Vietnam Content Marketing
Vietnam is one of the fastest-changing markets in Asia. But reaching the people who live, work, and buy here takes more than simply translating an overseas campaign.
Vietnam Content Marketing explores how brands, creators, and businesses build trust, grow audiences, and tell better stories in Vietnam. Through conversations with marketers, founders, and industry leaders, we uncover what works, what doesn't, and what connects with Vietnam consumers across social media, video, podcast, search, and beyond.
It's practical, honest, and focused on the realities of doing business in this market. Whether you're building a local brand, entering Vietnam for the first time, or trying to understand where the industry is heading, this show gives you the ideas and insights to create content that actually makes an impact.
I'm Niall Mackay from Seven Million Bikes Podcast and Saigon Podcast Studio, and this is Vietnam Content Marketing.
Vietnam Content Marketing
How to Create Viral Content Without Chasing Virality | Lessons from Anii Hoang
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"Podcasting is the easiest way to produce content because you are not the expert in that conversation, but you are the one hosting it." – Anii Hoang
Anii is the host of The Aspiring CMO Podcast and a content marketer who has built her career by consistently creating content, learning from data, and never being afraid to experiment. She shared how starting a podcast before she was an experienced marketer helped her build a personal brand, expand her network, and open doors that a CV alone never could.
One of my biggest takeaways was that great content marketers aren't obsessed with going viral—they're obsessed with getting a little better every time they publish. They study what works, learn from the numbers, and keep improving. That mindset reminded me of something we live by at Seven Million Bikes Podcasts and Saigon Podcast Studio: improve by just 1% every day.
Key Takeaways:
- Why starting a podcast can accelerate your career and build your personal brand.
- The habits and mindset that separate great content marketers from average ones.
- Why consistency, data, and constant improvement matter more than chasing viral content.
- Common mistakes businesses make before they even start creating content.
- How podcasting has evolved and why having a unique concept is more important than ever.
Timestamps
00:00 – Rapid-fire content marketing advice and Anii's journey into podcasting
02:00 – How The Aspiring CMO Podcast helped build her personal brand and career
06:00 – What separates great content marketers from everyone else
10:00 – The importance of retention, better content, and why shorter often wins
13:00 – Why great marketing starts with a great product, not great content
16:00 – Chasing virality, controversy, and setting the right boundaries for brands
20:30 – The future of podcasting and why every new show needs a memorable concept
In a quiet residential apartment in Bintan District Saigon, while most of the city is asleep, a young marketer sits under the harsh glare of a desk lamp, staring intently at a video editing timeline. She's reviewing the analytics of her latest short form video clip, tracking the trajectory of a line that tells a brutal story. The retention graph doesn't lie. It shows a massive instantaneous spike in the first single second, followed by a steep near-vertical plunge. Within five seconds, almost the entire audience has scrolled away. She has spent hours scripting, recording, and editing the piece believing it was high quality content. But the data reveals a painful reality. Her audience checked out before she even reached her core message. This is the relentless, unforgiving landscape of modern video content in 2026. In an era dominated by rapid scrolling and microscopic attention spans, the traditional rules of engagement have been completely rewritten. Many creators and brands fall into the trap of playing a pure numbers game, churning out volume while failing to analyze and improve the actual performance mechanic of their work. They mistakenly believe that a single magical post will somehow catch fire and go viral organically. The truth is, high-performing content marketing is a disciplined science of micro adjustments. It requires a ruthless obsession with the first five seconds of a visual hook and an understanding of audience psychology and a willingness to cast aside personal creative bias in favor of raw performance data. The best marketers do not look at their content through the lens of ideology or perfection, they look at it through the lens of return on investment. They understand that to truly command attention and a crowded digital feed, we must master the delicate balance between high-end production aesthetics and rapid, punchy execution. If a brand can't capture the human brain's desire for a media understanding within the span of a single breath, the rest of the message simply ceased to exist. I'm Neil Mackay, the founder of 7 Million Bikes Podcasts and Saigon Podcast Studio, and this is VM Content Marketing. In this episode, I sat down with Annie Wang, marketing expert and host of the Aspiring CMO Podcast, to break down the mechanics of modern digital attention. We discuss the strategic realities of running a podcast as a junior professional to network with industry titans. How to properly interpret video retention graphs to iterate your creative process and why businesses continue to throw money away by hiring marketing teams that lack the courage to test bold, unconventional ideas. Whether you're launching your first show, recording interviews, or creating professional audio and video content, Saigon Podcast Studio gives you the space, equipment, and support to sound and look your best. Come by for a free tour of the studio and see where your next great episode could be recorded. The link is in the show notes. So Annie, we start every episode with these rapid-fire questions, quick answers, don't think about it too much. A few words, one sentence. Are you ready?
