We caught up with Dan Healy, Head of User Centred Design at the Satellite Applications Catapult to gather the most effective ways of running user experience and design activities remotely. Here, is our deep dive chat as part of our Ask the Expert series.
Sam @ ADLIB: To start things off, it’d be great if you could give us an idea of what Catapult does?
Dan: We exist to make the world a better place and to grow the UK economy through the effective use of space technology. We work on projects where there’s an opportunity to use satellite data to gain insight into a whole bunch of different things. It could be observing activity in the world’s oceans to track illegal fishing vessels or using something called remote sensing to check and ensure the structural integrity of bridges around the world. Some exciting, important opportunities – things that you wouldn’t even imagine were possible.
Sam @ ADLIB: Incredible. So, in the context of that, what’s your specific role?
Dan: My role is Head of User Centred Design. My role is as much to do with coordination, facilitation and oversight as anything else. In practice, that means that my job is about making sure that we’re doing and prioritising the right sort of work. I’m also responsible for evolving our culture of user-centred design so that it allows the organisation to take a user-centred approach to all that we do. I’ve got a team of really talented designers and feel like I’m well placed at knowing who would be well suited to particular projects, especially if I know that someone’s got an ambition to work on something.
My organisation has a solid history of user-centred design. One of the things that attracted me to the job was the fact that I hadn’t seen many examples of a ‘Head of User Centred Design’ being advertised and I loved the specificity of that. It suggested a maturity of thinking around user-centred design and design thinking. That said, we still have room to mature and that’s where I think I can help. I want to celebrate the incredible work that we’ve done but also look ahead to the exciting stuff that we’ve yet to do.
Sam @ ADLIB: As we know, Designers can come from a wide variety of backgrounds including research, psychology, graphics, product… What sort of skills and backgrounds make up your team?
Dan: It’s an amazing mixture. We’ve got skills in service design, product design, immersive visualisation, industrial design, and design research. My background is in user-centred design and in particular user research and accessibility. I enjoy helping people who are working on projects that have more of a user experience focus to enhance their skills in that way. For example, I’ve just been working with a member of my team with the design of a usability testing study, which was conducted remotely. It’s something that I’d like to do more of with my team.
Sam @ ADLIB: It’s an interesting exercise and one of the reasons I enjoy working in this sector so much, because of that diversity in people’s experience.
So to talk about the current situation; in your role as a Facilitator, a Manager and also a key relationship for internal stakeholders – I’d imagine having to work remotely has thrown up some interesting dynamics and brought about new challenges. Has the business been used to remote work in the past and what has that looked like?
Dan: That’s an interesting question and one that I’m going to challenge. A few people have asked me “how are you adapting to remote working? Is that something that you’re able to take on easily, or is it proving difficult?” We need to be aware of the fact that, what we’re doing at the moment isn’t simply remote working. Someone on LinkedIn said something along the lines of “this isn’t working from home, we’re at our homes during a crisis trying to work”. When I saw it, it resonated with me. I thought ‘thank you for saying that and acknowledging what this is because it’s not just remote working’.
I feel like I have multiple working personas. What I mean by that is, there’s Dan Healy, Head of UCD, who works at the Satellite Applications Catapult office four days a week. That’s probably my most productive version of working me. Then there’s Dan Healy, Head of UCD, who works at home on a Friday – that’s me, usually in a totally empty house, with all the broadband I could possibly want and no distractions. I’m pretty effective in that context too – I can get my head down and focus. Then you’ve got this version of me, where I’m working from my daughter’s cabin bed desk. I can hear the kids downstairs running around like maniacs and my wife (who’s also supposed to be working full time!) is trying to home-school them and to help me out with my busy schedule. This is an incredibly tough situation. This isn’t remote working for me, this is coping with the situation we’re in and trying to make the best of it.
Sam @ ADLIB: That’s very well put, there’s a huge difference between what we know as remote working and our current situation isn’t there.
It sounds like you’ve been working on a semi-remote basis before with the team, how has that changed what you’re doing now? And what character traits do you think are most important when working with UX and design teams remotely?
Dan: I think flexibility and creativity are essential in this context. It’s not good enough to just say “okay, we now have Zoom and Teams, let’s do all of our meetings on those platforms” but we won’t change anything else. That doesn’t work. As you’ve probably found out yourself, doing video calls all day is intense and it lets people into your life in a way that perhaps you’re not used to or comfortable with. At times, I’ve quite enjoyed the opportunity that it gives for showing vulnerability and authenticity. I think it’s helped me to come across to my organisation in a way that is perhaps more representative of who I am. For people to see the messiness, the chaos of my life makes me more human.
