Social – DVO Agency

Don’t lose the faith in renewables

Despite some world leaders’ best efforts, the rise of renewables – and the opportunities they present – are inevitable

Following a major U-turn on the UK government’s net-zero climate commitments last week, countering the huge investments following last year’s Inflation Reduction Act in the USA, we thought it was a good time to share some of our insights into an industry that we have worked in for a number of years – and to support the view that there are many opportunities to be had in renewables globally.

The renewable and sustainable sector has long been a passion for the whole team at dvo. The projects we’ve undertaken span the UK and USA, and we’ve had a front row seat as these industries have grown and developed. This blog tries to make sense of where we are, where we think we will end up and, hopefully, strike a positive note for the future and the UK’s plans for net-zero.

Let’s start at the beginning

Early projects we undertook were almost exclusively in the wind sector. At first this was purely a UK marketing task, driving growth for our clients. We then took on a wider consultancy project to grow and develop a business in the USA, providing training and services to companies in the wind sector. So far so good. We learnt a huge amount driving b2b growth in two markets, working with and developing propositions for companies that straddled the Atlantic.

Not all things are made equal

About 4 or 5 years ago we noticed a clear divergence in growth and optimism between the UK and USA. The latter fuelled by Government support, sustainable job opportunities and – above all – profit opportunities for business in the US. In the UK it’s simply hard to make money in this space, there’s a distinct lack of support and the renewable agenda seems wrapped up in an eco-warrior spiral that takes focus from the real wins for everyone. This is simply not the case in the US and the sector has diverged away from the UK. Europe’s Emissions Trading System is pitted to be the cheaper and more positive focus longer term, but both approaches provide food for though.

The buzz is tangible

Visit a renewable conference in the USA, it’s like being a part of the gold rush. Opportunity, growth, optimism and a can-do attitude prevail. We may deride this, especially us Brits, but it’s real and it matters.

Renewables and the green agenda have a PR problem in the UK

Most mainstream media seem to focus purely on people superglued to the road, tree hugging and any other wild connotations associated with the green agenda. Alongside perpetuating the myth that anything green or renewable is expensive in both the short and long term, it’s simply not true. And what about making money? What about sustainable jobs? What about growth and opportunity?

Unfortunately the UK government seems indebted (or at least closely allied) to those with an agenda that doesn’t include renewables. Frankly, I’m not sure why. Most of our US work is in Texas – about as Republican as you can get – and not one person we’ve dealt with has mentioned anything about the climate change hoax or other wacky theories. They’re too busy making money. And for us, this is a win-win!

There’s still hope

While recent announcements and delays to the UK’s Net Zero targets may bring uncertainty to people wishing to invest in the sector, it feels like the Tories are just kicking the can down the road to win a few votes. Few can argue against the fact longer term sector growth is inevitable, even if the current government is focused on short termism. This is especially true in a stagnating – some may say failing – economy. If the US is anything to go by, renewables have experienced some of the biggest jobs demand, with wages outstripping average salaries by double digits. Some things need to change in the UK but there is absolutely no reason that we cannot follow the USA’s example. Industries are collectively gearing up for a greener future: jobs, investment (and the benefit of renewable growth) are all there for the taking. The UK is due a renewable second coming.

What about the short to medium term?

That’s where our sales pitch comes in! As a consultancy with a footprint in both the UK and US markets, underpinned with a history of helping UK businesses enter and find success in the US, dvo is well positioned to help companies throughout the renewable supply chain to take advantage of the US market’s growth opportunities. If you’re sat reading this looking over the fence at the cool kids and want to join in we have an open invitation to get involved!

So get in touch to see how we can help your business reap the rewards of the US growth in this area.

Get in touch with the dvo team and find out how your business can benefit from US growth opportunities.

Our new Community Manager

We are delighted to be joined by Community Manager, Kirsty Russell.

