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8:00 AM. I wake up after hitting the snooze button a few times. Then I check email and my calendar on my tablet or phone before I leave.
8:30 AM. I’m out the door by 8:30. I live 10 minutes from the office, so the Atlanta traffic is perfectly tolerable in the mornings. I’m listening to the WSJ This Morning broadcast on my iPhone. I don’t rise early enough to hear it live, so I listen to it through a podcast. The news wakes me up – gets me thinking.
9:00 AM. I always brew something – coffee, tea, something. It also prepares my mind for the day. I’m usually still listening to the WSJ This Morning broadcast, but today I’m not.
9:15 AM. I check email again to see if there’s anything I’m missing. My colleagues like to send the team thought-provoking articles, so I quickly drop those into the “Need to Read” category. That way, I can save it for Friday morning when I do most of my article-consumption. My boss(es) also sends over marketing ideas for me to ruminate on. I also save them in a special category for my weekly Wednesday morning “Innovation Station.” Side note: Innovation is really important to Arke, so every week, I spend two hours just thinking about the business and marketing. I also use that time to generate blog or campaign ideas. Sometimes I’ll use the time to think about all of our digital marketing channels and how we can improve them.
10:00 AM. I respond to a few more emails. One in particular needs my attention – the 2014 ARKE Marketing Plan. Our marketing team needs to create a 2014 marketing plan for the organization. It’s due on Nov. 18th for official review, but our marketing strategist already sent over her initial thoughts and ideas. I think about some of my own concerns and overall marketing needs, so I jot a few down and respond to some of her thoughts. We’ll schedule a longer meeting and probably discuss our approach to the plan.
10:45 AM. We’re at the end of the month, so I go into Google Analytics to check in and see how the blog, Arke.com, and FRM Solutions are doing. Nothing looks unexpected, but I do make a note to spend time with it this week to check out our goals and conversions for the month. I also go into Sitecore and fix up some of our landing pages. I also notice that there’s an old Google Analytics code on the site and it’s messing with our analytics. I let a developer know – I can usually remove/add/edit tracking scripts myself, but I don’t have access to the code. One of our developers gladly makes the changes.
11:00 AM. I walk over to our main conference room for a meeting about a huge project Arke will be working on until the end of the year: MTC. MTC is short for Microsoft Technology Center, and they have asked us to demo/create a very advanced marketing demo based on Microsoft and Sitecore platforms. The platforms include but are not limited to: Dynamics CRM, Sharepoint, MS Outlook, Sitecore, Sitecore DMS, Sitecore ECM, Azure, Arke CCA, and Google Analytics. We’ll be giving the demo sometime at the end of the year, so we need to get started. I’m responsible for assisting in re-imagining marketing reports, all of the content on the demo sites, developing branding for the faux-organization we’ll be basing the project on, analytics and social platforms for the demo sites, and working with our creative team to develop some awesome-looking templates. The meeting we’re having now is to review requirements. The Project Manager of the project asks a few questions and we discuss some solutions. We briefly discuss the creative – we had a partner of ours give us the initial branding direction and it’s up to us to fill in any branding gaps. We also discuss how to make sure we include Arke’s own brand and how to let the rest of the Internet know that the site is indeed a demo site.
11:45 AM. It’s lunch time! I usually eat with the developers at the mall across the street, but today is “Food Truck Day” – which really just means that the food truck Yumbii is at the building right next to us. It’s amazing. Try it if you’re in the area.
12:15 PM. After lunch, I call the advertising partner of our sister company FRM Solutions. They’re running an ad in a franchise newsletter and we need to confirm the deadlines for the content, but also make sure any URLs we give them have the proper query string tagging so all conversions and goals are logged into Google Analytics.
