With 'content marketing' being the phrase of the moment the digital marketing industry is focusing all of it's efforts on creating 'great content' - we tried our hand at this ourselves with our #KierHeroes campaign. The majority of big brands are using this as something to aspire to and the main reason for this may actually be that it's the type of content that wins awards and generates lots of social media comments and likes.

However, the big question is does it actually sell? With all this emphasis on the next exciting campaign idea one of the best ways to differentiate and exploit may actually be what is seen as 'boring content'. The reason no-one discusses this is because brands are ashamed of content which doesn't seem to be exciting and innovative but in many cases it is a neglected resource. At Kier, many of our fellow FTSE 250 companies may well be businesses many people have never heard of but yet they all turn over millions of pounds a year. They certainly aren't known for great content but they clearly have content strategies in place. Below are a few examples of some work which we've done on our 'boring content':

Company values:

At Kier, there has been a big internal push on our values of Enthusiastic, Collaborative and Forward Thinking. There are reward schemes for colleagues who demonstrate these attributes and they are displayed on the walls of all of our offices and sites for us to abide by when carrying out business.

We also have a section outlining these values on our intranet, induction portal and website. The question is does your company have values so important and clear that you'd carve them into the office walls?!

Company locations:

Adding a list of locations to a website is typically one of those steps that just gets done at the end, but if your business has many locations and activities it can be really important that prospective customers know what you do and where.

This is why we continue to maintain and develop our locations map to help show what our 80+ offices do across the UK and internationally. It’s a quick way for our prospects to learn a lot about us.

Company achievements:

The work of some businesses are technical by their very nature and there really is no other way to sell them. By presenting a clear road map if what has been achieved to date and the plans for the future you can demonstrate how what you have learned to date will influence your future strategy.

At Kier, we have done this for our continued Scape Minor Works Framework in the form of some concise statistics. No amount of YouTube videos or Pinterest pages will convince you more than this simple infographic.

Customer care:

Ensuring your customers and stakeholders get a good service is more essential for any brand than before. We have been doing a lot of work to streamline our customer care form to ensure that enquires are directly piped to the relevant departments.

Not only does this ensure much faster response times but it also reduces the amount of manual intervention required in forwarding comments to the correct business contact or in reporting.

Annual report:

This is a requirement for all businesses of our size and potentially could just be produced as part of a box ticking exercise. Shareholders rarely see engaging content that is designed specifically for them.

Given that they either fund the business (shareholders) or are critical to its running (employees) they need content as well. If anything the content created for them should have at least the same effort as that for customers. This is why we have made the effort to present the highlights in a more easily digestible format and not rely on the reader to have to download a weighty PDF document!

Conclusion

It's clear that none of this content is going to win any awards or be heavily shared on social media. It exists to both convert and educate and is important in building a brand story that is not just about the exciting and photogenic parts. Without it there's a real danger that we are presenting an impression of no real substance and that isn't there to aid conversions - Ultimately that's what we ask from every piece of content we create whether it's boring or great.

With a 'to do' list as long as my desk there is the danger that in a bad week I can barely look up from my computer, let alone leave my desk. Obviously this is not a good situation to be in and means I am neither connected with the business nor living a particularly healthy lifestyle.

Being responsible for digital at a company with 24,000 employees means I'll never be able to fully grasp the diversity of every role and department but, having visited over 20 Kier offices and sites, I've definitely been giving it a go in order to understand how the central digital team can best support them.

To continue this trend, the marketing team took some time away from our desks this week to travel to Barnsley to visit our housing maintenance teams. Kier have a five year contract with Barnsley Council to assist all of their council house residents, and maintain their properties, and we were to join them for a ride along. Whilst half the team were off filming two of us then spent the day on a variety of call outs with Gary (plumber) in the morning and Melvyn (electrician) in the afternoon.

Us suited and booted and ready for action

Interestingly, our first chaperone, Gary, was from a coal mining background and told us that after the closing of the pits he found it hard to adjust to the job of a plumber. The difficulty for him was not the practical side of the jobs (he said he was offered adequate training to carry out all of the repair work) but the social aspect. Some council tenants were just happy to have someone to talk to after a week alone in their house but Gary's experience had just been talking to fellow male miners in the pits. He felt where this job had allowed him to progress the most was in his ability to converse with the tenants whom he had been sent to help.