A little later than planned, but please welcome to the DVO team Kirsty Russell, who joins us as our new Community Manager.

Kirsty has definitely hit the ground running, straight into a photo and video shoot for one of our clients in her first week! Here’s a little bit a background on Kirsty and what she’ll be up to in the coming months.

Kirsty has over six years’ experience in digital and social media, with everything from content creation, social media management and photography. She has a first class music business degree and went straight into full time work after graduating. Not content with one degree, she’s now in the midst of a part time Masters degree at Loughborough University in Sport Management. This works well alongside one of her other passions: swimming. She swims five days a week and has been competing in Masters competitions for the past six months. She also enjoys creative hobbies such as photography, music and cooking, and she loves travelling.

In the short term, Kirsty is looking forward to expanding her marketing skillset outside of social media, getting to know her clients businesses and helping them improve their community relationships. Expect to see her impact on our own marketing as well, as Kirsty will be helping to build and engage our own network of brands, clients, suppliers and freelancers.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Join our team!

We are looking for a Community Manager.

Are you a social media whizz who would like to join dvo as a part time Community Manager?

dvo delivers its work supported by a Roster of talented on-demand creatives, developers and everyone in between. We tap into talent when they’re needed which keeps things efficient for the brands we work with. As we grow, we are developing further in-house services that will work across our consulting projects. The first of which is social media.

We are looking to add a Community Manager to the core team to cover social media delivery and development for our clients.

If you think you fit the person spec below, we’d love to hear from you.

We require someone with the following expertise:

Experience across all main social media platforms to produce engaging and well-designed social posts which are on brand for each of our clients, as well as some internal social media to promote DVO. Clients mainly use Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, however depending on future clients, will require experience or desire to learn new and developing platforms.
Strong photography and videography skills (not at a professional level but confident creating content relevant for social) for social posts that require imagery and videos.
Using design and editing software (Canva, Adobe Suite etc.) to create visually engaging posts for social platforms.
Confidence in engaging with members of the community and bringing people into the community in order to grow impact and build brand awareness of clients.
Strong copywriting skills to write engaging content for social posts.
Monitors trends on each platform and in each sector to produce the best content.
Strong research skills to work with consultants to develop content around themes and calendar content to further develop engagement.
Confident producing regular reports that will feed into wider agency work for each client, and work with consultants to agree KPIs which will be regularly reviewed.

Personal attributes:

Flexible in their style and able to juggle a number of different tasks at once for multiple clients.
Strong communication skills with consultants, clients and suppliers to build relationships and support the growth of the business.
Keen attention to detail.
Analytical mind with a focus on meeting KPIs.

The role will be varied within your social media delivery, so we are looking for someone creative who enjoys the challenge of working with early start ups and more established organisations. The role is a remote position, but we are ideally looking for someone who can travel to London when needed.

Please apply by sending your CV and a cover letter outlining why you are suitable for the role to [email protected] by midnight 8 November 2021. Interviews will be held the week after via Zoom so please also share your availability in your application. We look forward to hearing from you!

Job spec

Contact us

Optimising webspace; the benefits of brand blogging

This week we’re discussing the benefits of brand blogging.

Here at full service digital agency DVO we’re big supporters of clients optimising webspace. Sounds straight forward, of course as a business you want to optimise all your resources and channels and brand blogging can be a great way to achieve this. But in today’s New Normal, as marketers and business owners, it can be challenging.

So what exactly do we mean when we say optimising webspace? Well, it’s the practice of looking beyond a brand’s site or blog to create an overarching online marketing presence. Any approach that doesn’t encompass every element, from e-commerce to social media to blogger outreach, will create an incomplete, confused or broken machine that isn’t ready to take on a well-rounded marketing strategy. We’ve seen this time and time again with clients, where responsibility for different digital resources can sit with different departments and silos are a very real problem still. So having a strategy that sits above this and pulls all the elements together effectively is vital and will actually make each channel work harder and produce better results.