In terms of my organisation, we’ve adapted remarkably well. Over 150 people have pretty much moved out of the office and are conducting their work in a new way. Where we still need to do more work is around challenging our virtual behaviours. We need to rethink what meetings are for, to challenge the length of meetings and the tools that we use to facilitate those meetings.
One of the things I love about my job is that, as a user-centred designer, I’m invited into a wide array of different activities. I recently contributed to a homeworking policy that was put together at pace to try and address what’s going on at the moment and to give people assurances around what they could expect, what their rights are, and what is expected of them. I was delighted to collaborate with our Chief People Officer on that.
One of the things I did as part of that process was put together some guidelines on virtual etiquette. For example, if you want to chat with someone in the way that you would face to face in the kitchen or next to the water cooler, then ‘Teams’ is probably the best thing for that, but you should check if the person is available before you launch into a full conversation because that can be stressful for them. If you want to run a workshop, then we’d recommend using Zoom and something like Miro or Microsoft Whiteboard. Also, consider reducing the duration of your workshop or break it down into a number of shorter workshops. A workshop conducted in person is very different from a workshop conducted online. Not least because, certainly in my situation, I can’t afford the luxury of three hours. This means I can’t help with childcare.
Essentially, it’s about being as kind as possible to people. That’s one of the things that I encourage. We need to be kind to people and consider what they’re going through and how different it might be to what we’re going through. Everyone’s got their own struggles, it’s just that some of them aren’t as visible as others. There are different ways that you can exhibit that sort of kindness, for example, if you see that someone’s diary is very busy, and they’re in back to back meetings, could you maybe give them five minutes back between your meeting and the next one? Could you reduce your 45-minute meeting to 40 minutes or your 30-minute meeting to 25 minutes so they can get a cup of tea, go to the loo, get some headspace? Simple, seemingly trivial steps that are important.
Good practice around meetings is more important than ever. Before you book in that meeting, check whether someone is actually available, check whether you’re not triple or quadruple booking them, because that causes people to stress and that affects their mental health. Be considerate because if you’re double booking them or triple booking them, they’re going to have to spend time getting out of that mess. Put yourself in their shoes, what does that feel like?
Those are the things that I’m encouraging my organisation to adopt. I’ve already seen examples of it and that’s great.
Sam @ ADLIB: It’s interesting to think about some of those. Like talking about the communication etiquette that’s involved when actually the dynamic has changed a lot. You are in essence connected to (in some cases) somebody’s front room and their home.
When you look at some of the tools you mentioned and some of the practices when you talk about meetings and workshops, how do they look now compared to a few weeks ago when the world was so different and what have been the key changes that you’ve had to make?
Dan: They are different and, in some ways, I would say they’re better. I was facilitating a workshop recently and, before the pandemic hit, we would travel to one of our other office locations to run the workshop. I feel that changing the way these workshops are held has challenged the status quo and we’re now doing things in a different, more valuable way.
For example, for this workshop, we needed to use video conferencing for the conversation. That was an easy part, we would just use Zoom but the whiteboarding part proved a bit tricky. We’d been using Miro from time to time prior to the pandemic and so this time around it was a case of committing to Miro and seeing how it worked.
When I ran the session, I brought up the Miro board and said to the people at the beginning of the call, we’re going to do this as a bit of an experiment and let’s see how it goes, then started to put up sticky notes as things were going along.
Initially, the session would have been three hours, but I recommended that we break it down into two halves and made sure that we had a break in between. That seemed to go down well. At the end of the session, I asked how people found it.
I was delighted to hear that people thought it was better than doing it in person. It brought the whiteboard to the focus of the conversation, whether I was capturing things accurately. The areas that hadn’t yet been discussed were very clear and it felt like we’d got somewhere – we could all see the progress of our conversation. That was unexpected but great. If anything, it’s probably going to help us to show the value and the importance of what we do in the UCD team.
Sam @ ADLIB: That’s really interesting. In terms of how you communicate, manage and get the most out of your team is there a particular rhythm you’ve settled into? Or a working practice that is much different from what you were doing before?
Dan: When the pandemic hit, I was very aware of the fact that my team were used to being in the office. I’d spent a lot of time getting to know my team in person and doing my best to try to bring us all together. Now, we’ve been forced apart and this could have changed the dynamic irrevocably. We discussed and agreed on an approach to keeping in touch with each other. We have a virtual coffee for half an hour each day, which is optional. We can’t always make it but importantly, it’s not work-related, just a chance to chew the fat. I’ve enjoyed the fact that we’re six-plus weeks in and we’re still doing that.
