We’ve had a busy few months here at TopLine. Alongside the day-to-day business of providing terrific client service, we’ve been occupied with general elections, hiring, the production and maintenance of human babies, and the dispiriting end to one of the more tedious Premier League campaigns in living memory.
With all that to occupy our minds, it’s a minor miracle that we got anything else done at all. And yet, for all of Q2 2017, we were hard at work producing relevant, high-quality blog content that showed off our bona fides as a digital PR agency.
April
In the immortal words of T.S. Eliot, “April is the coolest month.” Such an upbeat dude!
Anyway, we kicked off the month with a deep dive into the secrets of B2B lead generation – a mystical, long-lost art form that combines a little science, a little art, and a surprising amount of emotion. You can check it out here.
Then we featured our head of production, Jamie Field, ranting mightily about the worst examples of video production, while offering tips on getting it right. He also offered advice on how to pitch video content.
We also featured a handy explainer focusing on meta data for websites.
May
May was another busy month for content creation – one that encompassed SEO, PR, and video production.
We kicked off with a blog on keyword analysis which delved into the methodology for identifying relevant search terms and allocating them to relevant pages.
We also saw the debut of Tom Farthing’s regular media relations blog. His contempt for newswire services is clear – and backed up by the opinions of pretty much every journalist he surveyed. Read the blog to find out why they’re such a mammoth waste of time.
Meanwhile, Jamie made his triumphant return with a post focusing on the questions you should ask when hiring a video production company – and yes, there’s more to it than ‘How much?’.
The SEO folks were kind enough to close out the month with a blog that highlighted the importance of SEO backlinks, and keeping the penguin happy.
June
The last month of the quarter was also the most productive: we published five posts from the PR, SEO, video, and content teams – belters, every one.
First up, the media relations department wrote up a recent visit from Jessica Twentyman – esteemed technology journalist, editor of Internet of Business, and a frequent contributor to Raconteur, the FT, and the crushed aspirations of feckless PR folk. Her talk related some vital pitching tips drawn from her own experience – faithfully transcribed here.
The SEO team pitched in again with a post that answered the question, what is guest blogging? A wrongly maligned and mistrusted discipline that’s been given a bad name by a few rotten eggs.
Returning to our pet theme of B2B lead generation – hey, it’s important – we highlighted five of the best campaigns in recent memory, including our own. Don’t look at us like that – our efforts helped us grow by 29% and increased profits by 46%!
June also saw the debut blog from the content department, TopLine’s most attractive, intelligent, and beguiling team. Our hunky copywriting beefcakes, who’ve got very nice eyes and have clearly been hitting the gym lately, dug up some brilliant copywriting tips and tricksfrom John Emory Powers – the first professional copywriter, and still, over a hundred years later, one of the very best.
Finally, Jamie closed out the quarter with five tips and tricks for making a corporate video. Whatever you do, don’t let your CEO perform the voiceover. Unless he’s James Earl Jones.
It’s been a busy few months, but the effort was more than worth it. See you again at the end of Q3 – and if you need our digital PR agency or video company skills in the meantime, give us a shout, we’ll be more than happy to oblige.