Birddog is the Brand and Digital Agency that achieves creative change for businesses. We work almost exclusively in the B2B market and so far with a small, yet fast-growing team we’ve been big enough to reach the whole world. Our award winning work impacts local, regional and international audiences across every market sector.

We’ve been telling the B2B Marketing Industry what it didn’t want to hear since 1994, shifting perceptions away from the ordinary, towards the extraordinary. It’s a tough job, but at least someone knows how to do it.

The Candidate
That’s where you come in. We’re on the lookout for exceptional, ambitious and commercially minded Community Managers who have proven delivery in the social sector. This is an excellent opportunity to own, manage and grow a social community across a number of channels. It’s an opportunity to be in a role that utilises your creative, journalistic and strategic skillset. If you’re looking for a work hard, play hard agency environment where you can really make your mark then this is it.

Experience
With at least 2 years+ practical social media marketing experience under your belt, you’ll have an eye for detail, be outgoing, self-motivated and highly organised with the ability to quickly build trust with your audience. You’ll be adept at developing and implementing social media strategies, building and managing online communities, writing social content and adding value in the social space.

Working closely with the Account Management Team and Directors, you will provide support and assistance from within the Digital Strategy Team. Reporting to clients is key, you’ll need to be able to analyse, provide suggestions that will improve strategy and identify trending themes that will inform direction.

You will be expected to develop and deliver upon a content management strategy and a content plan that will achieve the client’s desired project objectives whilst continually growing your audience. You’ll welcome ‘new’ members – get them comfortable, involved and participating. You’ll help them connect with each other, encourage interactivity and keep the conversations moving towards the brand goals. You’ll also be tasked with the writing and editing of both online blog content and social channel communications, ensuring they are suitable for the target audience

As a social native, you’ll be on top of new social media tools, policies and trends with a natural passion and desire to keep a close eye on the industry and best practice examples. You’ll be able to implement educated changes to the strategic direction of the social activity and you’ll be responsible for driving, growing and shaping valuable communications.

You must have a background in content development, social media, journalism, marketing or online PR with exposure to brand and digital. Additionally you should have proven knowledge of social channels, social tools and the B2B Industry. An appreciation and understanding of the IT & Technology sector would also be beneficial. You should be able to oversee complex social projects from beginning to end, taking responsibility for project management as well as being a key client contact.

Key Responsibilities
• Implementation, management & moderation of social communities i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums, LinkedIn etc.
• Lead, plan and generate a schedule of compelling editorial content.
• Measurement, reporting and analysis of social communications to identify trends, opportunities and behaviours.
• Online PR – social media crisis management & blogger outreach.
• Content creation across social channels including copy writing for blogs & articles.
• Audience engagement that leads to significant growth and contribution of high quality submissions.
• Coordinate with internal and external stakeholders.
• Monitor trends in online community tools, trends and applications.
• Building new processes and identifying any new opportunities for social media engagement.
• Support the Account Director in ensuring conformity to client’s overall goals and marketing strategy.
• Attend events relevant to social media and online marketing.
• Liaise with creative, accounts and technical teams.

To be considered for this role within the Digital Strategy team, you will need to offer the following:
• PC literate, MS Office – Word, Excel, PowerPoint.
• Excellent written and oral communication.
• Experience in community development and management.
• Strong project management & organisation.
• An in-depth understanding of social channels, monitoring, analytics and moderation tools.
• Client facing.
• Self-starter.
• Motivated.
• Well presented.
• Creative, diplomatic, cool under pressure and fantastic interpersonal skills.

If this sounds like you, you’re ready for a new challenge in Social Media and have the character and experience described please do not hesitate to apply.

Please send your CV and covering letter through to jointhecrew@birddog.co.uk by Friday 23^rd December.

In the event of high levels of response, we are unfortunately only able to get back to those applicants who have been successful.

Birddog has partnered with some of the best and most respected talent in the market to develop and deliver Social Web Training and Consultancy that businesses can ‘use’:

• Beginner – What is the Social Web?
• Intermediate – Social Web Motivations & Behaviours
• Advanced – Integrating Social Web and Brand Strategies
• Specialist Executive / C-Level – Deriving Value from the Social Web

Our series of one-day social media training courses are designed to take businesses from a basic understanding of core social tools (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Blogging etc.) through planning and development of advanced engagement and measurement strategies.

The courses are designed to suit small groups/teams typically from within the Marketing Department and combines presentation, discussion, case studies, activities and pre and post course learning support. Course content is tailored to individual clients and would be scheduled according to needs and availability.

