Hi readers, Welcome back to one of my weekly updates! A few hours ago I met the whole team like every Friday afternoon, but this time it was not like the usual team meetings. Deepak decided to take some time to do a live training session and explain a few things about
and more. He started by giving a few examples of how things could be improved and then ended up continuing the training for the whole meeting. We all found it very useful and we were pretty impressed by how much learning we could do in one hour. Earlier this week, I actually had a 1-to-1 call with Deepak on the same topics. I was struggling getting the results I wanted with the lead generation campaigns I am running for Pearl Lemon Academy and Deepak’s insight was very helpful! A few precious tips I would like to share with you are:
There are way more things I could mention but these are among my favourite ones.
Let’s be honest: this is not only for people working in Sales. We all do sales in our life, even out of our professional career. In fact, this is translated into ‘effective communication’ which is key to all relationships with other people. Long story short, I have decided to invest more time and energy on this because I am sure I will see a lot of value from my efforts! As today’s call seemed beneficial to so many people, Deepak decided to implement this as a new way of sharing knowledge. It’s another step ahead!
In terms of tasks I carried out this week, I can say I supported the team as a project coordinator, especially because several people were on trial and we gave them varied tasks to let them explore different areas.
At Pearl Lemon Academy, I’m expecting great things now that I’ve started optimising my outreach strategy. At the moment, I’m running a few lead generation campaigns and we’re about to relaunch two cold email campaigns. The goal is to get in contact with as many people as possible no matter what their interest in our business academy is. We’re looking forward to speaking both with potential customers and collaborators. So far I reached out to accomplished writers, as well as beginners, and I’m starting to speak with MBA students and interns working in different fields. While developing ideas for our online school, we realised our offer can be wider and not only address writers. Anyone who wants to learn about digital marketing and business development can learn from Pearl Lemon’s strengths!
A lot of time was spent on updating and improving content for the landing page we will build soon. I can’t wait to see it live!
On another note, I’m looking forward to enjoying my weekend and going for more walks in nature! This week I spent too much time sitting and especially in front of screens!
Until next week! Ciao, Federica
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Gonna be honest with you. This past week has been pretty… boring. After travelling home recently to Albany in upstate New York (as mentioned in my previous update), I’ve been quarantining in my house to be safe since I am coming from Philadelphia- which is a pretty populated city. I literally have only left my house to run. Other than that I’ve been stuck inside. But that has given me plenty of time to work on Pearl Lemon stuff!! The two big things I worked on this week was a review of We-Connect and finishing up content writer training. We-Connect is a LinkedIn automation tool for outreach, and I did a 2,000 word written review of it. I’d honestly highly recommend it! It was really easy to use and if you spend a lot of time conducting outreach on LinkedIn, it will speed up your processes immensely. After the written review, I did a video review We-Connect for the LinkedIn review series I’m doing. I’m getting much more efficient in recording those. I’ve created a couple of shortcuts, and I am also getting a handle on the style. And my intro only took one take this time! The other thing I’ve been working on is content writing training videos. These videos are so new writers have one place with explanations of everything they might do as a writer for Pearl Lemon. I think these will be really helpful because a lot of us current writers have had to learn how to do certain assignments on the fly, and these videos will hopefully save some of the confusion we’ve had. I recorded videos about internal blogs, client posts and guest posts, explaining:
Pretty much everything I could think of. The other writers- Rachael, Meghan, Heather, Harry and Tannishtha- are also helping me out by recording videos on:
I’ve been working on this project for a while, so I’m glad it’s finally coming together and I’m praying that it will be beneficial for future writers, even after my time at Pearl Lemon! Now, in these blogs, we’re also supposed to mention something we’ve learned during the week. And this week, I learned something crazy: what a fortnight is. And I’m not talking about the popular first-person shooter Hunger Games-style video game (which is spelled Fortnite). No, I’m talking about the unit of time. A fortnight means 14 days. I also learned that British people still use this expression and it wasn’t retired in Midevil times. I discovered the definition of a fortnight because Harry put together a bi-weekly meeting of just the writers and called it a Fortnightly meeting. After spending the first few minutes of our first annual writer’s meeting discussing the term fortnight and being enlightened on its meaning, the meeting was really fun and quite useful. It was cool being able to talk more in-depth on writing specific things that we don’t get a chance to during our full team meetings. Also, we got to air some grievances to people who understand the trials and tribulations a writer goes through over the course of a week. So that was my week! In this coming week, I am looking forward to having a fresh start! What I mean is that I actually finished some major tasks with nothing lingering into the coming week. So Monday, I will be able to start on some new ones, like:
I am also looking forward to leaving my house finally! (In a proper socially distant manner of course) Stay safe everyone! The post Weekly Intern Update 16- Noah (Content Writer) appeared first on Pearl Lemon Internship Blog. Via https://internship.pearllemongroup.com/weekly-intern-update-16-noah-content-writer/ Meet the team is back! She is our HR Success manager and it was super fun talking to her. So go check it out if you want to learn more about Federica! You can watch it here on the Pearl Lemon Academy YouTube page. For a quick preview, you will get to hear about how she learned four languages (and how I failed to learn Spanish). In other video news, I recorded two more LinkedIn lead generation videos, one for LeadFuze and one for Phantom Buster. Had some technical difficulties at times but I fought through them. I actually tried to record one about Aeroleads as well, but the tool ended up failing halfway through (I obviously don’t recommend it). As for writing, I finished a review on CRM Tools. I know what you’re thinking, I’ve been doing a lot of tool reviews. It’s been fun though! It’s a different style of writing and it’s been interesting trying to get it down. I’ve essentially combined technical descriptions with my past movie review writing experience along with a lot of different adjectives. The CRM one was a little tougher than the LinkedIn reviews though. CRM tools are all so similar, and I was writing a “Top 10 list,” so I had to find ways to describe what were essentially the same products in different ways. I think I managed to do it though! In other news, I have moved back home to upstate New York for the winter. I wanted to stay in Philadelphia a bit longer, but Covid was starting to rise in the city again, so I decided it was best to come home for the time being (after testing negative of course). But the good news for you guys is, more dog pictures! I missed Charlie a ton and was SO happy to see him! And my family of course. Can’t forget them. The post Weekly Intern Update 15- Noah (Content Writer) appeared first on Pearl Lemon Internship Blog. Via https://internship.pearllemongroup.com/weekly-intern-uptade-15-noah/ So I’m sure you’re wondering how the LinkedIn lead generation videos went and… they actually turned out pretty decent! Here is a screenshot of me in action: But I’ll let you judge for yourself. Here is my review of LinkedIn Sales Navigator. And here is my review of Crystal. There is also an accompanying written review of each over on the Pearl Lemon Leads blog: This week I’ve also been working on re-purposing that old In-house SEO guide I wrote awhile back, turning it into a Beginner’s Guide to SEO. See! I told you it would come back! Just had to be a little patient with it. That seems to be my thing though. Work on a not so great first draft, put it aside for a month, and then turn it into something readable. But hey, that’s writing sometimes. I’m just glad it isn’t going to waste! The opportunity came up when Sam, our new social media manager, told me we had a lot of people asking on LinkedIn if we had a Beginner’s guide for SEO. I told her we didn’t yet but that I had just the things and BAM! A week later we have one. I’m actually about to send it into the SEO and content team right… now! I can’t wait to get that bad boy up. Now with this guide, in addition to some of the other content I have written, I feel like I have some quality work published. Nothing insane, but solid stuff. I also think I have gotten a grasp on how to write for the internet in terms of style and formatting, and I have a better understanding of topics like SEO and lead generation. But now, I want to get better at writing blogs with more SEO tactics in mind. Because I typically just start writing, with no real list of keywords or plan for implantation. Part of that is the stubborn creative writing major aspect of me, causing me to focus more on the writing than SEO. So I think I need to do more:
That’s kind of my long term goal. My goal this week is to simply learn more about SEO and how to do all of the above, so I can eventually start doing it for real. I’ve started by watching a consultation call Dee had with Craig Campbell, a well-recognized SEO expert. Then I’m going to go through Dee’s other training and do a lot of Googling. It’s probably well overdue, but better late than never. Wish me luck! The post Weekly Intern Update 14- Noah (Content Writer) appeared first on Pearl Lemon Internship Blog. Via https://internship.pearllemongroup.com/weekly-intern-update-14-noah-content-writer/ I have been with Pearl Lemon for 3 months now, meaning my internship is officially half over It’s going by so fast I almost can’t believe it! It seems like just yesterday I was recording my loom application video in Boulder and sending it off to Federica and Lydia. And now, three months later, I’m a changed man… Ok, that was a little dramatic, but in all seriousness, my life has changed dramatically since joining this company. I’ve learned so much in this short time, and that has opened up a world of opportunities for me. I can’t wait to see what I learn over the next three months! As for this past week, I finally finished my podcast lead gen guide. It only took one month of writing then another month of re-writing, but it’s done! I’m really happy with the way it turned out, and if you want to check it out, here it is. The rest of this week consisted of most of my usual tasks, like managing trial writers, editing content and giving feedback. Next week though I get to try something brand new: recording videos reviewing LinkedIn lead generation tools! I haven’t done video content creation yet for Pearl Lemon (I’ve done a couple of podcasts, but those were more audio-focused). I love making videos, so I think it’s going to be a lot of fun! The idea is to show viewers exactly what it is like to use the tool, demonstrating:
To do this, I am going to make them pretty spontaneous. I’ll simply sign up for a tool, then hit record and start messing around with it. “But Noah, shouldn’t you do some prep beforehand?” No, and I’m glad you asked. If I do too much prep and plan the video too much, it might seem like I have an agenda, only showing certain parts of the tool to either steer the viewer towards or away from using the tool. Instead, I want viewers to be able to make educated decisions on whether or not the tool will be useful for them, and I feel like recording my first time using the tool will create a more authentic experience. That way, the audience will know:
So be sure to check back next week to see how it went! And here is to another great three months!
The post Weekly Intern Update 13- Noah (Content Writer) appeared first on Pearl Lemon Internship Blog. Via https://internship.pearllemongroup.com/weekly-intern-update-13-noah-content-writer/ I thought I blew it. I really did. A few weeks ago, Dee got me a guest post with Wishpond, a marketing company with a pretty solid blog. I was excited for it, as this was a great opportunity to get my name out there on other sites, as well as get Pearl Lemon a quality backlink. I pitched some topics and got one approved: 8 Ways To Generate Leads Through Podcast Appearances. And off I went. I spent a week:
After I had a finished piece in front of me, I went over the guest post guidelines Wishpond sent me several times, then thoroughly checked my blog post to make sure I did everything they asked of me. I did this because I could tell in their email that these guidelines are important to them and they didn’t like it when they weren’t followed. I didn’t want a stupid mistake to be the reason they don’t publish my piece. Then, once I felt that my blog post was refined and finished, I sent it in. The next day, I got a response from Wishpond. It was a single sentence, telling me my takeaways weren’t detailed enough, and that I didn’t give them edit access. EDIT ACCESS! What a rookie mistake! It said it right in the guidelines: to send in a google doc with edit access. “No,” I thought. “No no no how could I forget?!” I could tell they weren’t happy. Not only did they not