Born and based in the less-Northern parts of Canada, I’ve worked in communications and marketing since I first started university. That led to many sleepless nights balancing essays with client work, which, if nothing else, has probably helped me to develop some resilience to burn-out (and probably coffee, too). Professionally, I prefer roles where I can work closely with teams to align skillsets, foster growth internally, and produce original work that everyone walks away proud of.
Communications is a bit ironic. Being an effective communicator means that you can translate ideas well, however most communications experts would struggle to define what “communications” even means. As a field, it encompasses marketing, journalism, media, information technology, even telecommunications. I think that for most people who work in or study communications, it’s about meaning-making and how we collectively make sense of the constant stream of information we’re bombarded with each day.
Agency Marketing
Being in an agency is something of a badge of honour among marketers. Agencies are fast-paced and scrappy, with high expectations for each individual on the team. You find yourself juggling projects and expectations, clients and deadlines, trying to learn as you go and fly-by-night. I started as a content writer in a smaller agency which more than tripled in size during my three-year tenure. During that time, I was producing in excess of 2000 published words daily for a few dozen businesses across a wide range of industries. I quickly learned the importance of workflow and organization.
Shortly thereafter I started working on marketing plans and strategies for clients, deciding on how to reach their users by leveraging new platforms and tools. I enjoy taking measured approaches to marketing, watching as insights made from data leads to growth for the client’s bottom-line. Search-engine optimization (SEO) became my specialty during this time. I learned from the top competitors and discovered the key to higher rankings on Google Search results (hint: it’s not blackhat tactics).
Now I find myself filling out my repertoire in new and developing areas of digital marketing. I’ve taken to Microsoft’s Azure cloud services and PowerBI analytics framework for large-scale marketing automation. I also continue to provide my marketing services directly through my own company, Copy Comma, specializing in SEO and content creation.
Today, I’m a bit of a geek for productivity tools and personal information management (PIM) systems, which really just means I get a kick out of shaving two minutes off my morning routine, even if it costs me two hours upfront. I’m a firm believer in the power of Emacs with Vim keybindings. It’s been my primary text editor, task manager, and time sink for longer than I care to admit. But it has proven itself invaluable, too, helping me to manage all aspects of my client’s marketing efforts seamlessly. This website was made entirely inside Emacs, just one of its many uses in my day-to-day.
License
The content of this site is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
This site was built with Hugo using the Gruvbox theme by Michael Schnerring. The theme is licensed under MIT.