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Alright, what's the best piece of content marketing advice you've ever been given?
SPEAKER_01Start a fake account, follow your ICP's audience. So not the ICP necessarily, but the people that they follow, and then just fill up your fake accounts feed with those content.
SPEAKER_00What's the worst content marketing advice you've ever been given?
SPEAKER_01Act natural. What does natural mean? What does it mean? People don't want to see my natural state. They want to see my polished face.
SPEAKER_00This is one of my biggest pet peeves. I did a TV commercial once and they told me to make my hands more natural. And they kept saying, more natural? I don't know what natural hands are. I have no idea what that means. Next question. What is the metric you actually care about?
SPEAKER_01Well it depends. If you're a content marketer, you care really about views. Then the source of the views and then email signups. But that's more really depends on the campaign. But overall, as a marketer, you should really think about your ROI.
SPEAKER_00Next question. One piece of content marketing advice for someone starting from zero next week.
SPEAKER_01Decide what you want to sell, maybe it's a product or a service, and then start a brand new either YouTube channel, Instagram account, TikTok account, and then just create consistently on that platform. You're gonna fail a lot, but that failure will basically help you to learn what works. And that's the best way to learn.
SPEAKER_00And last question podcast. Great for content marketing. Why or why not?
SPEAKER_01It's great. And not just for content marketing. It's great to build in relationships and partnerships. It goes beyond just content. And if it's done right, it can be not just content marketing, but a source of many different things. So I I recommend having a podcast.
SPEAKER_00So you started your own podcast, The Aspiring CMO, to talk to senior CMOs. And you were really junior at the time. So that's very brave. Well done on that. How did you manage to get these people to come on a brand new podcast and be interviewed by someone who hasn't reached that level yet?
SPEAKER_01That's a great question. And it was very easy because I started networking before I started a podcast, and many people start the podcast to network. And there's a there very different cycle to it. Because I have already seen these people in person, like yourself, and you're on my show. It was so much easier to just carry the conversation to a video chat or like a video recording. So yeah, started my networking first. And when people hear that, oh you are CMO, I want to learn from you. Actually, 90% of the people are pretty happy to hear that. So stroking people's ego is a great, great tactic.
SPEAKER_00And so starting your own podcast, what did it do for your own brand?
SPEAKER_01Employers were so much easier to hire me because they saw immediately what I was capable of making as a hobby level. So I did my podcast obviously out of my free time, using my free resources. And so it was easy to put myself forward that way. What it did for my brand, I think it started a brand for me. Not just people started to know me for this podcast, which is, I don't know, it sounds silly to say, but I was very surprised to hear it. Because in my mind, I'm like, well, this is just my hobby, but you know me for this sh for this project, and it really means a lot. So it's consistency over time.