like my blog, but I didn’t follow a simple direction However, hope remained. In the email, they said they would give me more feedback once they get edit access. I immediately opened Google drive and turned on edit access to “anyone with the link can edit” before responding in an email informing Wishpond that I did so. Then I waited. And I waited… and waited and waited. But six days later, no response. So I figured, I’ll take one last shot. It can’t hurt, right? I spent an entire day earlier this week editing the post, going through each section to make them more actionable and detailed. Afterwards, I re-sent it into Wishpond and hoped for the best. And… They loved it! I can’t tell you how relieved I was. But they noticed the improvement and now it’s up! Go check it out over on WishPond! Now, with any great story, there is always a lesson or two. And for this story, they are:
The other main thing that I worked on this week was a blog for Resume Cats. Resume Cats is a resume building tool we recently launched, and we’re trying to build up a blog for it to help with its SEO and lead generation. I’m glad I am getting to help with Resume Cats because I feel like this tool is going to be so useful to people, and it is cool to get experience helping a new tool/business start out. Writing this blog post was also super helpful to me because in doing research on how to write a resume, I’ve come to realize that my old resumes were TERRIBLE! Oh my god, I have no idea how I’ve ever gotten an interview! Luckily now though I know how to write the perfect resume. And you can too! Go over to Resume Cats to read my blog and learn how to write a resume just like me! Or you can use the tool! It’ll help you write a resume faster than a cat can catch a mouse. Plus you can be among the first people to use it! That way, once it takes off, you can say you were an OG Resume Cat, and that you were there from day one before it was cool. Those took up a majority of my week. Some other tasks I did were:
As for next week, I’m honestly not sure what I’ll be doing. There will be some of the usual tasks, like guest posts and Quora and what not. But no week at Pearl Lemon is exactly the same and I’m sure there will be something new for me to do. Usually, I have some idea of what’s to come, but this week though I have no clue. I guess you’ll just have to come back next week to find out. The post Weekly Intern Update 12- Noah (Content Writer) appeared first on Pearl Lemon Internship Blog. Via https://internship.pearllemongroup.com/weekly-intern-update-12-noah-content-writer/ I will hold you all in suspense no longer… I GOT THE HUBSPOT BLOG APPROVED! Yes, Hubspot actually agreed to publish my article! I was honestly in shock when it got accepted. At the least, I thought I was going to have to edit my draft, but they took it! It gets published officially on October 26th, and I’ll be sure to link to it so you can read it. I know, it’s going to be hard to wait, but it will be worth it. Patience truly is a virtue. Ok, now it’s time for your favorite regular segment: the podcast update. So for the meantime am I going to be putting the Founders podcast on hold. Sad, I know, but the good news is I will be doing a different podcast! This one is called Pearl Lemon Meet The Team. Each episode I will be interviewing a different member of this fantastic Pearl Lemon team to give people an idea of what working at Pearl Lemon is like and to get to know us as people. Because at Pearl Lemon, we’re not just cogs in a machine. We’re people. (That’s the tagline I’m working with right now). I’m excited about this because it will give me some more practice interviewing in a lower pressure situation with people I already know. I recently did a test run/potential first episode with Rachael. If you remember, I already did one with her a few weeks ago. I picked her because she has been hosting the Plant Sumo podcast (which you should really check out!), so I figured she could maybe give me some pointers. It went swimmingly, though, and it was super fun. Can’t wait to start interviewing everyone else. And who knows, maybe I’ll be interviewing you soon! Also this week I wrote FOUR answers on Quora. Yes, I DOUBLED my productivity even more than last week. And the best part is, I’m going to write ANOTHER one tonight, bringing my total FIVE. Am I overusing caps in this paragraph? PROBABLY BUT WHO CARES? The last major thing I’ve been doing is working on my podcast lead generation guide. I wrote it about a month ago, and now I am going back and editing it. I’m glad I took some time away with it, because I think fresh eyes are helping me notice mistakes I missed when I was so enveloped in it. I mean, it was good before. The foundation was there, but now I’m going back and refining it, putting up siding, slapping a roof on it, making windows or something. This metaphor is kind of falling apart, but you get what I mean. I’m hoping this week I can make a lot more progress on it. I’m also probably going to be doing some more:
Yes, I got quite the week ahead of me. It’s getting late, so I should probably rest up so I can get after it! Peace out homies. The post Weekly Intern Update 11- Noah (Content Writer) appeared first on Pearl Lemon Internship Blog. Via https://internship.pearllemongroup.com/weekly-intern-update-11-noah-content-writer/ Heather here
It’s been a pretty productive week, overall. Naturally, this meant I had to sabotage my winning streak somehow (can’t go scoring yourself an 8 for productivity in the team meeting and think you can just get away with it, after all)! So despite my misgivings about the idea of a ‘fun, family outing’ to the local Christmas Tree farm, we went. Me, my husband and the eight year old bundle of whininess. “Oh, I’m sure he’s lovely!” I hear you say, watching my blonde-haired cherub frolic amongst the non-drop Nordic pines. I’ll have you know that rosy-cheeked wunderkind spent the morning sobbing that I was a ‘fun-sucker’ because I asked him to wear jeans instead of PJs to the farm. Yet, somehow, we got the tree (without ‘accidentally’ shoving each other into the netting machine), got it home and put it up. All the Christmas feels are on full-blast, and I’m feeling all warm and wistful. Other than that, today was pretty much a write-off. Be that as it may, the week was not without its gains! Let me walk you through it (just step over the baubles. I’m not done with them just yet). Template-Building
“Wait, what?” I hear you ask, “What happened to PR? She always starts with PR!” Here’s the thing: writing templates for email campaigns is a major part of my PR work. We normally do a 3-step sequence to increase the chances of a reply. This week I actually stopped to examine how effective this is. The answer is: very! Paying attention to responses I received from campaigns on the third outgoing email, I noticed this strategy had a fairly strong success rate. In fact, as per instructions from Deepak, we’re upping a lot of outgoing campaigns from 3 to 7 steps! We were also all treated to an impromptu tutorial by Deepak (the email king himself) at our Friday team meeting on how to write winning outreach templates. Hearing his explanations for why and how certain language, grammar and tone is used in marketing was fascinating. It also made a lot of sense – and made me cringe when I realised I was guilty of many of the faux pas he mentioned! Luckily, it turns out I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. As of next week, Deepak is generously donating a chunk out of his manic schedule to coach us on all things sales! When I started out with Pearl Lemon as a Content Writer, I can honestly say that Sales would’ve ranked pretty low on my list of interests. 12 weeks on, however, I’m realising Sales strategies play a role in pretty much every aspect of what we do! Right, onto PR…
PR
The momentum has been on the upswing this week. We’re continuing to explore new link building strategies, expanding our outreach, and consolidating network connections. Resume Cats has had a hugely successful Pitchground launch. Rachael whipped up an amazing guest post for PlantSumo that will feature on Zapier, and Serpwizz will be hosting interviews with industry experts in the very near future! Harry and I have also been pitching HARO for all three of these projects. Watch this space – the mentions are on their way! Client-wise, it’s been a productive week as well. We’ve lined up three interviews for Dr Watson, and the first one is pretty much ready to send off. We also saw our first mention for Astteria go live. Additionally, we’ve been exploring possible methods for traditional PR services. This new challenge is proving intriguing and multi-faceted. Also, it’s fun! Favour joined our PR team this week as well. She’s been a great asset already and thanks to her, we were able to get an expert round-up as well as our Pearl Lemon Placement blog post finalized. I can’t wait to get her involved in other projects. It’s going to be epic!
Highlights:Last week, I mentioned wanting to work on adding items to my Trello the minute they crop up. This week, I actually managed to achieve this (more or less)! As a result of having even the quickest of wins in writing, I was able to stay focused and optimize my productivity. It’s the first week in a long time when my ‘Done’ list was just about longer than my ‘To-Do’ list *does happy dance*.
