DIGITOOLS!
Growthhacking, Slideshare, Hubspot, Google analytics, Worldpress, HotJar, Hootsuite, SEO, SEM, CTR… And the list just goes on and on!
There are so many tools in digital business already and new ones keep coming up every day. Many of them I had never heard of before, some I knew about but most of them I had not used at all. So I was extremely happy when Ilkka gave us a proper session and demonstrated how we could use them in digital business. This was the session I had been waiting for the whole autumn!
Before getting into the online tools I’ve got to share a great picture Ilkka draw us. It’s all about how to get started. This is such a good triangle for not just digital business but for business in general and even for personal life and personal goals. I’ll just let the picture tell the story. I’m sure you get the point.
Hootsuite
Our blog task for this week was to try one of the tools Ilkka presented us on. I chose to start with Hootsuite, since it’s completely new to me. I really liked what I heard about it at lecture. You can post a message to several social media accounts at the same time, which is extremely convenient and saves a lot of time. I’ve been worried about how much time social media and especially being active on social media takes. Tools like Hootsuite make it so much easier. They also had an option where you could set a time for the post, i.e. make it ready and adjust the time for publishing it later on.
I found Hootsuite also very user friendly. They had such a good guide to beginners called Wise Guide. After choosing what you wanted help with, it guided you through the process by showing were to click and explaining what to do. Way too often the instructions are just in written format. The visual demonstration made a huge difference. As it was done “in front of the real page”, it was so much better than just watching a demovideo. 10 points to Hootsuite for this! Even an old fashioned anti-digi person like me found it easy!
There was one downside though. For instance Facebook recognises that the message has been made through another system and not directly on Facebook. Therefore it will not get the same visibility as an original Facebook message. Anyhow I think Hootsuite was a very useful tool, especially for busy entrepreneurs.
Website grader
Next on my list was to try website grader. I read this article Ilkka recommended about the top 25 marketing graders available. It was a definite reality check for me. Many of these were completely new to me. It really got me thinking why haven't I heard of these before? I've been working on many cases where these should have come up during the last 20 years; launching new products, explaining them to marketing people, planing campaigns and making business plans. The cold fact is that when you work in a big company, everybody sticks to their own line of work. That is what has happened to me. Even though I knew about our marketing strategy and the big campaigns, I had no idea how they were executed 'behind the scenes'. So my tip to everybody who is studying now and not yet so deep in the working life:
By working in a start up you will learn so much from every aspect of business. It will pay of in the future!
Now back to marketing graders. I took a deeper look into Website grader we checked briefly at school. This is provided by Hubspot. It was really interesting to see the differences between companies. I got results from 40 to 92. Most useful for me was the detailed information they provided about the results. It was really educational. If I wanted to know more about it, the site redirected me to Hubspot's marketing pages.
SEO
As I'm writing this blog in many ways to myself, I could not end this blogpost without providing a pic of SEO essentials. Again, I picked up thigs that were new to me. For instance I had not thought of the fact that URL structure makes a big difference as well. Also writing answers in the headlines was a great tip I will use in the future.
Thank you Ilkka for the great session on digital tools! This was a big week for me.
Besides from learning about the digital tools we have worked hard on our Talousguru-project. I'm really happy how our team is progressing. It's nice to be on schedule and avoid the last minute panic. On a personal note, I'm super excited about the next week. On Friday I'm off to Amsterdam for a weekend break with my husband. A well deserved break before life gets even busier in December since I go back to work.
