Digital Marketing

My Job 

I have been working for an Internet Marketing company based in Stockport called Search and More since September 2015. I started out as a Digital Marketing Appretice and I am now a full time Digital Marketer for Search and More. I knew this was an industry I wanted to progress in since leaving school as media and marketing have always been of interest to me. Some of the tasks I complete within the workplace are things such as: Email marketing and sending newsletters, SEO on page and off page, Blogs, Link building, WordPress (managing websites and updating content), Sprout Social (social media), SEMRush, keeping up with the latest trends in SEO and monthly reports and editing using software such as Photoshop and Adobe Dreamweaver – this is to name a few. 

I have had various jobs and work experience in the past however this is my first full time job carrying out roughly 8.5 hours a day 5 days a week. The transition from college to full time employment was a huge change for me in terms of the working day but I soon got used to it and I am currently enjoying my job and responsibilities. 

Since working for Search and More I have gained various skills in my selected industry including social skills e.g. attending meetings, networking events learning how to speak to clients and how to professionally take a phone call. Additionally, I am now familiar with programmes such as Photoshop, Adobe Dreamweaver, SEMRush, Mail Chimp, WordPress, Sprout Social, Google Adwords, Google Analytics and SEOProfiler. 

City and Guilds Level 3 Diploma in Digital Marketing  

I attended college for one week per month each time taking on a Digital Marketing subject block. At the end of each block I had to take an exam which covers what was learnt over the week, this is then marked and contributes to my overall Level 3 qualification. The subject blocks I had to complete are: 

• The Business of Digital Marketing 
• Photoshop Level 2 & Video Editing (Adobe Premiere) 
• Email Marketing 
• Search Engine Optimisation & Pay Per Click 
• Social Media Marketing & Advertising 
• Business & Marketing Concepts 
• Copywriting, CMS & Collaborative Technologies 
• Data, Metrics & Analysis 

Alongside college work I got set questions by my assessor who visits once every two months to track my progress at both college and work, as well as set me tasks. These tasks usually come in the format of a four sets of five questions that need to be answered and sent back to my assessor for marking. These questions are usually quite straight forwards and about digital marketing, these questions also contribute to my Level 3 qualification. 

I successfully passed my Level 3 Apprenticeship in Digital Marketing in October 2016 with flying colours.

CIM Level 3 Foundation Certificate Marketing

I enrolled on to this course in October 2016 to further my knowledge on traditional marketing and gain an approved qualification by the CIM. In June 2017, having passed all of my exams, I gained my Level 3 CIM qualification with a Distinction.

I am hoping to continue developing a further understanding of the wider role of marketing and be able to progress onto the next level marketing course which is the Certificate in Professional Marketing.

Social 

I am responsible for our client’s social presence therefore I am the queen of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ etc in our business. I manage our clients social pages using an online social media management application called ‘Sprout Social’ sprout social allows me to write, schedule and manage tweets and posts on our clients social media pages. It is not only posting on behalf of clients that I do, on a weekly basis I have to perform a social cleanup for each of our clients; following people back, unfollowing people, approving posts and keeping the client socially active and up to date. I need to pay close attention to each of our clients target audience speaking in a tone that will appeal to them and come up with content that will attract and encourage engagements with the potential customer and the company. 

We have a set of writers who produce weekly blog posts for our clients. It is my job to communicate with our writers to ensure that each client receives their weekly blog post and that it is of a high standard. I then post the blog post on the clients WordPress website, format it by making sure the blog post is search engine friendly and on page optimised and then promote the post socially via Sprout Social adding relevant hashtags.

It is also important that I make sure the client is socially active amongst potential customers on social media platforms; engaging with their market and getting their brand out there. 

SEO 

When a website is produced we virtually have the bones of the final product, it is SEO (optimized content) that provides the ‘flesh’ to the bones. Using applications such as Google Adwords Keyword Planner I can do a close up analysis of potential keywords for our clients, detecting if the keyword is popular enough to attract conversions or if it’s competitive. 

I then take a look at the clients competitor base to see what they are doing online and gain an understanding of the market. 

By adding the client to our SEO software (SEMRush) I can perform a site audit and make any changes that could boost their SEO and site performace in Google. I then start implementing SEO to the clients website in the form of on site tasks such as page format, internal linking, alt tagging images, meta descriptions, keyword implementation and title tags.  

SEMRush is a crucial utensil to my Digital Marketing tool box. Using SEMRush I can spy on potential competitors and see what keywords they are tracking as well as which sites they are linking to. I can see my sites ranking under keywords and compare this against competitors making changes where necessary in order to continue seeing progress in my sites rankings. 

Link Building 

I aim to achieve ten links per week for each client. This involves searching for sites on SEMRush that I could potentially link with, with a similarity in site content. For example, if my client was an accountant it would make sense for me to link to a site which discusses accountancy. Additionally I need to submit my site to directories so that potential customers have a more likelihood of finding my site. I can use SEMRush to spy on competitors links this is a straight forward way of detecting relevant links that could potentially drive conversions.     

Email Marketing 

A majority of our clients send out a monthly or weekly newsletter to their site subscribers. It is my job to prep each newsletter.

Domineeringly for email marketing I use MailChimp to design, structure and send client emails. MailChimp also allows me to view email stats and see how many people opened the email and clicked through to the website.

One other platform we are using is a WordPress plug-in ‘ALO EasyMail Newsletter’, ensuring each newsletter has no errors, the correct appropriate content and is sent to each of its subscribers. The overall intentions of these newsletters are to encourage visits to the site, reengaging with the clients target audience. 

This has been a brief introduction to my job role and responsibilities. For more information on digital marketing and the internet marketing company I work for, visit the Search and More website.