EmbedSocial: Learning to Innovate and Grow Remotely 

We talked to Katerina Bojkov of EmbedSocial about its Advanced solutions for user-generated content, online reputation, and visual marketing.

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times? 

Katerina Bojkov: Thanks for this question. I am truly blessed to have the opportunity to say that we are doing good despite all the troubles that COVID caused. 

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded EmbedSocial.

Katerina Bojkov: I started almost 15 years ago when two friends and I co-founded a digital marketing agency. I must say that I got lucky to bet all my career in a new segment, mainly because of the demand for services and products related to social media skyrocketed year over year. 

Our first significant breakthrough was in 2012 when we became a Facebook marketing partner, and till 2016 had a very successful agency working with great clients as a technology partner for their digital marketing solutions. 

Over a few years, we understood that we are more interested in creating our own product or platform that will eventually become a global company, used by millions of people. 

So, since 2017 we decided to focus and create a new product company that will provide digital marketers tools. And that is the time when EmbedSocial started to grow as a platform and started to get traction.

How does EmbedSocial innovate? 

Katerina Bojkov: Our main innovation comes from our customers’ feedback and the founders’ visionary mindset of where we think the market will grow. 

That said, our roadmap is a combination of the most requested features and some new and not proven features that we developed as MVPs to test if the market will accept them. 

Based on the real adoption of the MVPs and the initial users’ feedback, we decide how to continue developing them. 

How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how are you coping?

Katerina Bojkov: In terms of business metrics and growth, we can say that we are not negatively affected. For some products, we are experiencing consistent growth. 

On the side of the operations and the team management, we had a significant impact. 

We moved remotely and learned or struggled to learn how to communicate better and make things done without having the chance to sit in physical meeting rooms.

Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned?

Katerina Bojkov: Yes. We had to let go of the beautiful and cozy office that we worked hard to equip. 

It took us six months to see that we will not use the office any time soon, and we just had to make a hard decision to let it go.

The lessons learned are that, yes, we can operate remotely, but yes, we genuinely need to have team gatherings, even if they are virtual, to maintain the unique connection and culture we worked so hard during the past two years. 

How do you deal with stress and anxiety?

Katerina Bojkov: Workouts, long walks, podcasts, Star Trek, talks with similar minded people, and mentors. 

Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?

Katerina Bojkov: We see that we have different competitors for each different user segment. 

For bigger brands, the main competitors are their own web developers who can build some of our features in-house.

For SMEs, most of the competitors are widgets or plugins for specific platforms such as WordPress. Again, competing with parts of our platform.

And our primary strategy to stay in the game and continue to grow consist of: 

· Develop and provide an all-in-one platform with a range of products and tools, solving real and unique problems

· Exceed customer expectations with outstanding customer success (that we obsess about) and provide greater flexibility in using the platform. 

Your final thoughts?

Katerina Bojkov: I just want to encourage your readers to see the opportunities despite the crisis, adopt quickly and remember that now you can work from anywhere – you’ll only need a laptop and Wi-Fi. 

Your website? 

https://www.embedsocial.com