We’ve written a series of articles, breaking down the different areas of webspace, explaining what they mean, why they are important and how you make them work harder for you.

Why have a blog?

Owned media has many different aspects and may seem daunting. But it’s also the most accessible and easiest means by which connect to your audience. At the centre of this should be your brand’s blog. Why? Well, for many reasons but here are some key stats that you should be aware of, especially if you’re not convinced of the value a blog can bring to your business.

A blog produces 97% more inbound links to a company’s site compared to one without a blog.
Companies that blog receive a massive 434% more indexed pages on average than those that don’t. Seriously, you don’t have a blog!!!
Small businesses that blog will see 126% more lead growth compared to those that don’t.
23% of total Internet usage is on social media networks and blogs.

Every client is different. They have different brands, different products, different attitudes and different approaches but most want the same thing: to get their brand known. When they ask if they really need a blog, the answer varies depending on what they are hoping to achieve. We hope the stats above have helped convince you of the benefits of brand blogging if you were sitting on the fence.

A blog should be the heart of a brand’s owned media. Brand blogging is the motor that keeps it running. It provides the content that drives individuals back to your website. How can you get involved with social networks, your email databases and other channels without having something to say? For most companies, your website and blog exist to tell the world what you’re about and why they should care. Your site does it on a basic level, but your blog lets you go off on tangents. 60% of people feel more positive about a company that has custom content on its website than those that don’t. It shows a confidence and a level of expertise that consumers want from the companies they are buying from or interacting with. And if it’s content that evokes an emotional response and encourages further action like commenting or sharing, then that’s an added bonus.

What do I blog about?

Working with clients who are starting out on their social media/blogging journey, we hear the same thing time and time again. What should I say, what should I talk about? Why would people be interested in what I’ve got to say? While understandable, this anxiety is often misplaced – you’re already an expert in your field so talk about what you do. Using brand blogging to explain your decisions, your journey, your beliefs, your successes and even your mistakes. After all, that’s what your customers are most likely to be interested in.

McDonalds Canada is a great example of this, as can be seen in the fast food giant’s behind-the-scenes feature showing how burgers are photographed, hosted on YouTube. By being completely transparent about the dark art of food styling, the brand has taken something it knows intimately and created positive, engaging content that keeps its consumers interested and informed. The video has earned more than 11.3 million views.

Whilst developing content marketing for Expedia, we knew we needed to put a fresh spin on what could have otherwise just been more of the same old travel blogging, creating content that would stand out in a cluttered space. We did that by flipping the narrative into the future, focusing on what you could do, not what we had done collectively as the writing team. Making it about the travellers and the experience they could have allowed us to position the content we created away from the rest of the market. We built a network of writers across 8 global cities who were our correspondents and formed the basis of our content marketing approach. Having this solid digital experience meant we could build in tactical campaigns highlighting new destinations, seasonal holidays such as Halloween and tie-ins with wider campaign initiatives.

This is just one example of how we’ve used a brand’s existing know-how and worked with others to create useful content. Updating your blog at least once a week may seem daunting, but you already have the knowledge and expertise to share with your customers. And trust us, if you’ve got your offering and your branding right, people WILL want to listen. We’re here help bring it out. Talk to DVO about brand blogging on 020 3771 2641 or email us at [email protected].

Optimising webspace and why you should care about bloggers

Blogger outreach and bloggers can make the difference to your content campaign’s amplification, in the second in our optimising webspace series we discuss why?

Before digital marketing, there were two main ways to get your brand seen – advertising and PR. The online revolution has given us a third: Bloggers. But say the word ‘Blogger’ nowadays to those not in the know and you might be on the receiving end of an derisive eyeroll. Which is a shame and, we believe, very short-sighted. This valuable resource has been tainted by what can only be described as a deluge of third party publishers. I mean, think about it, EVERYBODY and his mate Dave is a blogger these days. In this our second post on optimising webspace, we’re aiming to re-establish bloggers and blogger outreach as a valuable element that can be a huge benefit to your marketing campaigns.