Team meetings are working well – we still do those every week. We also have a session called ‘Design Horizons’, which is once every few months where we take some time out (typically about half a day) to focus on some of the more strategic, visionary things for the team. That’s posed a challenge. We’ve introduced different ways of doing it using Miro boards and Zoom and running a much shorter session. I broke it down into just two hours with a 10-minute break in the middle, but perhaps that was too short. You could say that I’m taking a user-centred design approach to this, too. It’s all about experimentation and iteration, seeing how good we can get. Things have changed a lot, but I think we’re still managing to keep in touch with each other and we feel like a team.
Our informal channels in Teams and WhatsApp have become more important than ever. I always make an effort to say good morning to everyone on Teams first thing if I can. I like to encourage that sort of positive domino effect of people chiming in. We’ve started to introduce (sort of by accident) a joke of the day, though sometimes we have to rely on Siri and Alexa to help us out. It’s good fun and we’ve done that pretty much every working day for six weeks now – quite an achievement!
Sam @ ADLIB: It’s quite easy in this situation for everything to become about work in a lot of ways and it’s good to encourage some of those things and I imagine some of those will probably stick way beyond the current situation as well.
Finally, is there one key piece of advice for people who are looking to get their teams functioning at their optimum in this situation?
Dan: A piece of advice I would give to someone in my position is, make sure that the approach you’re deciding upon is a result of collaborating with your team. Work with your team to find out what works – ask them questions, listen to their answers. This can feel like quite a vulnerable position for a team leader because you might feel that your team is looking to you to be the rock, the person that has all of the answers. However, imposing an approach that doesn’t work for your team risks a long-lasting and negative impact on the team’s dynamic.
This article previously appeared on the ADLIB Blog.
10 more fun and educational activities if you are looking for that extra bit of help when planning/refreshing your ‘stay at home timetable’ with the kids for after the bank holiday sunshine.
We’ve put all 3 issues together on this link so you can easily access them all.
We really hope you like them.
Stay safe x
We’re on a mission to brighten up isolation and inspire every child in the nation!
If you’re from the South West, you may have already heard of Healthy Young Minds, our initiative to encourage children into STEM subjects by unleashing their creativity and imaginations.
Last summer, we tasked every child from Summerhill Academy, Bristol, to help us think of ways to tackle two of the world’s trickiest health problems: dementia and air pollution.
Why? Because complex problems require uninhibited thinking. Something that we know children are fantastic at. They have creativity by the bucketload, but often aren’t consulted on the big issues that they will likely face in the future. We think they should be.
It was a fantastic success: we had 400 entries, a judging panel with the likes of Dyson and Alzheimer’s Research UK, and four seriously impressive winners.
We’re taking this online
Now that the nation’s children aren’t in school for the forseeable, and parents have been thrust into the unlikely role of teacher, Healthy Young Minds is back for 2020 with a digital twist.
Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll be uploading new Healthy Young Minds challenges that you can download from www.healthy-young-minds.com
From topical Corona-themed challenges to ecological topics, we promise to open your childrens’ minds and give parents a helping hand for as long as this lasts.
All you need to take part is paper and pen (or a tablet if they’re lucky enough), and a dollop of imagination.
Will your little one be a big winner?
We’ll be judging the nation’s creative inventions and awarding our favourites with some e-prizes to help make lockdown easier for the whole family.
Our part-time User Experience Design (UXD) course will teach you all the key skills required to research, define, design and develop digital services based upon user-centred design principles.
The programme’s industry informed curriculum will teach you how to approach problems creatively in order to design the next generation of great apps, websites, and digital products whilst preparing you to pursue opportunities to work as a User Experience Designer.
Students will be taught the fundamentals of User Centred Design and learn to validate ideas by looping through the design process starting with User Research, Rapid Prototyping, User Testing and Iteration.
You will also be introduced to industry standard creative software tools and working processes whilst working on a real client brief.
Alongside this practical application of learned skills and techniques – you will be able to demonstrate your ability to successfully manage a project from concept to launch; combining commercially sought after skill-sets – through the application of research, design and technical development.
Students will finish the course competent in:
Our part-time User Experience (UX) Design course has been developed to help anyone looking to up-skill or change career and move into the ever increasing number of roles in UX Design.