Below are some examples of successfully run Social Media Courses. If you’d like more detailed information or to tailor a course suited to your business, just let us know:

Pre-Social Evaluation Workshop

• Outline - A Board level discussion to assess if/how/which aspects of the social web can play a part in an organisationʼs communications/engagement/marketing strategy.

• Objective - To provide decision makers with an opportunity to evaluate the business value, company structure, culture and assess the risks, prior to diving headfirst into social media.

Social Analysis Workshop

• Outline – A senior level workshop to assess the existing business approach and discuss the good, the bad and the downright ugly to introduce new thinking and to enhance social engagement/advocacy.

• Objective - To provide decision makers with evidence and best practice social strategies to improve all areas of the engagement process; from awareness through to advocacy.

Social Rescue Workshop

• Outline - An admission by senior management that they need help. This workshop strips back the existing strategy and helps businesses to understand how to recover and create more successful social engagement.

• Objective - To provide decision makers with the knowledge to revise, recover and rejuvenate their overall approach to the social web.

Advanced Social Strategy Workshop

• Outline - This is for those businesses who already have a good understanding and wish to take their social strategy to the next level.

• Objective - To provide decision makers with new thinking, the latest trends, and measurement advice to continually evaluate performance.

What to do next?

For full details of our services, contact Birddog

• Executive Target Market Profiling
• Priority Account Targeting
• Influencer Management
• Executive Community Creation
• Sustainable Pipeline Creation
• Market Leadership Positioning Strategy
• Executive Event Programmes:
  • Breakfast Briefings
  • Hosted Dinners
  • Hosted Lunches
  • One-to-One Meetings
  • Round Table Discussions
  • Seminars
  • Webinars
  • Workshops

The result of our activities is to put you right in front of those elusive senior decision makers in your target industries. We help position you as active thought leaders in your industry by facilitating conversations around business issues and not product functionality. We develop bespoke programmes that deliver one to one meetings.

What to do next?

For full details of our services, contact Birddog

Over the years we have formed lasting relationships with experts in almost every B2B marketing discipline. These relationships can be called a number of things – ‘partnerships’, ‘supplier networks’, or ‘third parties’. At Birddog we just call them, friends. We rely on our friends to help us and our clients when we need them. (We think that’s better than blagging, bullshitting or lying.)

We’re happy to introduce our clients to our friends and let you all get on with it – and we’re happy to manage the process as part of developing wider client relationships. All roads lead to the brand after all. Just let us know what you need and we’ll help you, and/or introduce you to our friends…

Some of the Things We Do (with a little help from our friends):

• Digital Media Planning
• Executive Events (Senior Exec./C-Level / C-Suite)
• Online PR
• Social Media / Social Web Training

What to do next?

For full details of our services, contact Birddog

Structure

Birddog’s B2B Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) programme comprises of five stages. Engagement in the programme can begin and end with one, or all of the stages, depending on where the client is in the development and implementation of a search strategy.

Stage One – Marketplace Review

• Existing search engine visibility
• Competitor visibility
• Keyword competitiveness.

Research is conducted across multiple search engines including Google, Yahoo! And Bing.

Stage Two – Technical Review

• Content
• Technical structure
• Page elements such as navigation
• Semantic HTML markup
• Keyword density analysis
• Page titles analysis
• Meta data analysis
• ALT & descriptive tags analysis
• Copy / image ratio analysis

The review ensures that all areas of a website that require optimisation are highlighted, so that the correct optimisation programme can be developed and implemented into the site (stage three).

Stage Three – Content Development and Programme Structure

• Keyword planning
• Keyword density development
• Markup optimisation and validation
• On page element optimisation:
  • Page titles
  • Meta data
  • ALT & descriptive tags
  • Semantic markup (content ordering, H1, H2 tags etc)
  • Copy / image ratio optimisation

Once implemented (in stage four), this content will optimise the digital property, increasing the relevancy of the content/site to make it easier for search engines to understand what to index and how frequently to visit.

Stage Four – Content Implementation

Detailed planning and implementation of the optimised content ranging from simple updates via a client Content Management System (CMS) to more complex development of SEO optimised website code. Before any inbound link building begins (stage five), new, optimised content must be implemented into the site, to maximise any uplift in visits. Delivery of this stage comes in the form of a pre-defined programme of implementation over an agreed timeframe, lasting days, weeks or months.

