Far)
What Brings Us Here
We partnered with the National Film Board on a project that featured stories behind Indigenous-led community action in Winnipeg.
WBUH was a companion piece to the award-winning short documentary film this river, created by author and filmmaker Katherena Vermette and NFB producer Alicia Smith, and featured profiles of volunteers of Drag the Red and Bear Clan Patrol, both grassroots MMIWG and MMIP movements in our city.
We developed a social media strategy, consulted on content, and managed all aspects of the social media component of the project. Reading the personal stories of participants in the project was eye-opening and sometimes gut-wrenching, and she still considers it to be one of the most important and impactful projects we’ve worked on to date.
This Place: 150 Years Retold
We partnered with Portage & Main Press/HighWater Press to develop the launch strategy for “150 Years Retold” a graphic novel anthology which features Indigenous authors and illustrators and explores Canadian history through the perspectives of Indigenous peoples.
We created a really robust campaign that included developing all assets and the strategy for social media, multiple contests organized in partnership with Indigenous creators across Canada, blog posts, interviews, and cross-promotional content with the authors and artists, email marketing campaigns, and ads for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
It was a huge project and a lot of work, but not only did it lead to a multi-year partnership with the fine folks at PMP/HWP, but we also helped the book achieve #1 in Native Canadian Literature and #2 in Canadian Literature through pre-orders on Amazon.
Ad Campaigns for Siloam Mission
Alyson is a values-driven marketer and makes it a priority to work with nonprofit organizations locally and across Canada with the goal of helping our communities, so she’s really enjoyed this ongoing partnership with the folks at Siloam Mission.
She actually used to volunteer in their kitchen before Starling Social and related activities (teaching, speaking, etc.) started to take up too much of her time. Being able to give back to a nonprofit doing important work in her city by developing and managing their social media and Google Ads campaigns has a very special place in her heart.
“THE FAMILY CROW: A Murder Mystery”
This was one of the weirdest projects we’ve worked on and Alyson was over the moon to take it on!
Adam from Pucking Fuppet Co. reached out to her after she wrote a review of his one-man show for The Winnipeg Fringe. Not only did our efforts result in several sold-out shows, but the media we got to use to promote the show was super weird and quirky (aka, right up my alley).
As a former theatre kid herself, Alyson loves getting to support Canada’s arts community and was able to bring what she learned through Starling’s partnership with Adam and his team to a “Facebook Advertising for Performing Arts” course for ArtsBoost, a nonprofit who supports performers across Canada. How cool is that?!
Growing Starling Social
Looking back over the last ten years, the thing Alyson is most impressed with is her team.
Alyson never imagined herself as a person who would thrive as a manager, but her team helped her build a company culture that she’s very proud of, where we all feel heard, supported, and can collaborate on any kind of project. She says that isn’t just because of her!
“The hardworking people who sit down at their desks for Starling’s clients every day always bring 110% and I can sleep easy (okay, easier) at night knowing that I have a team of whip-smart humans behind me every step of the way.”
Alyson’s Four Biggest Business Changes
However, there are many things to be proud of about the company’s evolution over the last decade. Alyson shared the four biggest changes in her business since its inception:
Being Choosy About Our Clients
When agencies are just starting out, there can be a lot of pressure to bring every client possible through the door just to generate revenue, but finding clients who are a cultural fit is so, SO important.
If a potential client starts sending up red flags in the initial discovery call, I will talk to the team about how they feel, get their read on the situation, and if necessary, we make the decision to turn down the business together.
(Aka, we do a “vibe check” together.)
Refining Our Systems and Processes
My poor team hears me say, “if it’s not written down, it doesn’t exist” so often that I’m sure I must drive them crazy, but I live and die by this mantra.
Figuring out how to communicate, operate, and collaborate as a 100% remote agency has its challenges, of course, but this approach has paid off for us in spades, especially when Starling was first starting to scale up.
Now we have a documented, repeatable, and scalable process for every type of client, project, and deliverable, which not only increases our clients’ trust in us, but helps us communicate and be more transparent with them than if we were just winging it all the time.
Honing Our Values
When someone goes into this line of work, it’s usually because they like writing, or have an interest in creating content - and that’s great!
But being a business means we also have a responsibility to give back to our community and do good, which is why we’ve started sponsoring events like the QNET Leadership Conference, tournaments for the Epilepsy and Seizure Association of Manitoba, and the Winnipeg Women’s Community, among others.
Growing my team also means I have more bandwidth to give back professionally, too. I’ve been a volunteer with SPARK!, a local nonprofit who connects small NPO’s with businesses who offer their services pro-bono* since 2018, I’ve worked with Manitoba Music as a mentor helping emerging artists, and sit on the board of the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, to name a few.
My team is also dedicated to supporting our community, and makes it a priority to work with and support LGBTQ2SIA+, Métis and Indigenous-owned businesses.
* I was awarded Volunteer Manitoba’s “SPARK Pro Bono Consultant Award” in 2021 for my volunteer work, which was a real honour.
Changing With The Industry
When Starling first started out we offered a pretty narrow slate of services: copywriting, social media management, and email marketing.
We started with these because they were my biggest strengths, but as the digital marketing landscape has changed over the years we’ve expanded to include social media ads, website development, video content development, branding, and Google Ads (PPC).
Some of these new services were introduced to meet our clients’ evolving needs, but generally speaking I started looking for team members who could meet these needs because I saw that we’d be pigeonholing ourselves if we weren’t proactive about growing and adapting as the industry changed.
Now, this doesn’t mean I’m the expert in all of these fields! I can read basic HTML and CSS, and I know just enough about Photoshop, InDesign, and how to run a Google Ads campaign to be dangerous, but I prefer to work with people who are experts in their respective fields rather than under-delivering (see my point above about knowing when to scale!)
Advice for New Digital Marketers
Know When To Scale
One of the biggest mistakes that new business owners make is not recognizing when they need to scale.
“I get it! Moving from a ‘solopreneur’ to a ‘manager’ can be an intimidating transition, and I definitely didn’t go into this thinking that I was going to lead a team.”
Alyson holds her work (and that of the people who work for her) to a very, very high standard, so when she realized that she couldn’t keep executing at the level she expected of herself, she brought on others who could help her maintain it.
Learn to Write Properly
Don’t rely on AI tools like ChatGPT to do your work for you!
I mean it: there’s a lot of low-quality content being churned out right now; before that was because a lot of people entering into the industry didn’t take the time to hone their craft, and now it’s because increasing amounts of people are cutting corners by letting an AI write their content for them.
Using AI seems like a good strategy at first, but it’s not a good look when your content sounds hollow and doesn’t have the unique, creative touch that the human brain brings to the art of writing.
The Future of Starling Social
In five years, Alyson hopes to be doing exactly what she’s doing right now: running a marketing agency that does work that she’s proud of and working with clever, passionate people.
“I love the work that I do and while there are always ups and downs, I’m legitimately excited to sit down at my desk every day.”
As a passionate traveller, where in the world she’s sitting at that desk might change over time. It’s one of the reasons why Starling is, and will always be, 100% remote.
“Flipping open my laptop or turning on my computer is still an exhilarating feeling — after 10 years in this business, all I can hope for is many, many more.”
If you have questions for Alyson, or want to talk about your next digital marketing project, you can contact her here.
