The list below includes links to useful resources that you or new staffers can read in month one of a career in marketing. The list is my idea of what is most important or most eye-opening for those beginning their careers.
I've been working at Econsultancy London for three years. When I started I didn't know what the acronym 'SEO' stood for. Our recruitment policy has since been firmed up, but the complexity of working online has increased.
Hopefully, whatever your industry or business size, you can read and bookmark this post, or pass on to new colleagues.
Study your company's style guide
From banned words, to how to write numbers, to American or English spellings, you need to get an idea of style from day one. Which fonts can you use, and at what size? If your company doesn't have a style guide, write one as you go along and you'll get somewhere in the region of 11,000 brownie points.
On the broader topic of what makes good copywriting, see The A-Z of Online Copywriting.
Read the Econsultancy SEO Beginners' Guide
You likely have an appreciation of the might of Google and possibly Baidu (China's premier search engine). If you've never considered how Google ranks web pages, read the free-to-download Econsultancy Beginners' Guide to SEO.
Then you can move on to consideration of how search impacts other marketing channels.
Mess around with Google Trends
Gain confidence with web tools and get a fun introduction to keyword research by comparing search terms over time and in different geographies. Here's one to whet your appetite - searches for 'cocktails' and 'hangover' in the UK over the festive period.
Sign up to some emails
The email is still a big part of marketing and it's definitely an area where you can pick up tips from others. Sign up to a bunch of email newsletters from your competitors and across your sector (as well as the Daily Pulse, of course).
This will give you a chance to analyse the ease of signing up, the design and delivery of the email, and the content therein.
Tweet
A great circus of sloth, a place to find your 15 minutes of fame, or a priceless and serendipitous source of information? Perhaps all of those things, Twitter is another platform that will lend you confidence.
Creating tiny bits of content, learning to curate information and correspond with peers, Twitter is valuable indeed. Here's some suggestions of people to follow:
@lakey, @martinbelam, @danbarker
Attend a conference
Conferences are great for networking and learning what's new. You'll likely be pleased to find out you understand most of the speakers. Ahem, Econsultancy runs a number of conferences.
Remember 80:20
Your workplace might not be like Google's in giving you one day a week to explore your own learning. Nevertheless, it pays to understand that learning can happen as part of your 'business as usual'.
Training, reading and discussion are activities that should be on your to-do list.
Explore mobile
Make sure you have a decent smartphone and you're using it to the full. As we move to 'mobile first' and 'mobile only' cultures it'll pay to know what experiences you value on your mobile.
Get a Google Analytics log-in
Drill down into some data and try some custom reports. When you get more confident, here are some custom reports you might find handy.
Rel=author?
Once you've settled in, perhaps you'll be asked to blog. Get your Google Plus profile linked with the sites you're writing for. Doing this will enable Google to serve a richer snippet under search results that feature your writing.
Here's a handy guide to setting up the rel=author tag. There's nothing like vanity to spur you on to writing more, and it will help with clicks through from Google to your content.
Drop in to customer service
Try to spend some time appreciating how the customer service departments function in your business. Getting a look at enquiries and feedback on the front line is often the quickest way to understand challenges and opportunites within a marketing role.
These are just some ideas of stuff that I didn't do in month one, but would have benefited from. There are tons of other valuable things you can do at the start of your learning curve, and hopefully readers have commented below and shared some.
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