SPEAKER_00And it's not silly, I'm the same. I still get people say to me, Oh, you're you're from the podcast, and I kind of forget about it as well. And then you talk to people, and a lot of people as well don't even consume the podcast, they see the short video clips, which is so cool. And then the coolest thing that ever happened to me was being recognized in full walk by somebody who came up to me, and they were actually from Scotland on holiday in Vietnam, and they were like, You're you're Neomi Kai, right? And I was like, Yeah, yeah. And they're like, Yeah, I'll listen to your podcast. I listened to it before I came to Vietnam, it's been so helpful. I just wanted to come say hello. That was hands down the coolest thing that's ever happened to me.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Wow. Welcome, you see, like we we just kind of do things in public and people take notes. They're not gonna clap with you on the spot, but they they know things. I I know that people will watch and and people will sometimes remember to.
SPEAKER_00So why a podcast? Why did this channel really help your brand?
SPEAKER_01Podcasting is the easiest way to produce content because you are not the expert in that conversation, but you are the one hosting it. So whenever people want to learn something from an expert and you are the first one or one of the few ones who host it well, they will immediately recognize that expertise associated with your brand. So podcasting is a good entry point for people who don't want to be the solo creator, who don't want to always put themselves in front of the uh camera and things. So that's why podcasting is really, really helpful. Also, it's not a lot of planning, like you just have to plan a few questions, but then the rest of the things will read from the guests.
SPEAKER_00So you've now interviewed dozens of CMOs on your podcast. What makes a good CMO stand out?
SPEAKER_01To me, is how they handle pressure and how they handle different campaigns. So in my show, I often ask them about an example of a campaign they like to present or or they remember. And some of them fail to answer, some of them are really specific to answer those questions. And I think that really shows that I know that you know anyone can get a CMO title. If I join a startup tomorrow and I'll be like, you know what, guys, I'm the only marketing person, call me the CMO, I'll be a CMO. But the purpose of the show is to explore what it takes to be a good one. And I have noticed that some marketers I have interviewed didn't have either the the management uh background or they couldn't really answer a very simple question, which is like your favorite campaign, how did you achieve it? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So how did the podcast format help you be able to come to those conclusions?
SPEAKER_01I watch people's body language. When you are in a podcast, at the end of the day, it is just a conversation, and you can see how people are passionate about or not passionate about this topic. And granted, I also feel that some people are really lacking public speaking skills, so maybe they have a hard time expressing themselves and they could be still like good marketers and stuff. But yeah, the way they answer, the way they structure their thoughts really helps me to realize what it takes.
SPEAKER_00And is that one thing that you see over and over again from the people who really get content marketing?
SPEAKER_01It's so simple. People who know content marketing are obsessed with what that piece of content is saying, looks like, and sounds like. And they have a natural instinct of looking at the psychology behind every single hook, what it takes to be viral, what formats it needs. And they're extremely relentless of on trying. So the best influencers and content marketers, they put out hundreds of content a month. So they would post like two to three times a day just because content is so much about a number scheme, but also improving those numbers. And I made the mistake personally of just following a number scheme, but then not improving my process. So I think when I still look at good content marketers and now influencers, they are influencers. They consistently improving every single piece of content they put out, whether it's funnier, shorter, punchier, more controversial, they they have no bias towards what could work and what doesn't, so long it works. So that's and not a lot of people have that type of mindset because uh if you have what it takes, you don't care about what people think about you.
SPEAKER_00They're not too stuck to what they've done in the past.
SPEAKER_01Correct. And they're also not stuck with the ideology of like what they think uh good content should look like. When you're a paid media buyer, for example, it really uh shows uh the number shows, let's say, like something that is a way low production, way faster at it, maybe badly done from a professional point of view, could convert higher. And at the end of the day, ROI matters the most. And depending on what industry, what product, what offer you have, though those content will be different. And uh, as a content marketer, your job is to have the speed and the creativity to churn out as many as fast and as possible.