It is aimed at people looking to learn the ‘mindset’ and application of User Experience Design to digital projects (both agency and client-side) – and to gain a deeper understanding of the methods, tools and processes of working as a UX Designer.
This programme would be useful for anyone hoping to expand their knowledge of UX Design methodologies, tools and processes.
This course is ideal for:
(This is by no means an exhaustive list.)
Check out our students reviews
Sign up for a taster workshop
For any other information please do get in touch with Nicola nicola[email protected]
Published by Nick Brown at 27/03/2020 for accelerate-agency.com
The challenges for many companies are inevitable during the COVID-19 outbreak. In a flash, many are nervously thinking about their physical well-being and the health of their businesses. Many companies have immediately cut back on their marketing campaigns. They decided to trim budgets, which is completely reasonable. However, now is an excellent time for small and large businesses to rev up their search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.
Smart business owners will use the coronavirus downtime to focus on growing their company. SEO and content marketing allow your business to keep in touch with your customers, while most of us are reliant on digital communication. For you to understand the long-term benefits of search engine marketing, we listed six reasons why you should focus on SEO at this time.
One major reason why you can’t just stop your SEO efforts is that consumers are too invested digitally. With work-from-home set-ups, it is evident that people will spend more time on their computers and mobile devices. This is already happening as the spike in traffic on Pornhub makes clear.
Of course, it’s not just porn that people are watching. Ecommerce giant Amazon is only one of a range of companies that have seen a sudden surge in demand for their services. This surge in demand is the result of a robust digital presence. SEO and content marketing can be your solution to combat the impact of coronavirus on your business.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide/
As businesses are settling into the new normal, we will be forced to spend more time researching and finding products and services online. This isn’t just conjecture. A study from Vodafone reports that internet usage has surged up by 50% in some European countries. It’s a prime time to produce and release content to an audience of potential customers who want to do more than slouch on the couch watching Netflix.
The big winners of this situation will be companies offering digital products and services that help companies operate online and ecommerce stores that deliver the goods we need to our doors. This is an opportunity to get in front of a larger market than you would otherwise be able to access.
Because of the pandemic, many goods won’t be easy to find. Furthermore, As some manufacturers will cease operations, scarcity is sure to ensue. Note that when goods are insufficient, people will look for them online, and they will explore alternatives if some products are not available from their usual supplier. While I was primarily discussing goods, the same thing will be happening with businesses and consumers looking online for service providers.
If you are involved in a business offering products or services that are in high demand, you need to start working to rank for the items that you offer. It also pays to work to rank your content by introducing topics around the products that consumers demand.
A lot of companies will scale down on their marketing campaigns. This is understandable. It’s also an opportunity. While others are focused on keeping abreast of the latest news on social media, you can double down on your marketing.
The current crisis, while severe, does give you the space to focus on improving your marketing efforts while others slack off. It’s this focus on the end goal that separates successful businesses from the crowd.
Some of the things you should be focusing on include optimizing your sales pages for conversions, reviewing your content marketing strategy, and guest posting. This is essential work, especially considering that we don’t know how many weeks or months this current crisis will last.
While there is uncertainty over when things will get back to normal, the COVID-19 pandemic will not last forever. As a business owner, you must see the “big picture.” Although short-term business plans are essential, they cannot be made at the expense of long-term strategies. It pays to think months ahead of where you want your company to be in the future.
Note that optimizing your business’ web presence takes a lot of months of work. If you work through this time to build your content, you can prepare your business to see better sales in the next months. Stopping SEO marketing can negatively impact your business. This is because you won’t be able to rank high in SERPs and connect with your customers.
SEO marketing will remain to be one of the most effective ways to reach your target market after the outbreak. Businesses that carry out powerful search engine marketing campaigns will reap the benefits of their investments when things normalize.
With the right SEO and content marketing strategies, your content can be the light of many during this dark time. Communicating your brand identity and company values is especially important. Through your SEO and content efforts, your customers will be aware that you are still offering your products or services.
As you provide consumers with valuable content, you will increase brand awareness and customer engagement. Through effective content marketing, you can provide valuable content that helps solve the problems many people face. Slowly, you will become your customers’ ally in this difficult time.
Your SEO campaign will increase your online exposure, and this will be a long term gain. The advantages you gain now will last longer than the current crisis.
When allocating your marketing budget, it’s important to choose a channel that offers a clear ROI. SEO is measurable and quantifiable. Thanks to tools like Google Search Console, you can track your search rankings, see the number of people who visited your site, and with Google Analytics, you can track the conversion rate from visitors to customers.
