Things I’m Learning:
Search Engine Optimization:
Digital marketing, generally, seems to boil down to this. How likely is a search engine to recommend your page or site as a source for whatever searches your desired audience might be making? How do you get your content to be more prevalent to search engines? The answers to these tend to be fairly non-intuitive, (at least they have been to me). First, you make sure your page/site’s metadata is succinct, accurate, and synonymous with whatever your desired audience is searching for. Then you ensure that the audience is able to pickup whatever it is they’re looking for or close enough from the excerpt, to draw them into clicking that link and checking out your site/page.
Web Development:
First off, learning the language is vitally important. Just like any form of skilled work; the jargon is absolutely necessary to learn. In this case the jargon includes bits from other languages (mostly mark-down programming languages such as php, css, and html) which are foundational to the skill-set. One’s familiarity and fluency in the profession specific vernacular tends to be indicative of their skill levels. There are limits to the practicality of semantic skill, so beyond obscure and esoteric uses in the back-end (which can be addressed by those less skilled with the assistance of AI and diligence) the most likely uses will be for custom database development.
Social Media:
This is a great source for brand familiarity and legitimacy. The largest western conglomerate of them that I’m aware of is Meta, their business suite is the marketing hub for Facebook and Instagram (two of the largest social media platforms). As a general rule it’s better to remove posts and remake them than it is to hide unwanted comments. I’ll need to be particularly careful to read everything when managing social media campaigns. Another good rule of thumb is to use other ads as templates for your own.
Google:
Google Analytics, Google Ads, and Google Search Console. Three foundational legs of digital marketing, with Looker Studio forming the seat. Each is its own tool box that deserve their own sections and explanations. Demographics, change histories, keyword statistics, and a helpful document processor to display it all in whatever format you like. As great as it is, Google is not infallible and one shouldn’t get into the habit of simply trusting the data these tools offer. Hop on the back-end of your sites and verify that their information is good.
Business Advice:
One of the most important things one can do for their business is networking. Local chambers of commerce are excellent resources and tend to have leads groups and other local small business organizations one can take part in that provide excellent opportunities. Consistent mid-high quality communication with clients and coworkers is another significant source of productivity and business. For example, Gliffen Design’s weekly project board meeting opens the floor for discussion about the tasks that will be filling the following days, and is a significant tool in Gliffen’s arsenal.
General Advice:
First and foremost, study up on whatever industry you’re trying to do work for, regardless of what kind of work that is, the additional context will usually boost the quality of your own workmanship. The job hunt requires one to advertise themselves; apply SEO principles to your own resumes and applications and specify the experiential level of the positions you’re seeking. Read between the lines when interpreting the meaning of job titles; companies are applying marketing principles to their job openings and literal definitions cannot be relied upon to inform one of what the job might entail. Read postings critically.
Graphic Design:
An aspect of digital marketing that can’t be overlooked. It’s very unlikely you’ll come across a bit of work in which you will not need to do at least a little graphic design. So far the fundamental rule seems to be that it doesn’t matter what your opinion of the design is so long as the client is satisfied. This involves lots of duplicate logos, demo flats (static images of what a website and it’s pages might become) and branding guides. One of the least intuitive parts of this for me so far has been the concept of “negative space” which is important to include in your designs to prevent cluttered and difficult to navigate spaces.
Search Console:
Another helpful Google tool. Particularly useful due to the ability to request for a page to be indexed by google; one of the more common uses of the tool. Other uses include discovering keyword statistics and information, and taking that further to look at pages that haven’t been indexed to find problems such as broken interlinks (particularly on large sites).
Some general rules: Broad match ad campaigns should only have broad match keywords. Make sure the adgroups don’t overlap. Don’t mix exact and phrase match keywords in an adgroup. Only use loads and loads of keywords if all are exact match, if it’s a broadmatch group then you should only need to use a handful. When overhauling a keyword list for an adgroup, do not delete the “bad” seeming keywords, pause them.