SPEAKER_00What I love about that is it's something that I've taught from the beginning. And we live every day here in the Cyclone Podcast Studio and with 7 million bikes podcasts. It's always just trying to be 1% better every time. It's a tiny amount, but if you do that every single day, that's 365% better by the end of the year. Yeah. And we see this all the time. We're always trying to get better at everything we do, whether it's lighting, whether it's creating content. And if you just try to be that tiny bit better every time, it makes a massive difference.
SPEAKER_01Correct, yes, yes. And I I also think from a content marketing perspective though, or a marketing perspective, not just you put out more and better, but then you take the feedback from the numbers you have given. So a good content marketer also looks at the the retention graph of a video. If if I see that my video looks like retention graph looks like this, well, it looks, it looks like people caught the attention from the first one second, but then they drop. So that means my content sucks. But like if my content graph looks like this, like more horizontal, which it should be the goal, people stay to watch till the end. And that that signals are good content. But most of our graphs look like this. So it looks like a slope. And when you when you're doing these, like let's do better one person at a time, uh, you have to really increase that watch time. And or if it's a static post and then it's like different metrics, right? But but we are living in a video world, like we're making a video right now. So at the end of the day, how long can you make people watch that piece of content?
SPEAKER_00And what is the best tip to make people watch longer?
SPEAKER_01It has to be shorter, it has to be the first five seconds has to be invested so much in like what it looks like, what what's the title on top of my head today? What do I say? And yeah, like the right now, just a production setup already catches attention because it looks so pretty, right? It's it's beauty. So things that are really easy to for people to understand, or if you are an a sport brand, why do people use athletes in their videos, right? It's easier for the brain to understand, like, okay, if I see an athlete in a in my sport brand, people will have the association that my brand is associated with athletes. Because I sell sport brands, like sports clothes.
SPEAKER_00Talking about the visual is so important, and I I try and talk I try and say this to people because there's some people wonder why the short videos or the long videos on YouTube aren't doing very well. And we produce them, and I look at them and I go in my head because I'm I don't really want to tell them because I know it's not gonna change much, but you're using a condenser microphone for one, which is not good quality, so the sound isn't great, but mostly you're using like a 720p webcam camera, and your guest is as well, and you're laughing because you see it on YouTube. I did the same thing, but in most people these days are now watching YouTube on their TV, so you blow up to a big 50-inch. I saw a TV in the shop in the shop the other day, 100-inch TV. So somebody's watching your YouTube content on a hundred inch TV, the content quality is awful. And this is what we pride ourselves on here, and we're really excited at Psychon Podcast Studio is the aesthetic, the lighting, the quality of the video. Instantly you see that in a short video or a long video, and you can see right away that the quality is much better. And this is what matters now on YouTube, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I think part of it is obviously the production quality because I mean, you know, podcasting twenty in 2020 is not the same as podcasting in 2026. Like this industry has changed a lot, and the expectation of people to watch a podcast or listen to a podcast, or even like just stop and just listen to the first second, like it has to be with the production. So I will scroll past something that is like just doesn't catch my my beauty attention, right? But uh a production like this really helps. But the next step is really like what does the person say? What are the triggering words and questions that make a short form video successful?
SPEAKER_00So, from all these conversations on your podcast, from all your experience, what do businesses need to get right with content marketing before they even start?
SPEAKER_01Well, it's marketing at the end of the day is selling something. And if you have nothing to sell, it's hard to do in marketing. So as a business, you already have to have something working for you in order to market it better. So it's hard to also market something that everyone else provides. So you have to invest in your product or your service more. Let's say water, right? Like I'm not doing water companies. We need water and we have to differentiate ourselves. So if you, as a business owner, you don't have that mindset how you are differentiating yourself from your competition, and the marketer will have a very, very hard time to follow your vision because you don't have a vision.