This ability to track improvements and measure the result makes SEO one of the most effective marketing channels. Certainly, it offers clear benefits over PPC, which offers traffic on tap, but only if you have a budget to pay for it on an ongoing basis.
There are also subsequent gains that you can accrue from SEO. For example, you can convert visitors to your site onto your email list, grow a PPC retargeting list and more. All of these are marketing resources that you can utilize for future campaigns.
Truly, it is important to be highly strategical in a challenging time like this. We may see an economic downturn in the next months to come. When that happens, some businesses will not thrive and others will. Considering the fast-changing global landscape, squeezing all possibilities to be successful is essential. Your actions now will separate your business from others.
A recession because of the coronavirus may be inevitable. However, with a plan in place, you can prevent your business suffering from the impacts. Maintain your market share by investing in long-term digital marketing strategies like SEO. Start by hiring a reliable marketing agency to increase the number of relevant visits to your site.
Republished from Accelerate Agency’s website https://www.accelerate-agency.com/6-reasons-why-you-should-focus-on-seo-during-covid19
We want to let our members and the community know that we are still very much in operation during this challenging period. Whilst our keynotes, member lunches, workshops, and initiatives are currently on pause, we will continue to deliver value and support the local creative community by sharing advice and positive stories via our digital network.
We recognise that this will be a very difficult time for most of us and to get through it we all need to support each other. Remote working can be challenging but it’s been heart-warming to see some brilliant initiatives appearing within the network.
We’ve already come across some great examples of ideas to help creative businesses get through these turbulent times. For instance, ‘Digital Guzzle’ Friday’s from the Noisy Little Monkey clan, Virtual Book Clubs with Armadillo, and members offering free services such as copywriting, tips for remote working and how to manage your finances.
Our region is known for its unique collaborative spirit, so, we have an ask: share your initiatives and offers of support with us and we’ll add them to this blog page where we’re compiling positive news and stories to keep you going.
Are you offering free drop-ins for creative businesses? Have you set up a virtual networking event to help people connect? Written a blog about weathering the storm? We want to hear it!
Let us know by emailing Kirsty with details of your initiative, including a summary of what you’re offering, who it’s for, your online link (this can be a LinkedIn post, tweet, blog etc), plus details for how people can get in touch. We’ll be regularly adding to the blog so keep checking back for updates.
If you’re a member, we’d encourage you to self-publish your own articles and share the positive activity and good news with the network. Please also continue to post your job opportunities and virtual events to our website over the coming months. The more positivity we can circulate the better.
To kick things off, Chris Thurling (our Chair, business coach, mentor and serial networker!) is opening a virtual drop-in where members can book a free 20-minute coaching and mentoring session. Chris has earned multiple battle scars through surviving three periods of recession, so can provide useful advice and words of wisdom he’s learned throughout his journey.
Slots are available on Wednesday afternoons (between 2pm – 4pm) on 25th March, 1st April and 8th April. If you’re a Bristol Media member and would like to book, please email Chris.
If you’re a local business offering a short-term or freelance role for people working within the creative industries, please get in touch. You can advertise the vacancy for free on our Jobs board until the end of April.
We appreciate that for the smaller businesses and self-employed amongst you, it’s going to be a particularly testing time. The environment is changing at a rapid rate, so we’ve created a Slack channel for our freelance members to share info, resources, opportunities, and anything that will help support the local gig economy through the current situation. If you’d like an invite, please email Alli.
We will continue to work with local businesses and networks to ensure we are all actively supporting the creative industries in our region. If you are an organisation who can offer your services to support creative businesses in Bristol, Bath and the South West, please let us know.
If you have any questions or would like to speak to one of the team, please get in touch.
Together, we are greater than the sum of our parts.
Whether you travel regularly for business or just like exploring new places, travelling brings a whole set of digital security threats. While business travellers are especially vulnerable because they have all sorts of business data stored in their devices, everyone is at risk of security breaches, including identity theft, credit card fraud, or cyberstalking.
If you maintain your digital security when you travel, there is no reason to cancel your travel plans out of fear that you might get hacked. Here are some ways you can keep your data and devices safe when you travel abroad.
Keeping your devices locked is your first line of defense in case you misplace them or lose them to pickpockets. An unprotected device can and will result in the theft of company or personal information.
If you’re travelling with a company-issued laptop or device, your IT department will already have set up a PGP key or device password. If your device doesn’t have one yet, ask your IT department to create it. Once you receive your password, change it to something that you will remember easily, but is too complicated or obscure for thieves to hack.
