Heike Young (Microsoft) on Building Trust and Influence With Employee-Led Content

The Animalz Content Marketing Podcast

See how Heike Young, Head of Content, Social & Integrated Marketing at Microsoft Advertising nails enterprise content. In this episode, Heike explains why she measures success by shifted perspectives, not just metrics, and how her team prioritizes influence over reach.

She breaks down how content, creative, and marketing ops work together at Microsoft, and why empowering employees as content creators beats traditional brand-first publishing. You’ll learn how she built a scalable system using pre-approved decks, self-serve video tools, and bold POVs aimed at the mid and bottom funnel.

👤 About Our Guest: Heike Young

Heike Young has built and led content teams at Salesforce and now Microsoft Advertising, where she oversees global blogs, YouTube, employee advocacy, and integrated campaigns. Her approach is rooted in operational rigor, deep cross-team alignment, and a belief that content’s true job is to change how audiences think. Heike’s frameworks help enterprise content leaders cut through silos, shift team roles toward analytics and operations, and unlock the creative power of employee voices, making her a go-to resource for anyone navigating the complexities of large-scale content.

📻 About This Season of the Animalz Podcast: Enterprise Content Marketing

This season on the Animalz Podcast, we’re pulling back the corporate curtain to show you how the largest, most complex B2B SaaS teams actually get content out the door. Our mission: demystify these hidden machines and reveal what it really takes to run content at scale.

Hear from content leaders of some of the biggest names in SaaS sharing the systems they've built, the battles they've fought, and the lessons they've learned along the way.

⏳ Timestamps

• 00:00 – Introduction: Why enterprise content engines need new rules
• 02:09 – Heike’s career path: From ExactTarget to Salesforce to Microsoft Advertising
• 06:56 – Building research-driven content programs and the “content revolution” framework
• 08:41 – What is Microsoft Advertising? (Bing, Copilot, Xbox, Activision) and the scope of the content engine
• 12:49 – “Changing minds” as the north star for content—not just performance metrics
• 13:51 – Why “spicy POV” content wins the mid- and bottom-funnel
• 18:06 – The “four wheels of the car”: Aligning content, creative, product marketing, and demand gen
• 20:49 – Turning product marketing into a content ally (using ICP for planning)
• 22:55 – Why content teams must own their analytics (and avoid dashboard overload)
• 23:55 – Evolving content roles: Why operations and analytics matter more than copywriting
• 28:13 – Employee creators vs. brand channels: Empowering real voices for distribution
• 32:33 – Why LinkedIn’s algorithm favors people over brands (and what to do about it)
• 34:47 – Tools and workflows for modern video content (CapCut, LinkTok Guide)
• 40:38 – Operationalizing authenticity: Letting creators show their real voices

🌐 Mentioned Links & Resources

• Microsoft Advertising / MAI (Microsoft AI) (00:08:41): The business unit Heike leads, including Bing, Copilot ads, Xbox, and Activision inventory.
• Mustafa Suleyman TED Talk on AI (00:08:41): Heike’s recommended resource for understanding the future of AI.
• Copilot (00:08:41): Microsoft’s generative AI experience, central to their ad strategy.
• Salesforce (00:06:56): Where Heike built research-driven content programs and led the Trailblazer community.
• ExactTarget (00:06:12): Heike’s first content marketing role, later acquired by Salesforce.
• Trailblazer Program & Dreamforce (00:06:56): Salesforce’s community and flagship event, models for content-driven marketing.
• Content Marketing World (conference) (00:14:41): Where Heike’s org-chart slides on content structure drew industry attention.
• Grammarly (00:23:55): Writing assistant that frees up content teams to focus on analytics.

Connect with Heike Young to follow her latest content strategies, frameworks, and employee advocacy experiments.

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