This got me thinking about  the importance of these same skills in a digital context (or any office environment) and how all digital marketing roles could benefit from a culture that emphasises a combination of skills and duties. It also demonstrated that it may not be the skill which you think you need or have that make you successful in a job.

It's clear that the technology landscape has completely changed our ideas of certain company roles meaning many professionals have also had to venture outside their comfort zones as roles shift along with trends. A great example of this is the traditional customer service department. In the past, customer service representatives communicated with customers over the phone, and later on through online reviews. But nowadays, the roles of social media specialists and customer service professionals are pretty blurred.

This trend has forced social media experts to develop some customer relations skills and vice versa. It also creates a need for these two departments to develop some common goals, best practices, and a consistent voice. The combined effect of the daily work carried out by Kier employees in the field (housing maintenance, highways operatives and construction workers) can have a massive effect on how the brand is perceived across the country. We are concentrating a lot of time and effort on effectively governing the brand but one bad customer experience could undo this work in a second.

The machines are taking over

Also, as more job roles become increasingly automated specialised technical skills may not be the way to compete in an increasingly difficult economy - to really get ahead, what a worker needs are the aforementioned social skills. In the future, the jobs that are least likely to be automated are those that demand lots of interaction with co-workers or clients, not just the performance of rote analytical tasks. These jobs also call for the ability to perform innately human exercises—like pondering another person’s point of view. These nuances of human interaction are the one area in which machines are really struggling to compete with us and are where we can really thrive and differentiate.

The lesson for me was also that  having good technical skills is just a tiny part of success in the workplace. The team in Barnsley do an amazing job of completing their work and keeping the residents happy and their acquired social skills are essential for anyone in order to both enhance the reputation of a company and succeed in a career.

Keeping customers happy since 2015

I have always prided myself on fighting the corner of the external customer in any organisation in which I've worked. After all, without our customers we don't have a business! This has led to me previously getting frustrated when the focus of all of our efforts is placed on internally targeted work such as 'unnecessary' analytics reports for executives or in spending our time and money on staff events and giveaways.

However, a big learning curve for me has been to come to realise that our internal clients are really just as important as our external customers - especially when we have the responsibility of delivering digital solutions for over 24,000 staff! It's taken me a while to come around to this way of thinking, and part of that has been my own pride of wanting our work to hit the largest possible audience, but internal CMS etc. users really do need to be kept as happy as our paying customers.

In the past I have been involved in some great user experience testing initiatives to track everything from the response to a new design to the quality of the navigation but with a solely front-end focus. This has been great in allowing us to tailor a website to ensure the maximum number of leads and goals are achieved but what about user testing the back-end?

As we are responsible for selecting and managing our systems (anything from a CMS to an email client, asset library or survey tool) it's important we also involve the internal users of these to develop and utilise them fully.

What is often overlooked is that the in-house marketing team in any organisation is providing a service. Our clients are the wider business who are all reliant on what we provide to them to do their jobs properly. They may have what we deem to be a smaller audience than us, or one which is not as high profile, but it is our responsibility to streamline the tools we have in order for them to deliver on their individual objectives.

This is why I have introduced some internal user testing of our back-end tools at our regular user group meetings. This will really help my central team get to grips with the pain points and objectives of the wider business and tailor our solutions accordingly.

It's also true that many people are still very nervous of digital. They know it's required and that the digital marketing team are clearly professionals, who know their stuff, but that's as far is it goes. By being clam, collected, trustworthy and most importantly available you can be seen as a team not just of builders of digital assets but a resource on who they can rely on to educate them and help them grow. Being approachable is everything alongside making people feel that no question is a stupid question!

None shall enter!

Some internal clients may not want to be particularly hands on but for those who are it's essential they are provided an environment in which to flourish. If the central team is just seem as an agency who locks down all of the systems and builds everything themselves they will just end up with more work than they can deal with and a load of unfulfilled colleagues on the outside of an impenetrable fortress. 'Self service' is important - if only for your own sanity!

We have seen with the recent launch of our 'Marketing Hub' that the wider business is essential in informing us of what they need to deliver - whether it be in winning work through bid documents or supporting the building of working relationships with councils and joint ventures. We can then present a united front, share best practice and pool our efforts.

This also allows us to be recommended as a service who listens throughout the business and stretch our reach further as more people are sent our way to aid in project delivery and strengthen the brand.