1:00 PM. I get started on booking up social for the demo microsites we’re building for the MTC demo. The dummy site is based on a fictional steakhouse – “Anderson Roth Steakhouse” – so we’ll need to make this look as real as possible. I send an email to my team to discuss social possibilities for usernames and emails. Our graphic designer also sends us some logo ideas for the faux-restaurant and we immediately discuss what works and what doesn’t. With branding, I can start entering in photos and content into the restaurant’s social profiles. I also go into Google Analytics and create a new account and tracking scripts for the fake site. I make a note to go back and review all of the initial plans and proposals for the MTC project on our portal so I know what’s going on and what’s expected of me.
2:00 PM. I’m back in email. My colleague and I have been invited to be a panelist for business class for artists. Me being an artist myself, I am fully supportive of being a panelist. I also see that we need to make decisions on the FRM ad as we’re getting closer to EOB. Next, I email our marketing intern and I challenge him to write a few blog posts for us since he’s been mostly doing research. He also works remotely – so to keep him engaged while he’s across the country, I’m encouraging him to reflect on all of the research he’s gathered for us over the past few months and focus on a particular aspect of digital marketing that he finds most interesting.
3:00 PM. Microsoft Convergence sends me an email about the event coming in March 2014. I’m reminded of a presentation I did about email marketing best practices for one of our clients, and I used Microsoft Convergence as an example. I also predicted that since the email is promoting an event, it will be filled with more content and take on more lead-generation tones and perspectives. This email proves my prediction, so I send it over to the client and ask them to compare this email example to the one I took a screenshot of in the presentation so they can see how it’s evolved. I also forward it over to my leadership and ask for guidance on how we will approach our speaker nomination for the event. We’ve got to think of content that will be compelling enough to warrant a Convergence submission. We have until November to decide, but I make note of it to discuss at our next scrum.
3:30 PM. I get another email about our Arke Retreat teams. During our annual Fall Retreat at the beginning of the month, the whole organization got together and discussed what we can fix and how we can grow. We were broken up into teams and each team was given a major “bucket” to focus on and fix. We had about an hour or so to discuss potential solutions, and then after the Retreat, we would flesh out our ideas and present to the whole company later. Fast-forward to now, and our team leader sends us the first pass of a potential solution we discussed at the Retreat. I read, reflect, and try to find any missing links or holes in the proposal that could cause it to flop. I decide that I should save it for tomorrow because I realize we’re getting closer to the end of the day, and I still need to write a blog post, update the FRM ad, and prepare for “Innovation Station” tomorrow morning (I take it very seriously).
3:45 PM. I sit down and write this blog post. It’s probably the easiest blog post I’ve ever written.
4:00 PM. I get a confirmation from a developer that the extra Google Analytics code has been removed from our site and we can finally take advantage of Demographics and Interests reporting. My colleague and I high-five because he was having the same issue with his personal blog: not being able to access GA’s new reports because of an extra Google Analytics tracking code. Meanwhile, one of our developers starts working on some changes to Arke.com. He has some questions/concerns and wants to discuss a solution.
5:00 PM. I finish up the blog post, decide that creating a FRM landing page for the ad is worth it, update the copy, and pack up for the day.
5:12 PM. The drive home isn’t too long. It only takes 20 minutes. I’ve seen worse Atlanta-traffic.
6:15 PM. My boss wants some quick updates to a sales sheet that we have. I email our graphic designer and ask him if he can make the changes. He makes the changes and emails it to me and my boss.
8:40 PM. After dinner, I’m on Duolingo.com and Codecademy.com. I want to learn PHP and Javascript, but all of the developers actually think C# would be more worthwhile. I’m flabbergasted since most of my marketing technologies use JS and PHP (WordPress, plugins, etc.), but I reserve C# education for later. My goal is to be mostly independent when I need to make really small code changes to any of our marketing technologies or identify problems I have with the sites I own (these skills have already proven useful within the last week). I’ve mastered HTML and CSS and want to take it a step further. As a marketer, I know I’ll never live in code like a developer, but being able to navigate the code of Arke’s own sites is really important to me. I use Duolingo to brush up on my Spanish and French. Since I’ve recently discovered Codecademy and Duolingo, my nights have been spent on both of the sites.
12:00 AM. My brain is done! Lights out.
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