If you have a smartphone or tablet, it probably comes with security settings that will allow you to lock and unlock it with a PIN, a pattern, a fingerprint, or facial recognition. If possible, make your PIN longer than four digits (six digits is good enough for most purposes) and avoid using a very common password, like 1234 or 0000.
The point of locking your devices is to make your data harder to access, buying you time to recover it or, in extreme cases, to delete it. The more complicated your device’s unlocking mechanism is, the more difficult it is for an unauthorized person to use it.
We’ve already discussed changing your device passwords as soon as your IT department has set them up. The reason you should change your default password is that you don’t know who’s had access to your device, whether it’s physically or online, and you should always keep other people guessing.
Some businesses don’t require password changes. However, most organisations require password changes every 90 days, which is an industry best practice. If you are travelling with your devices, you should be more careful and change your password a bit more frequently
The best passwords are those that are completely generated randomly. But the problem with coming up with a strong password is that the thing that makes it hard to crack is also the same thing that makes it hard to remember.
Here is a table that illustrates the differences between strong passwords and weak ones.
Strong passwords
Longer than 8 characters
Phrases or sentences
Combination of letters, numbers, symbols, punctuation marks
Uncommon combinations of words, riddles, or slogans that are easy to remember but hard to guess for an outsider
Weak passwords
Shorter than 8 characters
Single word or number string
Letters only
Easy-to-guess strings, like “Password”, “Love”, names, birthdays, or anniversaries
In addition, you should have different passwords for each app or website that you use to keep those who gain access to your devices from stealing your information or engaging in fraudulent activity. While it’s hard to remember all your passwords for multiple apps, a good password manager will help you sign into each one without much trouble. If possible, enable two-factor authentication, which requires you to enter both a password and a one-time code that is sent to your email or phone.
Changing your passwords regularly will make it difficult for someone to break into your device and steal your data. Using different uncommon passwords for your apps and accounts will make hacking even harder and will improve your digital security drastically.
You might find Bluetooth useful for such things as transferring files between devices and listening to music with wireless earphones, but it also leaves your devices vulnerable to all sorts of cyber security threats.
If you leave your Bluetooth radio on, anyone with a Bluetooth device can connect to it and hack into your devices. From there, there’s no guessing what they could do. Keep Bluetooth disabled as much as possible when you travel. If you absolutely need to use it, set up a strong password and don’t give it out to others.
You should also protect your mobile hotspot the same way. If at all possible, don’t use it; if you can’t avoid using it, like when you work in a place without a good, secure wi-fi connection, make your password as strong as you can make it.
Free wi-fi access can be very appealing for travellers, especially if data charges in the places they visit are expensive. However, not all EU countries comply with GDPR or have stringent cybersecurity laws, so you can’t be too sure you’ll have the same level of protection that you enjoy in your own country.
Using an unencrypted wi-fi network is probably the worst thing you could do in terms of data security when travel. It will leave your device vulnerable to hacking and open it up to different kinds of security breaches. If you use VPNs to torrent privately or to access business apps, using a public wi-fi network will also expose your VPN to cyber attacks and put your colleagues’ data at risk.
That being said, you should also disable auto-connect on your devices as it will keep them from connecting from unencrypted wi-fi networks that you encounter as you travel. It’s a nice feature if you’re at home or at your regular workplace, but never a good idea when you’re travelling. Always change this setting before you fly out.
Whenever you visit a tourist attraction or attend an event, it’s tempting to share your location. Everybody checks in somewhere, anyway. Even if you don’t mean to share your location, many social media apps attach it when you post an image or video.
However, sharing your location can alert criminals to the fact that you’re not home or in your hotel, which means that you’re leaving your loved ones, personal belongings, or property at risk. Turn this feature off for all your apps and disable your GPS whenever possible.
Whether you’re at a tourist trap or participating in an event, do not disclose your location to anyone except those who really need to know it, like your boss or your family.
Gone are the days when all a computer virus can do is go into your hard drive and play a creepy video while deleting everything in your hard drive. Now, viruses have adapted to mobile technology. They delete your data, mine your computer for sensitive personal information, then move on to the next device.
While not opening email and messages from suspicious senders is one way to avoid viruses, you can still unwittingly infect your devices when you download something or access a public network (another reason you should only connect to a network you trust!). Installing a trusted anti-virus solution will keep your devices and data secure while you travel.
Updating your devices’ operating systems is a time-consuming exercise, but it’s something that you should not put off doing for too long. OS updates usually contain patches that protect your device from security threats, such as gaps in the code that let cyber attackers sneak into your network.