Blogging took off in the late nineties. These writers, critics and reviewers started out making careers from what were once hobby blogs. Whether using wit, authority, well-crafted prose or all three, many bloggers managed to grow their readership to such a level that brands and advertisers sat up and took notice. Let’s have a quick look back before we look forward.

From humble beginnings, Peter Robinson’s very funny Popjustice founded a record label, released branded compilations, held branded tours and broken pop news stories. Charlie Lynne’s film blog Ultra Culture was hailed the UK’s foremost film blog by reviews aggregator Rotten Tomatoes and hosted the national premiere of Spring Breakers. And Jack Monroe, the budget food blogger behind recipe site ‘A Girl Called Jack’ has earned worldwide media interest and become the face of Sainsbury’s ad campaigns. How’s that for the power of blogging? And lots of people sat up and took notice. Where’s there’s traffic, there’s cash and where there’s cash, you’ll quickly find people jumping on the bandwagon trying to exploit it. Hence the above mentioned eyeroll response. Blogging started to get a bad name for itself, what was once innocent and pure, spontaneous and organic, became cynical and cheap, lacklustre and cold.

So what does today’s blogger look like? Well, for a start, don’t call them bloggers! It’s all about ‘Influencers’ now. Which, considering how much blogging has moved on in the last few years, is a far more accurate description. Gone are the days when a blogger could throw up low grade content on their blogs (their own or ‘borrowed’ from elsewhere), fling out some click bait, post tired listicles and sit back and watch the revenue pour in in line with their blog traffic. Today’s blogger understands the power of engagement, and harnessing top quality content on their blogs, their social media channels, images and graphics is at the centre of all this. The best blogs capture their readers’ imaginations, giving them reasons to return, stay and share. It’s actually pretty much the basis of DVO’s core proposition around content and engagement, and something brands the world over are keen to buy in to.

When we worked with specialist travel operator Thompson Lakes and Mountains, we saw an opportunity for blogger outreach that feed content to not one, but two blog audiences. By creating a guide to the company’s most popular destinations inspired by the maps often found in fantasy novels, we worked with a number of influential travel bloggers as well as the fans of dramas such as The Hobbit and Game of Thrones. In doing this, we used this highly engaged network to spread word of Thompson Lakes and Mountains across multiple channels on our behalf.

(Click the image below for the full infographic).

The best bloggers are seen as proper, respected experts in their fields. No longer is running a blog just about posting about your Couch to 5K progress (or lack of it!) or what you ate for lunch this week. Good blogs are well researched and presented, understand their strengths and their audience. They produce useful and inspiring content which illicits a response and excites the reader, prompting them into action. Which in today’s saturated digisphere is no easy task.

Be sure to check out our previous blog in this series on brand blogging. If you’d like to discuss with us how you can expand your reach into earned media, get in touch. Talk to DVO or drop us an email at [email protected]

content marketing

The social media storm that is Movember

Movembers a lot of fun for most of us. This week we analyse what you can learn from Movember to make you’re social media more effective.

A quick look at social media will tell you we’re staring down the face of Movember (already!) and the question of whether to ‘tache or not to ‘tache raises its head. Yes, that’s right, it’s nearly Movember and men (and women) the world over are considering ways that they can support this very worthwhile charity. As a full service digital agency we want to look deeper, analysing why initiatives like November are so good at engaging large audiences and how you can apply the same thinking to your campaigns.

Every year, in November, Movember turns moustaches into a symbol of support for its cause. But what was once a very simple premise with an equally simple fundraising journey has become somewhat of a behemoth. Ask most people what they think Movember means and what the movement supports and they’ll say, “growing a moustache in November, get some sponsorship and raise money for testicular cancer”.

But Movember has become so, so much more than that. Let’s explore.Continue reading