I am a novice, there is no denying it. I dabble in Facebook and Instagram, I have never tweeted or hashtagged. Born in the Generation X bracket, social media sits on the periphery for me, I remember life without mobile phones! And now I have the task of running a digital marketing campaign for the launch of the Audacity app… in the next couple of weeks, 10 working days!
How did I get here you may be wondering? Well, I volunteered, semi volunteered. While minding my own business at my desk, a meeting was taking place about the launch of Audacity and I overheard the words ‘no budget’ and ‘Emma can do it’. We are a small company, everyone pitches in, I agreed.
Into the deep
As an Office Manager, I am an organiser, a planner, a desktop researcher, surely all of these skills are transferable to a digital marketer?! Arm in arm with my best friend Google I jump ship.
But where to start, a plethora of information over a multitude of sites and it’s in a whole new language. What are these phrases – search engine optimisation (SEO), touchpoints, pillar page, topic cluster, content compass, crawl reports?
In my research, I come across Google Digital Garage. Neatly packaged, easily digestible and not too time-consuming. 40 hours in and look at that, I’ve got my certificate, I am certified in the Fundamentals of Digital Marketing. Launch day – 5 days and counting!
Time to create a content compass (for those not in the know it’s a spreadsheet) and fill our social media platforms with relevant content to attract, engage and delight our visitors. The aim being to convey a consistent message across our website, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn through engaging blogs, posts, photos, videos and quotes.
In 5 days?! Surely that’s a month’s work! Hootsuite comes to my aid here. It makes finding, scheduling, managing, and reporting on social media content easier. Well, once I’d managed to finally link Hootsuite with our Facebook and Instagram business accounts (this took soooooo much longer than it should have done, I am not tech savvy and being certified in the fundamentals of digital marketing did not help here) I am up and running! Launch day – 3 days and counting! #ThisGirlCan
Sink or swim?
I’m back on familiar ground here now, I have a task list to organise, a schedule to plan and more research to do, the fundamentals only take you so far. How long should a blog be? What are our keywords for SEO? What’s the character count for the app store? How do you use hashtags and how frequently? Daily, weekly or monthly posts? Google, again the friend always there to support you, helps to answer these questions but you know what I really need… the world’s most beautiful To Do List app. Launch day – 1 day and counting!