In the same way, you should also update your apps, especially those you use to access personal and financial data. Not updating your apps can result in identity theft, blackmail, and fraud, especially if your apps have existing security gaps.
You should also remove apps that you no longer use and retain only those apps that you use frequently. Aside from making your phone run faster and saving battery life, cleaning up your phone can help you avoid cyber attacks that take advantage of connections opened by unneeded apps.
Mobile technology has evolved to a point where you cannot avoid using it. We are increasingly getting dependent on mobile devices for almost everything we need, from sharing photos with amusing captions to buying travel tickets to completing high-value transactions. Unfortunately, cybersecurity threats have also taken on new forms.
Cyber attacks can hit you any time, especially if you’re travelling in an unfamiliar location. Changing your personal habits and fixing a few settings in your devices will help you stave off these attacks and keep your data and devices safe.
Torchbox has been providing digital services to charities and nonprofits since the year 2000, we offer digital product development, digital marketing services and we’re the founders of an open source CMS called Wagtail, which is used by the likes of the NHS, Oxfam and Mozilla Foundation (to name but a few). And now, as we hurtle towards our 20th birthday, we are delighted to have been included on The Sunday Times 100 Best Small Companies to Work For list 2020.
This list is based on the open and honest feedback from our employees – providing them with a chance to have their say (anonymously) and to highlight areas we can improve on. We’re chuffed to have achieved a 3 star level of accreditation (the highest) which means we have “extraordinary” levels of engagement.
Everyone at Torchbox is driven to work for an organisation that stands for something beyond making money, which helps explain why we have such brilliant people and why they stay.
Olly Willans, Torchbox Founder and Creative Director said:
“Having become an employee-owned company last year – the first digital agency to become a 100% Employee Owned Trust – we’re on a journey to make Torchbox the best place to work that it can possibly be, whether you work remotely or in one of our Oxford, Bristol, and Cambridge offices. We don’t have everything right yet, and this survey provides us with valuable feedback on what is and isn’t working and highlights areas that we can focus on. Next year, we’re determined to do even better.”
When it comes to digital marketing services it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by how many are actually out there. Every digital marketing agency is selling several of them, and there are so many that overlap, seem to duplicate, or use so much jargon it’s impossible to actually tell what on earth they even do.
That’s the last thing we want at OggaDoon – and if you’re tired of going around in circles, just get in touch and get some real answers. After all, there’s nothing more frustrating than speaking to agencies who just want to sell, rather than add value.
The first thing to do is gain some clarity on exactly what digital marketing services are out there, and what all that lingo means. Here’s your short guide to digital marketing services and if you keep scrolling, our hot advice on how to best use them for your business’ advantage.
What are digital marketing services?
Although these can be broken down in a hundred different ways, there are essentially five core digital marketing services out there.
Website design and development
And yes, website design and development are different. A website designer or website design agency will want to sketch out the look and feel of your website, explore your customer journey, and ensure the messaging is absolutely on point. A website developer or website development agency, on the other hand, takes the designs and makes them into reality by using coding or template adjustments.
Sometimes a website design agency also offers development, and a website developer also offers design work. But make sure you ask the question before you get started, or you could find you end up with double the spend.
Social media management
This looks pretty simple: managing your social media. But what does a social media management package actually look like? The full breadth of the service starts with an audit on your social channels, with recommendations on how to improve your profiles, targeting, copy, and visuals. It then delivers content (copy, hashtags, links, images, videos, GIFs, etc) on a weekly or monthly basis, all designed to engage with your audience.
Next, a good digital marketing services for social media will engage with your followers and get involved in debates and trending topics on your behalf, creating monthly analytics with recommendations on further optimisation. It’s a huge task, so make sure you’re getting all of this impact if you’re paying for it.
Content creation
Content creation is an absolutely vital part of the digital marketing services package, because without content, you’ve literally got nothing to say online. ‘Content’ covers copy, web releases, blogs, news articles, images, GIFs, videos, infographics, banners…
If you can read it or see it online, then it’s content, and the best agencies are those creating a wide variety of content types to ensure your audiences never get bored.
SEO and PPC
The more technical end of the digital marketing services spectrum, SEO literally means Search Engine Optimisation: anything and everything you do online to make it easier for Google to push you to the top of search results when people search for your business, your services, or your industry. This can involve ‘backend’ changes to your website, alterations in copy and layout, and technical improvements to site speed, mobile optimisation, and more.