Challenges:Turns out I need to learn more about the specifics of B2B marketing vs lead generation (accidentally confused the topics and have now rendered a lot of useful quotes redundant)! Still, I now have a list of solid titles for expert round-ups courtesy of the ever-patient Deepak. So, I guess that’s a plus! I am now going to force my husband and son to listen to Josh Groban’s Noel for the forty-eighth time, stuff some mince pies in my face and admire my Christmas tree! How many sleeps till Christmas? The post Weekly Placement Update 12 – Heather (Head of PR/Content Writer) appeared first on Pearl Lemon Internship Blog. Via https://internship.pearllemongroup.com/weekly-placement-update-12-heather-head-of-pr-content-writer/ Monday started out terribly. There’s been construction happening on the block and I woke up with no power. I ran out of data on my phone too because of how terrible wifi was so I couldn’t access any work. They said it would take a few hours to fix but it wasn’t fixed until the afternoon. I finally got to work around 3:30 PM totally stressed and overwhelmed. The wifi was still shit, I couldn’t even get through any of the videos people asked me to review to complete tasks. All I was able to do really was get through lead gen campaigns and upload last week’s blog which was super frustrating. Because of all these issues arising I feel like I’m falling behind with work and I’m afraid I’m being seen as a slacker or lazy, which I promise I’m not, just a bit of a rough patch. The flatmate workouts are still going and we added in a 30min Zumba session which was honestly quite fun I must say, it’s helping me clear my mind and feel refreshed which is needed during this lockdown. On Tuesday the router was installed and the wifi was much better thankfully. Had a busy day spending the majority of it working on lead gen and assisting with new campaigns. Last week I took up these new tasks which I still haven’t managed to get to which I feel bad about but I contacted everyone letting them know what’s going on and thankfully they’re all super understanding of it all. I beat myself up a bit too much about all my work going on. Went on a mini walk along with the workout hoping it would clear my mind which it did thankfully. I just need to take it easy and one step at a time. Wednesday I spent the day working on lead gen more. A fellow intern is taking over the internal campaigns I’ve been running these last few weeks so besides organising and updating all the campaigns I compiled a bunch of information for her about the campaigns and how/where to get started with lead gen. After this week hopefully I’ll be able to focus on content writing more. I don’t mind running these other two internal campaigns temporarily, but hopefully, soon I can turn to the public relations and content writing tasks I was given last week. I had the usual workout with my flatmates and then we went on a midnight walk which was honestly great. Had no idea where we were going, we just walked around for a little over an hour which felt great. I was out of the office on Thursday dealing with some personal appointments during the day and then my flatmates and I had a little thanksgiving dinner as two out of five of us are American. It was nice and cosy filled with laughter and great food. Not the same as being at home with my family, but it was still nice to do, reminding us of home. I was bombarded with messages and emails from work on Friday, it took ages to get through everything but I finally managed to. I ended up skipping the team meeting to continue working. I got a lot done, feeling super productive which felt nice. We had the flatmate workout which felt good again, it was quite fun and then one made me go outside and do sprints with her and run around the block. Ya girl does not run, didn’t enjoy that at all. Had a nice healthy salad for dinner before stuffing my face with cheesecake and pie after…oops ha! Totally worth it and deserving though after a long hard week of work. Work didn’t stop here though either. Did some on Saturday. I have this writing task for a client I’ve been working on for quite some time now, and it’s still going, so I’ve been banging out the writing as fast as I can (of course with care) to get their work launched and up and going. Another workout today and then tomorrow I rest! Like I say every week (lol), hope work next week is smooth sailing! The post Weekly Intern Blog Update Week 8 – Yanie (Marketing Executive) appeared first on Pearl Lemon Internship Blog. Via https://internship.pearllemongroup.com/weekly-intern-blog-update-week-8-yanie-marketing-executive/ Hey reader, – super cool as you are given tasks and you always have something to do; – dynamic ‘cause something could always come up; – funny especially in team meeting during the ice-breaker part; – hard as you must be punctual on deadlines when requested; – and comfortable because this is my daily view (apologies for the intruder roof)
One thing I want to do differently is, for sure, improving my writing skills but I know this blog and the tasks I’m working on will help me do that. Working remotely is something almost everybody wants, it has to be admitted. But it is not as easy as you believe, especially if your team is based all around the world. Time zones are different, you must constantly have a look at your phone for new messages and maybe you may need help from your American colleagues… but it’s 3am there and he/she is certainly not gonna be awake. The post Weekly Intern Update #1 – Giulia (Digital Marketing Specialist) appeared first on Pearl Lemon Internship Blog. Via https://internship.pearllemongroup.com/weekly-intern-update-1-giulia-digital-marketing-specialist/ |
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