With this in mind I am currently attending our annual two-day 'Leadership Conference' in the Cotswolds where I will be talking about the tools we offer to the business. The plan here is to increase the exposure of what we offer and show our commitment in finding the time to pay the same attention to our internal clients as we do the end-user.

The London themed reception desk

This past week has been particularly exhausting as I have been out and about visiting regional Kier offices and external agencies. However, I was definitely most excited about my Friday appointment as I was invited by my Human Resources colleagues to present a Digital Marketing Workshop at LinkedIn's London office. This has only been open for about six months and is definitely designed to impress clients with it's London theme (including an underground room and desks with built in 'Boris bikes' which charge your mobile phone). Needless to say we made the most of the exciting new surroundings!

Using the facilites at lunchtime

As a department our HR team has always been a priority of mine when ensuring the business engages digitally. Job searches are consistently in the top three on our website (as with everywhere I've ever worked) so streamlining the user experience is paramount. I've also noticed a trend of companies recruiting for 'Resourcing Digital Marketing Managers' who are given the responsibility of developing and delivering a significant upgrade to a company's recruitment and digital attraction assets. This goes beyond new customer acquisition as everyone competes for the very best talent available.

Outside of our content marketing strategy for LinkedIn we work hard on delivering a consistent experience for applicants and my training session emphasised the need for both Marketing and HR to work together to give a consistent view of the company which follows through on the promises made in our advertisements. Some of my key themes and tips for the team were:

• The importance of managing online profiles - if you are a recruiter it's essential you look the part online and maximise the opportunities available to you
• Conversely, it's important to understand the person as well as the worker of whoever you are about to interview. I always undertake background checks on potential interviewees, as if someone has seen fit to share something then it there is no reason not to do your homework on them before you meet. It also gives a good understand of how digitally savvy they are before they start
• Create content beyond just job advertisements - as with a customer acquisition campaign it's just as important to ensure that there is the content available to show what a good place your company can be for people to work. Once a candidate clicks the job advert you need relevant landing pages showing all of the benefits/information available to them as we did with our Apprenticeships Week campaign
• Make your job advert pages as good as they can be - these are your product so it's important they are the jewel in the crown of your careers pages
• Listen as well as talk to shape the employee brand - Along with the usual social media channels, websites such as Glassdoor give you a valuable insight into how you are perceived and if all of the work you are doing is paying off
• Be proactive to find 'passive candidates' - Andy, our LinkedIn Account Director, informed us that only 15% of LinkedIn members are actively seeking work. If you want the best candidates then you have to find them as many people would be open to the right job offer coming along
• Use tools to take away the manual process and filter the best fit candidates - Tools such as LinkedIn recruiter are an excellent way to find your next employee of the month. You can filter by location, experience or job type and it even allows you to use an exemplar employee for a search to find someone else just like them!

Anyone for pool?

To present yourselves as the best employer over your competitors you will need a mixture of all of the above as we're not all blessed with the fantastically modern offices of Tech companies (with table tennis tables and free snacks in every corner) such as LinkedIn!

Can you see the family resemblance?!

The way in which history has been recorded and certain individuals remembered (and others forgotten) is a fascinating subject on which the current trend for social media and online publishing will no doubt have a lasting effect. For this 100th post I'll be sharing how I was very excited to discover a few years ago that the Fryer family had a distant relative who was part of one of the most exciting and evocative naval stories of all time - the Mutiny on the Bounty.

Originating from Southampton many of my ancestors are sailors but none more famous than John Fryer who set sail in 1788 as Master of the Bounty. He was unique in that he was the one member of the crew who disagreed with Captain William Bligh's decision to promote Fletcher Christian (later leader of the mutineers) to Acting Lieutenant but then remained loyal to Bligh after he was cast overboard. Bligh's account of the Mutiny vilified Fryer, but Fryer gave fair evidence at Bligh's court-martial. Edward Christian, Fletcher's brother, was assisted by Fryer in publishing a counterweight to Bligh's version.

John Fryer's Narrative

These events showed that it was possible to have two contemporary and contrasting opinions of an event and that the history with which we are presented can never be 100% accurate. At the time both Fryer and Bligh were privileged in that they were men of influence and could see their accounts published. However, as social media has become popular we are now awash with every type of opinion on an individual or event. This will mean either a much more measured take on how events are remembered or a tangled web of thousands of sources to wade through in which to arrive at an accurate account.

