Work In PRogress – Issue Ten – Abigail Emily Bennetts

Hi there,

Welcome to issue number 10 of Work in PRogress!

I’ve found myself feeling a little bit overwhelmed with SEO Twitter and ~content~ these past few weeks, and even I’ll admit, a little bit uninspired with this newsletter.

One of the things I love about working in this industry, is that I’m constantly consuming and learning new things – and not just from my own mistakes and trial and error. I take a small chunk of inspiration from every single person working in the industry who shares a top tip or a campaign on Twitter, or from anyone who’s taken to a (virtual or real) stage, blog post or podcast to share their insights.

The whole reason behind creating this newsletter was because I loved receiving round-ups of campaigns and insights, and wanted to help curate and provide inspiration for others in the industry. I feel very lucky that I’m working in a job that I’m so passionate about.

Having said this though, I forget sometimes that my job is literally to come up with creative ideas and consume content. So it’s okay to have a ‘dry spell’ of inspiration, to take a lil bit of time to recharge and just switch off from it all for a weekend (or two).

It’s one of the things we discuss in my chat this week with Shaun Hill, Head of Content at iProspect: that our best ideas come when we’re feeling relaxed and happy. And it’s true! For me, my best ideas often come right before bed, normally after I’ve watched something mindless on TV with my boyfriend. Not when I’m bogged down in other people’s campaigns or passive aggressive SEO ‘debates’ on Twitter.

So I suppose what I’m saying (and more importantly, reminding myself) this week, is that this industry, love it as I do, can feel so bloody small and all-consuming sometimes, and so it’s healthy to take a step back every once in a while.

Thank you so much to each and every one of you that has signed up to, and continues to read these witterings over the past four and a half months, and as ever please do continue to send me your campaigns, events and feedback.

Happy Tuesday!

📩abigailebennetts@gmail.com 📩

Abi x

Issue #10 – Fave PR Campaigns

My fave PR campaigns from the last two weeks…

God I love The Pudding. The geniuses over at the visual essay site have recently released a piece called ‘Winning The Internet’, which is a data-driven newsletter of links in other newsletter (which I’m now linking to in my newsletter).
Smelly campaigns always deliver, and this one is no exception. Lifestyle Packaging made an FOI request to look at smell complaints for every county in the UK since 2015, to see where the smelliest places in the UK are.
I absolutely love Mona Chalabi’s work and thought one of her most recent data vis pieces on wearing face masks during the pandemic was particularly important to highlight. View (and follow!) here.
I don’t know about you lot but I’ve been having some particularly vivid and freaky dreams in lockdown, and so I loved finding this project called the Shape of Dreams, which visualises the subject of dreams, indicated as rising related queries on Google Trends. Admire and get lost in it here.
Finally, I was gushing over the visuals in this infographic which I stumbled across on Visual Capitalist, and looks at the history of the world’s deadliest pandemics.

Develop your skills..

Learn something new and discover useful resources this Tuesday morn with my fave tips, tricks and informative articles from the last fortnight:

To kick things off this week, this article by Amanda Milligan about how to use topic longevity to optimise your content calendar was really well-written, and really got me thinking about how we can use more strategy in our ideation for clients.
I also loved this article by Damian Summers who shares his top tips for what to do when you come up with an idea that’s already been done. Super topical as this has been happening A LOT recently, and probably the most iconic title for a blog post ever: REVEALED: New Study Shows Your Idea Has Probably Been Done Before.
This next top tip by Iain Ross kind of relates to what I was rambling on about in my intro this week, and so I absolutely loved this thread about protecting your mental health when working in an industry that’s always on.
My good friend Aliyah Loughlan shared an absolute stellar tip on Twitter the other week about heading to answerthepublic.com before starting ideation or writing content for a client.
Finally, I really enjoyed this article by Stephen Spiewak about how to use internal data to tell stories.

Must-attend events…

Fantastic events to virtually attend over the next couple of weeks include…

For a day of all things SEO, Content and PR, Paid Media and Personal Branding, don’t mis Sheffield DM, taking place on Thursday 6th August. Sign up here.
Little biased here but you would be crazy to miss the Digital PR Summit (Online) – a FREE half-day virtual event that brings together some of the brightest minds in digital PR to share tips, tricks and insights – plus John Mueller from Google will be doing a Q&A on link-building! Register for your space here.

If you organise (or know of) an amazing digital PR, SEO, or digital marketing event please do submit the details of the event below (it’s hard to keep up with every event that’s going on each week!), and I will share these events with subscribers each issue.

Submit your SEO, digital PR or marketing events here

This issue’s Work in PRogress – Shaun Hill

This week’s Work in PRogress is the hugely talented Shaun Hill, Head of Content at iProspect. Read the full interview with Shaun on my blog, linked below.

Read more