SPEAKER_00It reminds me of one of the clients we work with to pharmaceutical marketing. And one of the things I've heard them say many times, and I love it, is the difference between Pepsi and Coca-Cola is marketing. Because at the end of the day, they're both sugary brown, fizzy water. It's just which one has different marketing, makes you choose which one you drink.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Correct. And Coca-Cola really won when they just like, okay, we're gonna own Santa Claus. So see, like even conventional brands had invested in like their how to say today's spokesperson, avatar, or content creator, right? Every brand has a a face or multiple faces to be safe, but the best ones only have one. And and the best ones only have one that people love. So I think that's a good example. But you can see that between Pepsi and Coca-Cola, the differentiation is there too, because they're always coming up with different uh flavors and different like features, so that's a zero calorie or zero something, or like they add a little bit of flavor in there, and that has to come from the product marketer or product developer or something, and then the marketer can sell it.
SPEAKER_00Now, when it comes to content marketing, where do you see businesses throwing money away?
SPEAKER_01Hiring the wrong people, obviously. Like I think that says the number one. When I one of the questions was like, what sets apart a good content marketer in my mind, right? And if you hire someone who never had a content marketing experience or someone who doesn't have the guts to be controversial, to be to try things out, I think that's the biggest money because marketing takes a long time. Hiring the wrong people will really like slow your budget and slow everything.
SPEAKER_00You mentioned the word they're controversial. Where do you draw the line between being controversial and grabbing views, between being controversial and losing customers?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's where a good CMO comes in. That's why that's why you need a good leader on the top to say, like, okay, this is fun, but let's draw the line. So for example, uh Pride Month is this month, right? And I'm sure that decades ago this was like a no-no. But nowadays, i if you will want to be an inclusive and fun brand, you have to do something for Pride Month. And I think there's it has to be some sort of timeline to it. Like some things work better in 2020, some things that work better in 2026. And of course, let's just not let's just assume that we all know that, you know, bad things like nudity and like porn and stuff. Like we don't want to be associated with it in general. But outside of all these big outliers, you need to have a leader who can draw the line b between this.
SPEAKER_00And I think of an example from my team because I say lots of things on my podcast about Vietnam, discover Vietnam, and we take those clips and we post them, and some of them go viral, and some of them do really well. And one recently that did really well was I said that basically Vietnamese women are badass. Vietnamese women are amazing, don't mess with them. And then I kind of veered into the territory of Vietnamese men are lazy when you go out into a coffee shop in the morning, you're laughing because you see 50 Vietnamese men, no females. You see them on the construction sites and they're doing everything and and all of this stuff, right? And so it went really well. And the comments were largely very supportive. Yep, you got that right, lots of Vietnamese women commenting. But there was some people that were like, no, you're full of shit, you're that's not true, mostly from Vietnamese men, like you know, we're not lazy, blah, blah, blah. And I had to have a discussion with the team and say, you know, be careful in the future that we're not too controversial because I don't want to get in trouble. Because at the end of the day, it's my face that's on this, it's me. Also, what I say is in an hour-long interview and you're taking a clip that it might be 15 seconds. And also you see the the metrics. On average, people are watching for three seconds or five seconds, then they're jumping to the comments. So people are making a comment on something I've said for five seconds out of a one-hour clip. So just be careful what you choose for clips, because I don't want to get in trouble. And they were amazing, they were like, We know what you can and can't get in trouble with. Yeah. Don't worry about it. We won't make you say anything or we won't promote anything that that's too controversial.
SPEAKER_01Correct. Yes, yes, yes. I mean this happens in virality. Like what's I think it's make a pros and cons of virality, right? Like not first of first and foremost, not every piece of content goes viral. People want to be viral, but then they want the virality without the consequences. And that's just it's like wanting a unicorn for also, I don't know, poops, muffins. I don't know, like it doesn't exist.
SPEAKER_00How often has somebody come to you and said, We want content that goes viral?
SPEAKER_01Not often, but I think I'm I'm getting to that point now. And again, it just has to draw boundaries. Or if you want to get viral, then you know we I have to post so much to make it happen.
