At Loom we love sharing our digital marketing expertise and inspiring the next generation of marketers. When second year Sociology Student Holly approached us about a work experience placement we were really excited to welcome her into our collaborative office space. These are Holly’s impressions of Loom and what she learnt from the experience.
I’ve always found the idea of marketing as a whole really exciting and appealing. Once I heard about digital marketing, I had a very strong feeling that it could be the ideal career for me. Due to the amount that technology and internet dominate our society, I began to realise how important digital marketing is for companies. It now really seems to be the best, most efficient, and also most exciting way of interacting with targeted audiences.The more I read about digital marketing, the more I wanted to know. I’d been trying to learn as much as I could online, but I became eager to get some real life experience and see what it’s really like, especially in a digital marketing agency. I was so excited, and so grateful when Loom offered me a placement.
My time at Loom
On my first day I felt a little nervous and had absolutely had no idea what to expect, but as soon as I stepped into the office everyone was so welcoming and friendly. Claire gave me a little tour and an introduction to the company; I instantly felt at ease. Throughout the week, each member of the team individually gave me so much of their time to teach me about the particular area of digital marketing that they specialise in. I genuinely think I’ve learnt much more about digital marketing this week than any course could have taught me.
Not only was I taught and shown so much, I was also set various exciting tasks which gave me a genuine insight into what it’s really like working for a digital marketing agency. I absolutely loved this as I felt like a real member of the team.
My digital marketing tasks
- Content – To get me started with the content work, I was given the task of editing one of Thom’s blogs; adding any suggestions I had, as well as adding amusing gifs to each paragraph. After I got the hang of it, I was then set the exciting task of writing two pieces of content myself.
- PPC – Not really being a maths person before this week, I assumed that the PPC area of digital marketing wouldn’t be for me. However, after Tommy and Wes explained everything to me, I began to realise how interesting it could be. I worked on tasks like removing bids on any negative or unrelated keyword searches.
- SEO – I learnt the best ways to help Google and other search engines ‘crawl’ your site as efficiently as possible. For example, I learnt to add the ‘no follow’ value to the rel attribute of an external link. I also learnt others ways to improve your site’s Google ranking, and increase traffic. For example, how keywords relate to user intent and the importance of intent in content.
- Social – I learnt how to use social media business tools such as Facebook Business Manager and Tweetdeck. Using these tools I created and scheduled multiple social media posts for various brands and companies. I also learnt how to measure impression and click rates, illustrating where you’re maybe going slightly wrong or where your posts are really making an impact. It’s really interesting to see the results of your work.
Throughout the whole week everyone was really singing Hart’s Bakery’s praises. On my last day, the whole team and I had a little wander down there for delicious iced coffees and cakes. It was so lovely, and I now see what all the fuss is about!
I really love how there’s so many different aspects to online marketing and the way no two days tend to be the same.
Not only that but it seems to be a great career for a variety of people. It can be suited to those into numbers and stats, those who are creative or absolutely love writing, and also those who are social media experts. This helps give a digital marketing team a mixture of personalities too.
As a university student, with quite a sporadic and irregular timetable, working a 9-5 job hasn’t exactly been number one on my list of things I’m looking forward to. However, I now genuinely can’t wait to graduate and get started on my digital marketing career.
Thank you so much for having me Loom!
*nb at the time of writing we were called ‘Digirank’. This article was updated in September 2019 to reflect our name change.