Whereas earlier generations only have very small pieces of information about their lives recorded and perhaps only a few photographs with which to be remembered we are now awash with detailed, self published, online diaries listing what people have eaten for dinner, where they have checked in on Facebook and a mass of photos saved on the devices we all carry around in our pockets. This rising generation is the most photographed in history and one statistic estimates that in the past five years, more photos have been taken than all the prior years combined.

There is a lot of content out there!

However how many of these photos are just saved to a hard disk and hidden in a drawer, or uploaded to a social media site that will be gone in 5 years? Where is that longevity that a painting or book had in the past? Without making the effort to print these precious memories they will be confined to existing on an old device in a drawer as digital is cheap and cameras are everywhere. These lost memories prove expensive - not just to us but to future generations.

A big part of my current job at Kier is to increase the reach of our brand online. Essentially I am responsible for actively managing our digital footprint to build the foundations of how the brand is, and will be, perceived. The opposite side of this (the passive digital footprint) where we are mentioned by the public or in which our logo is photographed somewhere, is something we can attempt to control but eventually we are no longer the masters of our own destiny in the way the rich and powerful were in the past.

Mutineers turn Captain Bligh and
18 others (including John Fryer) adrift

In fact, I am currently taking steps to ensure that this blog is not forgotten and have begun to put together a printed version that will hopefully stand the test of time. Not for my own ego but so that the hours I have spent writing it (in total it amounts to a 60,000 word novel!) are not forgotten on an old and defunct SD Card in someone's loft.

Obviously it will never reach the exciting heights of John Fryer's life - I've worked in some colourful places but never any that have shown signs of a full scale mutiny!

Due September 2016!

In this last week I've been sharing the big news that my wife and I are expecting our fourth child. Of course, this is a really big deal to us and another exciting development in our ever growing family. I always think of myself as a Husband/Father first and a Digital Marketer second but recently I've come to feel that the skills acquired by the former can actually enhance the latter.

When I first became a father, nearly seven years ago, I was terrified of the pressure of being the chief bread winner trying to keep up with a fast paced industry on less than four hours sleep a night. How was I to ensure I left work on time everyday to enjoy family meals or that I switched off from work at the weekends to make the most of my time with my daughter?

I'm not going to pretend there aren't daily challenges, but below are a few areas in which I feel this increased domestic responsibility can actually make you better at your job:

Time management

Turning up either in the office or at meetings on time is essential to show respect to your colleagues. As a parent it's just as crucial as a delayed meal/bedtime can have disastrous ramifications! Becoming a parent makes you a master at planning ahead - my wife is the queen of this and every morning we come downstairs to a laid breakfast table and a row of packed lunches prepared the night before!

Knowing that you have a finite number of hours to get things done really helps you focus on delivery.  Rather than spending days in meetings, or over complicating presentations, parenthood teaches you to focus on projects that have clear end results.

Compassion

In marketing, you encounter lots of different (and often strong) personality types. Raising children can make you much more attuned to the emotions, motivations, and personalities of others – including the people who work with and for you.

Thicker skin

The daily struggle continues!

Getting approval for a piece of work, or even achieving buy in for a big digital project, can be an uphill struggle. In the world of parenting, you quickly learn that your child's rejection of your cooking is not personal. When they scream at you for telling them it's bedtime or tell you they don't like you for confiscating a toy, you know it's because you are actually doing something right. In both marketing and parenting, having a thick skin and a sense of humor can help you keep your blood pressure down and things in perspective.

Working as a team

One of the first decisions my wife and I made on becoming parents was that we would present a untied front. Even if one of us disagreed with the other's methods we'd wait until the children were out of ear shot to discuss it. Children are very perceptive and any sign of weakness or inconsistency would mean a big chink in our armour to exploit! The same is true at work where if you function as a team you are much stronger when any difficult scenarios come your way. Any infighting or back biting between managers will definitely weaken your department.

Staying positive

Children all suffer from repeated mood swings and some people in the office are not that different. However, if you can ensure you remain in a good mood (despite the sleep deprivation) and behave in a consistent manner it has a similar effect on co-workers and makes you more approachable. Then your children/colleagues will take you much more seriously when you really do put your foot down!

Patience

Patience is a virtue!

There are very few skills more valuable or more challenging to learn than patience. But when there are children who can’t wait one minute, let alone five, the happiness of the household depends on both mine and my wife's abilities to keep our cool. Parenthood has a way of putting things into perspective and often results in a workforce that is less argumentative and more focused on a positive end result.