SPEAKER_00Some people think they just post one piece of content and they're gonna go to the body.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, most people do. Most people say, like, you know, you hire a magic person who will magically do uh a viral content for you. Yeah, yeah. And that's just an expectation where people, everyone fails.
SPEAKER_00It's I I've read it and I've experienced it myself, and it's you you could post a hundred pieces of content and you do not know which one will go viral, but one of them will blow up and suddenly I mean I've had it where I've literally produced a piece of content with my wife that's in it, and I've said to her, Don't worry about it, nobody watches these things, and then it blows up, and it's like 160,000 views later. She's like, You told me nobody was gonna see this. Like, I didn't think anybody would. Because I had no idea. And I've worked for a major corporation here in Vietnam, and I've heard it time and time again where they say, Oh, we're gonna create some viral content, and you're like, No, no, you don't you don't create viral content, it's not a thing. And I don't know if that's changed because that was many years ago. Are you still seeing that or you're not seeing that so much now in Vietnam?
SPEAKER_01I see that there's a a formula to making something potentially viral, but it's not guaranteed. Marketing and anything in life is just not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00So you're now on the agency side, digital web services, DWS. Has that changed how you view content marketing?
SPEAKER_01Yes. Being in DWS has been a great journey. How I view content marketing, it's yes, it has to be very formulated. I'm I've been in the industry for a couple of years now, and I just see that some format, some titles, some avatars just do better. And my job is really to take myself out of any type of judgment or bias I have towards it, and I just like look at the trend, the data. And that really changed my perspective, and it's also changed from a content marketing perspective to just not be afraid to fail. Because every single piece of content I put out could have, you know, in my industry, if I get like 10,000 views, it's amazing, right? But for some industries, if I get 10k, that's like middle or not even considerate. So you have to really like try hard and and be as concise as possible.
SPEAKER_00And if you were to start your podcast again today, what's the biggest thing you learned?
SPEAKER_01If I had to start my podcast today, I would come to Neomokkay's Saigon Podcast Studio and record um day maybe one or five if I I don't know, it's really intimidating to see all the lights at first. But Neil, you're you are so nice. So I I would definitely come to a place like this with someone like you. Of course, I wouldn't do this by myself. It's so hard to get into a production studio when you haven't even produced anything yourself. So I would I would definitely do in-person planned and yeah, and and in-person and planned. That's all. That's all. That's all I would do. But it however it limits the number of guests I can have.
SPEAKER_00That was not pre-planned answer. I did not ask you to say that. So thank you very much. That is very kind and I do appreciate that.
SPEAKER_01I love it, but also um one tip, number one tip for podcasting nowadays is to have a concept. What I've done wrong, and hundreds and hundreds of podcasts, not just myself, done wrong. It's just you just get on a zoom call or you just get on a some video recording software and you record, right? But the best podcast I've seen, they have a concept. They would sit on a beanbag, they would have a topic, they would have something special that people want to come back to. So Joe Rogan has his own like classic setup with the road mics and and his background. Sure, I think that was a good entry. But now if I want to start over, I would be in a very different setting. I would somehow link it to my personality. What do I like? I like dancing, I like traveling. So somehow I would have those elements, whether it's like a different destination every time, or I'm eating food. I think there's like a new show where people are having a conversation, but they're eating food, like not just any food, but the last meal on earth that they would eat. Like it's such a different concept, right? So you want to have something that sets your set, like your physical creative set apart.
SPEAKER_00Love it. Annie, thank you so much. This has been amazing, and thank you for joining me on Vietnam Content Marketing.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for having me. Yeah, subscribe everyone.
SPEAKER_00This episode is hosted by me, Neil Mikai, with production, editing, and support from the 7 Million Bakes Podcast team. Te Huan Ling and Qi. Thanks for listening. Follow Vietnam Content Marketing wherever you get your podcasts, and visit 7 Million Bikes Podcast to learn more about the team behind the show.