The Business of Digital Podcast

Guest Frank Days joins the podcast to talk scrums, Jira, product marketing, waterfalls and oh yeah - Agile Marketing. Listen to learn What is Agile Marketing.

What is Agile Marketing?

So it doesn't matter if you call it Agile Marketing, Agile for Marketing or just Agile - it is clearly something that more Marketing teams are looking into and often implementing. If you AREN'T using Agile you likely are in the typical "Waterfall Planning or Model". This is where you follow the steps you see below over 6,9 or 12 months.

Agile typically happens in "Sprints". You will be having daily scrums or quick weekly meetings, using something like Jira perhaps, and really trying to push things forward quickly. As with everything there are variations to the best practice way of setting up and following the Agile Methodology but as you listen you will notice that time and time again the guys all give examples of how they have used Agile but didn't quite follow the rules. We highly suggest you give a listen to the show and dig into the resources and look into how you and your team can best use Agile Marketing on your next project.

Episode 60 Mentioned Tools & Resources

The Agile Marketer Book

The Marketing Agility Podcast

Jira

Waterfall Model

The following are some quick yet deep resources if you really want to dig into Agile & Agile Marketing:

Agile Methodology

The Agile Method

Agile Methodology: The Complete Guide to Understanding Agile Testing

Every company is different and thus every content calendar and promotion calendar should be too. Hear various examples and create a calendar that works for you.

Content Calendar Examples & Templates

You often hear that you need a content plan or content calendar but what it looks like, how it works, and what works for your team/company likely will be different than what works for others. Every company has different hurdles and issues for pushing content and social updates live so why would someone think that a single type of calendar would work for everyone?

That is where we did some digging thanks to Ian's team content calendar post spurred the idea.

Excel. Or a Google Sheet like what we use for this very podcast. In the simplest form, it is just a shared document with a list of 100 ideas and all of the shows we have already recorded. Sure we have the next 5-10 planned out but we often move things around, push things out and take advantage of when guests can join us (or when inspiration hits for something different!).

Rigid or flexible? What works for your company and what allows you to push ahead even when resources, projects or budget change but your calendar and goals don't?

Here are some additional resources and content calendar examples for you to dig into:

4 Steps to an Awesome Content Calendar

7 Content Calendar Examples From Awesome Brands to Inspire Your Own

How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar: Tips and Templates

4 Steps for Creating a Social Media Calendar

Social Media & Promotion Calendar Example

Another example is the social and promotion calendar that is very high level but gives you an idea of yet another example to dig into. The goal of the promotion calendar was to demonstrate how a brewery or a restaurant could approach promoting an event via social channels, blog, email, and so on. You can easily replace any of the items or the goal but it gives you a quick outline so that each day you know what you are doing. It also gives you an idea of what to schedule ahead or to help other team members understand when everything is happening.

What is your approach?

Let us know in the comments or on Twitter how you approach your content calendar and promotion calendar!

Get tips on how to grow a digital marketing team. The episode starts with hiring, moves to training, and ends with retention for your in-house or agency team.

How to Grow a Digital Marketing Team

The episode dives into three main topics around building either an in-house digital marketing team or building a digital marketing agency team. The examples the guys dig into can be applied for just about any skill set, so it doesn't matter if you are hiring an email, paid search, social media, SEO, web developer or something else the methods to grow your team should help you!

So quickly what are the three areas?

Hiring - Dig into some hiring lessons learned by Mat as well as some ideas on hiring digital marketers for your team

Training - Nothing stops in digital marketing so keeping up with Instagram, New Development Tools/Methods, Google & Bing Changes and so on is something we all need to do.

Ongoing Training & Team Building - You invest time and money in your team so why not try and make it hard for them to want to ever leave?

Digital Marketer Hiring Tips

The guys give some interview questions and methods to help you find the right person for the right position. Good luck with your hiring!

Who do you hire for? Skill? Background? Fit?

When you can have outgoing people interview or help hire replacements.

Hiring question tip - ask for examples of thinking processes of how people approach their job. The goal is to understand how they approach and solve problems.