Strengths and weaknesses 

I am amazed at how my three current children are all so different despite having the same upbringing and genes. One is clearly gifted at maths (I have no idea where that comes from!) and another is already showing signs of some sporting prowess (again... no idea!) They also have their own unique strengths and weakness, as do we all. Recognising this in the workplace is very important in order to have a healthy dynamic and when managing projects.

Staying relevant

In digital marketing keeping up to date with the latest technology is paramount. This is something which I have previously written about and I maintain that by having children it gives you that extra impetus to stay in touch to ensure they don't fall foul of the every changing social media and internet landscape.

Sugar

Whilst sugar is getting a lot of bad press at the moment there really is nothing like a full stomach to transform people in to a much more agreeable mood! Having taken homemade cakes into the office on a number of occasions there is no doubt it made for a much better atmosphere. The smiles on our children's faces on presenting them with this year's Easter eggs was a thing to behold!

Of course, it is not necessary to be a parent to have this type of perspective on life and work, but for me it has helped immensely. I also am far from perfect and feel I fail daily both at work and as a parent which are constant learning experiences of trial and error. However, the more policies that company CEOs can enact to motivate us parents to remain valued members of the workforce, the better they’ll all fare in the end.

For this blog post I thought I'd take it back to basics and look at the role of digital marketing in various types of organisations to address the much publicised 'digital skills gap'. Working in a rapidly growing FTSE250 construction company has definitely proved to me that the economy is continuing to grow, but it seems that schools and training budgets are not keeping apace with the increasing focus on employees digital skills. In marketing, skills such as user experience, social media and analytics are now an increasing requirement in every job spec.

Digital talent is definitely in short supply as I have witnessed first hand. From my background of working in schools I would frequently see the IT teachers being outclassed by their pupils - my theory on this was that anyone who was particularly gifted in this area would go on to work in industry IT departments where they could make much better money with much reduced stress levels!

Things are changing slowly, but you can count on one hand the companies really addressing this issue and they're usually the big players such as the IDM, Google, or the BBC with their high profile 'Make it Digital' campaign.

Coding academies are also sprouting up in abundance and whilst I would support my children getting involved in this (I can't deny the Kano or Raspberry Pi look great fun) it's important to remember that not everyone needs to learn to code a great new app but instead to understand the fundamentals of how code works, where to find it, and how to go about finding out how things are made or work with code. The key focus is digital literacy rather than digital skills.

Happy memories!

I remember spending hours with my Amiga BASIC book in my early teens copying out code to make my screen change colour on different key presses! Whilst it didn't teach me how to code outright, it was a very useful grounding of the principals and processes of how things work. This is how I feel the best digital professionals can excel - by being as autodidactic as possible in order to stay up to date with the latest innovations and principles.

I've also seen that the best digital professionals are often found at either technology focused companies (e.g. Amazon) or those who are the most open minded and unafraid to take risks (e.g. Innocent). By seeking out roles in these types of companies individuals can quickly make their mark and also have fun experimenting and pushing the envelope.

Our new Twitter account is going
from strength to strength

For my part, and whilst the above scenario does sound appealing, I get a lot of my job satisfaction from seeing previously tech-shy colleagues pick up and run with something to which they were either previously resistant or had no realisation of the benefits. A key part of my role is extolling the virtues of a digital business to gain market share on our competitors. The launch of our recent dedicated Construction Twitter account is a good example of this as other colleagues are now beginning to request something similar for their division! Selling in digital to a big company can be a lot of work but the hard won results can be much more rewarding.

Essentially, there's a need for transformation in training and culture in a large majority of companies. With the emphasis on the importance of digital from senior leaders there still remains a lack of focus and investment on developing the digital skills and talent. Training and development programs have been ineffective or insufficient and there needs to be fundamental change to organisational structures to make this a reality.

Keeping on the employability theme, this week marks the beginning of National Apprenticeships Week and we have been hard at work on an external campaign to really shout about what we do in this arena. This all centres around a Blog containing interviews with 18 apprentices and their experiences of working for Kier. We've also managed to get out and film some of them in their roles allowing me to dust off my video editing skills!

This is a big step forward for us and I've been working closely with the PR team to ensure we maximise any press coverage and have a robust social media plan for the week. With ambitious staff recruitment targets anything we can do as an employer to both attract and support the best possible colleagues is very important.  We may even get some young blood trying to give me a run for my money on the digital skills front!