First month at Netmatter

Wow can’t believe I have already been here a month, time has gone so fast. I have been learning and training as a digital marketing apprentice for Netmatter, under the watchful eyes of some great colleagues such as Mike Greaves, Catherine Durham and Rosy Barraclough. It’s been a great experience and learning curve so far.

Week one, welcoming, shadowing and blogging

I was very nervous of course as I arrived on my first day to be greeted by Mike who made me feel very comfortable and very welcome. I was then shown around and shown to my desk which was with two other ladies now three as a new apprentice started two weeks after me.

I have learnt a great deal in this first week which ranged from learning how to write a blog to learning to use certain programs and websites to produce and promote these blogs, along with learning about search engine optimisation and digital marketing strategies. My first bit of learning was shadowing two colleagues Rosy and Catherine who showed me each of their job roles and what they did on a day to day basis. However, conversation with Rosy went a bit off topic as we realised that we both listened to the same music and that her fiancé sings in a band that I also listen to. This was very exciting as Rosy also lives in Maidenhead like me and so I thought I would get the opportunity to possibly meet Dale who is Rosy’s fiancé. As conversations got back on track Rosy showed me how to use Hootsuite and how she uses it along with Google Adwords and keyword planner. I shadowed Catherine second who is the Digital Marketing Manager

I shadowed Catherine second who is the Digital Marketing Manager and she showed me the different clients that Netmatter deal with and which tasks she manages The task she was doing at the time was Photoshop work for Linens Limited and from what I could see Catherine was creating a new layout for one of their web site pages. Catherine then sent me on my first task which was to optimise my own Google account and then create my first blog on how search engines operate and how people interact with them. The first week at Netmatter ended really well as on the Friday it was my birthday and I was turning 19 so on the Thursday we went out to the pub after work for a quick drink before we went home.

Week two, Hootsuite and first client work

After I had written my first two blogs in my first week it was time to upload them to the Netmatter website and optimise my blog by posting it on the Netmatter Twitter, Linkedin and Google plus page as well as posting it on my own Google plus. Rosy showed me how to use Hootsuite which is a website where you can manage all your social networking sites at once. This made putting my blog out there really easy as I created one message and it went out across all of Netmatters social networks. This was really exciting as it meant I could see how far up the search engine rankings my blog went, along with this I got to see the views on my Google plus go up which meant people were actually clicking on and reading my blogs.

The second part of this week I conducting my first bit of client work for a company called The Ramp People. I was re-writing their title and Meta tags that appear on the search page when people search for an item. I learnt that it was important to try and include words that people searched for the most so their page would then show up. For example when I was writing the Meta tag for truck and van ramps it was important I mentioned that they were heavy duty, aluminium, lightweight and what the ramps could be used for. I had to do this because this is what people were searching for when they wanted to purchase a truck or van ramp. After I had written these tags Mike then showed me how to upload them onto Magento. What I learnt from writing these Meta and title tags was the length that they had to be and what content had to go in them. It was quite a hard task at first because it was very hard to fit all that information into one small sentence.

The final task I started in my second week was starting revision for Google Adwords fundamentals exam which we as a company would be taking in November. The first bit of revision that Catherine sent me was to read an 80 page long booklet on how Adwords works and what it is used for. Let’s say this was a long and tough read.

Week three Linens Limited and The Ramp People

Week three was a bit different to start with as we had a new apprentice start called Holly. This meant I was no longer the new person and not the only apprentice. Holly settled in very quickly and she was soon conducting client work like I was.

One of my tasks in the third week was to create some new text ads for Linens Limited and then upload them onto their Google Adwords. I was creating ads for fitted bed sheets based around the keyword group of egyptian style bed sheets. These ads had to be written in a way so that they would catch a reader’s eye and so that if someone clicked on the ad they would then purchase something from the site. This is important as every time someone clicked on a Linens Limited ad it would cost Linens Limited a certain amount of money, this meant it was important to get people to click on the ad and then be satisfied so they then would purchase an item. This task also was helping me learn about how Google Adwords worked and so it was helping me to revise for the exam.

The second client task in week three that I conducted was more work for The Ramp People. This time I was re-mapping links from their other website The Road Safety people to their main new website which has all their products on it called The Ramp People. Some products from their old website don’t exist on their new site because they no longer sell them. The idea of the new site is to merge both companies together.

Finally in week three I created another blog but this one was different it included an infographic. An infographic is used to explain a topic in less detail but with pictures and colours to explain it with only the key points down as text. The one that I created was to help people understand how to use Google Adwords for online marketing. I did some research first and used a Google Adwords page to help me get the information to create the infographic, which was created on a website called magic piktochart. I then posted this blog on Netmatter site and again used Hootsuite to promote it.

Week four, client blog

Towards the end of week four I wrote my first blog for another company. The blog was titled how to change a laser cartridge and drum in a printer. This blog was for Printernet. I then assigned the blog to Paul Wilkinson at Printernet who then looked over the blog to make sure it was good enough for his blog site.