Stage Five – Off-Page Optimisation

• Directory listings
• Article writing
• Content seeding
• Blogging
• Blog interaction (commenting)
• Social media -
  • Micro blogs – Twitter
  • Bookmarking – (digg, reddit, stumbleupon)
  • Networks – Facebook, LinkedIn
  • Blog seeding/directories – Technorati
  • Retweeting sites – ReTwt etc
• Web listings -
  • News aggregators – Google news
  • Google maps
  • Google directory

Off-page SEO is a gradual process, whereby the client URL is seeded on a variety of sites that are complementary to the client business and industry. The process is intentionally slow, so as to not jeopardise search engine listings through being flagged for unusual behaviour. In addition to inbound link building, the client will be provided with a monthly report covering site stats (traffic, visits, visitors, and page views), keyword exposure, referrals, positions, and Search Engine Results Page (SERP) listings.

Want to know more?

Contact Birddog

In navigating the site, everything is fairly simple.  There’s the usual ‘about us’ and ‘service’ pages, but, like many visitors who visit this site, you’ll probably only ever read them once, so instead, the focus has been placed on two key areas:

Our work is the showcase for all of the work done by Birddog for clients. It’s the place where pictures really do speak a thousand words. The proof in the pudding if you like…

Our world is our commentary on our industry, talking about anything and everything relevant to things in our daily lives. You’ll also find Scot’s monthly blog articles as also featured in B2BMarketing.

These are two ‘streams’ of content, continually being updated by the Birddog team. The most recently added articles will appear at the top of the first page, so it’s simply a case of browsing through the content and clicking on something that takes your fancy. If you’re after something specific, click on one of the words within the ‘tags’ section of the article and you’ll then be shown a list of all articles corresponding with that tag. Or you can use the search engine.

Enjoy…

Oliver Budworth

Digital Director

However, if the site looks fine but you want to know what I’m talking about, go and find someone who is using IE6 and visit our URL…

…or you could just click here

Service companies provide bespoke, specialist, professional services where no two requirements are ever the same. Every client is different, every solution is made to measure. There are similarities, undoubtedly, and processes that can be repeated, but the delivery is unique every time.

So it comes as no real surprise that projects, campaigns and activities rarely go entirely according to plan. In many respects, precisely because each project is so different, the processes and experience that are applied to them are about the only thing that stands between success and catastrophic failure. And we do this willingly – enthusiastically even. Clients and agencies alike wake up every day, go to work and stand in front of their peers to say, “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… (dramatic pause)… The Wheel!” We reinvent the process every day – it’s the same, but different.

And the variety, the ‘challenge’ is what keeps us all going. But the speed of delivery, the uneven playing field, the twists and turns along the way mean that, at best, plans change and at worst, well, at worst it all goes tits-up. Those are the cards we’ve been dealt.

But my point isn’t, ‘shit happens – deal with it’. Nor is this a tale of woe resulting in the aforementioned colonic disintegration. The opposite in fact. If something can go wrong, it will – the important part is how you respond to the challenge.

We’ve just finished a website. It was a big project for an important client and Birddog was expected to deliver everything required to launch the site. Well, the truth is we don’t deliver everything, not by ourselves at least. We outsource components – in this case the HTML geekery required to make the damn thing work. So far, so good.

And then the changes started. Changes of specification, changes of copy, changes of functionality, changes of content, changes of mind. Changes of underpants. Clearly the changes shouldn’t happen and in the blissfully ideal world we all dream of, the project would run without hitch or interruption. But that never happens so it is at this point we reach the crossroads. Down one road is the ‘contract’ – the small print, holding the client to the agreed specification and the end of a beautiful friendship. Down another is the sucking of teeth, the tut, tut, tutting, the client amendment penalties… and the end of a beautiful friendship. Down the third road is the ability to give the client exactly what they ask for and retain the ability to smile. That ‘third way’ is a hard enough road to travel when the requirement is self-contained. When it requires the willing participation of other parties – well that’s what separates the wheat from the chaff.

I’m not usually exposed to the intricacies of project delivery. One of the few benefits of my grey, receding hairline accessorised with deepening wrinkles and furrows, is the ability to delegate, secure in the knowledge that others more deserving will soon have a similar sallow complexion. But I was privileged to witness this one.

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I watched a supplier – propeller-heads no less – move heaven, earth and most of the intervening solar systems to help us deliver the website that reflected the client’s ever changing mood. They did it without blinking, without hesitation and without a second thought for their own safety. They responded positively and consistently to every curve ball. And they smiled.

I was humbled. Having been on the receiving end of this positive experience as well as being on the sharp end of many negative ones, we would all do well to remember that in a service industry the ability to provide a service isn’t a differentiator or a mandate – it’s an entry point.

This is a service industry. Birddog is a service company. We’re going to smile more.

Scot McKee
Managing Director
Birddog Ltd.