PPC is the twin sibling of SEO, and is essentially the paid for, ‘I can’t wait for my SEO changes to kick in’, version of SEO. You pay Google or another web channel a certain amount for clicks or impressions based on the target aspects you want to rank for.
Digital marketing
The worst culprit under the ‘digital marketing services’ banner, this really depends on the marketing agency that you’re talking to. That’s because it is typically used to cover all the other little bits of digital marketing that don’t naturally fit into one of the above boxes.
In our minds here at OggaDoon, we believe that digital marketing includes newsletters, mailers, pop ups and web forms, online surveys and interaction points, chatbots (with or without AI), webinars and video conferencing, and literally anything else that happens online that connects you to your audiences.
There are many digital marketing services
And not all of them are created equal. The best digital marketing services are those which have been expertly tailored to your company: your brand identity, your business lifecycle stage, your industry, what you’ve tried before – and what worked.
One easy way to find out just what your business needs is to talk to us directly, but if you are looking for more generalised advice, then here are the three things you should definitely be doing, and three things you should definitely not be doing when it comes to digital marketing services:
DO: test
One of the best things about digital marketing services is that you don’t just have to trust your agency that everything will work eventually – digital aspects of marketing have plenty of opportunities to test. Whether you’re A/B testing the use of emojis in tweets, videos on Instagram, different delivery days for newsletters, or different times for pop ups on your home page, there are always opportunities to test and find the best way to accelerate your brand’s growth.
DO: ask about metrics
Numbers, numbers, numbers. Digital marketing services will each have their own metrics and associated KPIs, so do be bold and ask your agency what KPIs they are working towards and how they compare to industry standards. If they don’t know, then perhaps it’s time to talk to another agency who understands the importance of tracking growth and success.
DO: work collaboratively
We want the absolute best results for our clients, and that means we need to work collaboratively. Have a new member of staff joining you? Tell us! We can create a short ‘Welcome to x’ campaign that will deliver insight and attraction to your company for future recruitment, across your website, social (particularly LinkedIn), and job sites. And that’s just for starters.
DON’T: compare prices like for like
There is no such thing as a like for like quote when working with agencies on digital marketing services. You need to take many other factors into account, such as their previous track record, recommendations from others, the metrics they have achieved most recently, what their contract length is, and more.
DON’T: just do what your competitors are doing
Your competitors are the best at doing what they do. Make sure you focus on doing the best at what you do. If your brand doesn’t naturally sit on YouTube, don’t pour time, money, and effort into creating a YouTube channel! If your competitors are killing it with chatbots, don’t just replicate it for your own website and hope it delivers the same results. The best digital marketing services are those curated for you and your audience.
DON’T: give up immediately
It’s easy to hope for instant results with digital marketing services but especially for specific niche audiences, you need to commit to at least 6 months to ensure market penetration. Simply stopping in one direction within days and trying a second doesn’t give you enough time to really test, so you could be missing real opportunities for growth.
Looking for more guidance? Choosing the best digital marketing services for you – and then delivering excellence – is exactly what we do. Get in touch now.
So, you want to know about SEO?
If you get difficult questions about SEO and you know you could do more for your clients but don’t know where to start (or who to trust), this workshop will be perfect for you. Alternatively, if you’re responsible for website SEO and are looking for ways to improve your website then this session is for you.
Jon Payne, Technical Director of Bristol agency – Noisy Little Monkey – will be sharing expert advice, strategies and actionable tips in this Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) workshop, where you’ll discover how to get the best chance of ranking highly in Google and Bing for your own or your clients’ website.
Jon will provide you with theory and show examples so that you can go and get started straight away!
Account planners, strategists, small business owners, or anyone responsible for website performance who is looking for a crash course in beginner’s SEO.
This workshop takes place at 3-5pm on Thursday 13th February at Origin Workspace, Berkeley Square, Bristol.
Tickets are £20 (+VAT) for Bristol Media members and Origin Workspace members, £30 (+VAT) otherwise.
Jon is technical director of Noisy Little Monkey, the digital marketing agency focused on HubSpot. For more than 10 years, Noisy Little Monkey has enabled businesses to generate more leads, drive sustainable growth and unleash anarchic creativity.
The Noisy Little Monkey team work hard to improve the bottom line of their clients through services like: Inbound Marketing, SEO and Social Media Marketing. Jon is a wizard with all things relating to technical SEO and has spoken at events including SMX London and SEMrush webinars. His talks will leave you feeling refreshed, motivated and you’ll (hopefully!) leave with a smile on your face.