Digital Marketer Training Tips

We all know that things change daily but especially if you are hiring people with no to little experience. List to hear more details on some ways to train those new hires and your veteran team members.

Looking at interns is a great way to skip some of the training as they get that in the semester with you.

Dave digs into one downside though for taking on new hires/team members that require a high amount of training.

The size of your team and company will likely dictate how and when you are able to train people.

Larger teams are able to share tips and internally train but also break up the training of new people so that no single person is responsible.

To assist with training look at online classes and certifications as well as conferences.

Local colleges often offer classes that also can be taken during work or after - have your teams look at those for ways to get additional training.

Training & Team Tips to Keep Your Team Happy

Looking down the line in how to keep people happy, on board and just a humming team. With most people hopping jobs in digital marketing (especially agencies) after 2 years, here are some ideas:

Evaluate if team members are in the right spot. Internally audit where people fit for clients, projects and for their own growth.

Continue to look for ways for everyone on the team to grow and succeed.

If you are a team leader, be upfront with goals and directions for each team/team member.

Track your own time, your team's time and run an in-house team like an agency. It will help avoid burning out your in-house team.

Pitch Deck Best Practice Podcast

Whether you an agency pitching new business, an in-house marketer pitching your project to a boss/CEO or if you are pitching your business idea to VCs it is likely you will create a pitch deck at some point. As a marketer and especially as an SEO you spend as much of your time trying to get budget and projects approved as you do actually working on those projects.

So when would someone possibly need a pitch deck? There are many reasons and here are just a few of the examples that we cover or mention in the episode.

Monthly Reports

Quarterly Business Review (In-House & Agencies)

Meetings with VCs

Internal Project Reviews

Pitching New Business

If you didn't catch our Death by Powerpoint episode we highly suggest you check it out. A pitch deck is a type of presentation but with the goal of getting a "yes" or "approval". So give a listen for some tips and pitch deck best practices and be sure to check out the THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY OF PITCH DECKS blog post.

Things to DO in Pitch Decks

While we cover a number of things in the episode here are just a few of the main things we recommend you do to achieve a great pitch deck.

Audience - think about who you are pitching and what they care about/what their goals are.

Fonts - don't go crazy with custom and one of a kind fonts. Think about what fonts may be included on the device you are presenting from if it will not be yours.

Visual Space & Flow - try and keep each slide to one idea/goal. Go easy on the text!

Things to NOT DO in Pitch Decks

On the other side of, course are some things you want to avoid. These items can derail your pitch deck and presentation and we HIGHLY suggest you avoid them or think about when to use them.

Animations & Video for no reason

Use old and dated layout

Visual Space & Flow - 25 bullet points and an essay on a single slide will not win anyone over.

No common colors, style and overall appears to be hodgepodged by multiple people

SlideStorms

As far as the "SlideStorms" that we talked about during the show, here are two examples from Marcus Tandler that you can dig into.

My 181-slide #SlideStorm I presented at @DigitalOlympus is up on YouTube: „SEO Fun with Google Search Console“ https://t.co/yNOQ7BYGYZ 181 slides in 18 minutes about how to work effectively with Google Search Console #Enjoy :)— Marcus Tandler ✰ (@mediadonis) January 8, 2018

Episode 57 Mentioned Tools & Resources

PITCH DECKS: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY

Death by Powerpoint

Every month & quarter there is at least one holiday that can impact a business' normal hours, operations & sales. Get tips on social media posting and blogging.

What is Best Practice for Posting on Holidays?

The TL;DR Version - It Depends. As Mat says during the show, what you do and how you handle each holiday will DEPEND.

Every month and quarter there is at least one holiday that can impact a business' normal hours, operations and sales. Depending on your business you may have to think about one or more physical locations, multiple social media accounts and of course your website. Even on holidays, you need to make sure customers and prospects are taken care of and that keeps getting harder.

So give a listen to the show and get a number of examples and ideas on how you can best serve your customers/prospects on holidays even if you are closed. As far as blogging and promoting content, the show covers that too!

Here are two quick resources for lists of holidays:

Holidays in United States in 2018

The Ultimate Social Media Holiday Calendar for 2018