This interview was provided by Tom Chapman, a publishing specialist at CandidSky.
CandidSky is a digital marketing agency based in Manchester and specialises in such services as SEO, content marketing, and PPC.
How did you get in to Marketing?
Similar to many marketing professionals, I moved into the sector from journalism. I’d worked on local news, freelanced for a while, wrote for a variety of online publications but eventually started falling out of love with the industry.
Furthermore, marketing was less stress, better hours, and better paid. My degree – and my experiences – were quite easy to transfer over and I started off at my first agency as a copywriter.
Over the years, I moved into search engine optimisation (SEO) and ultimately moved into my current role – which largely involves a mixture of content marketing, SEO, and content creation.
What does a typical day in your role look like?
With my role, there is no real ‘typical’ day. Some days, I will be designing a data-led outreach campaign with the intention of getting clients featured in industry press. Other days, I’ll be creating articles and conducting research.
As a publishing specialist, you do a lot of work with other organisations, magazines, and newspapers. This can range from local businesses all the way up to institutions such as the Guardian and BBC.
One thing is for certain though – it’s never boring and there’s always something interesting going on.
What do you love about your role?
This role rewards creativity and that is probably the best part of it. Coming up with a great idea, getting buy-in, and seeing amazing results off the back of that is an amazing feeling.
However, it also helps that I have an amazing team who are all easy to get along with. Never underestimate how important good colleagues are in a job.
What sort of qualities does a person need for this role?
Soft skills are probably the most important thing for this role. For example, part of the job involves media pitching. Consequently, you will sometimes have your pitch declined – occasionally very harshly if the journalist is in a bad mood.
When this happens, being able to pick yourself up and crack on is a valuable trait. Emotional intelligence and people skills are really useful and something which a lot of people surprisingly don’t possess.
As well as this, skills from a writing or journalism background are really useful but, realistically, these can all be picked up on the job.
What advice would you give to someone looking to move towards a role like yours?
In today’s world, almost everyone is a writer – and most people can easily prove their skills at creating content. The real challenge is what you do with it afterwards. It’s a great step forward if you can demonstrate the actions you’ve taken to get your blog/article featured on a variety of publications and the tactics you’ve used to get traction amongst your audience members.
After all, if you consider yourself a writer but no-one is reading your words, then what’s the point?
Not working
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Public relations – or PR – jobs are concerned primarily with building an awareness and interest in a particular company, brand, person or product. There are many different jobs within PR careers but they all contribute to that general theme. Although public relations jobs are closely related to advertising, there is a difference in that those with public relations jobs focus on gaining free media exposure rather than directly paying for it.
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