My journey into a “digitally nomadic” lifestyle.

I left London to pursue a simpler way of life near the beach which required less time commuting and more time exploring, surfing and enjoying nature.

It was a pretty easy decision to make after 5 years working in Central London where I learned a lot working for Orange and Hearst but my one concern and question for myself was in regards to staying relevant when not surrounded by in-house specialist teams, agencies and the inherent digital talent in London.

A lot of the tips and tricks I learned over the years came from colleagues and friends working in a similar field and from attending events and chatting about projects in the pub. How was I supposed to stay on top form on a beach in Mexico or Portugal?

Well the first thing I did was line up a job teaching SEO at General Assembly in London. This was the perfect excuse for me to stay on top form in terms of changes to the industry and also encouraged me to head back into London regularly and also to meet a variety of people, many of whom got in touch in regards to consultancy work after their introduction or advanced SEO course.

I also chose to work at a really pleasant co-working space http://mapleworks.co.uk/ which lead to a few jobs and some useful contacts and friends. One of those contacts was the exceptionally talented Dave McMillan at Lab19 Digital who invited me to help on a project for freelancers and recruiters in the recruitment space called Flagd. I’m assisting Flagd with Marketing Strategy and we were invited to exhibit as part of the Beta Programme in WebSummit, Dublin.

In terms of keeping up to speed having all of those interesting projects and smaller clients really helped and forced me to learn an awful lot more about overall marketing strategy for smaller firms with either a digital or physical footprint. Luckily as anybody who works digital can attest to a huge amount of what we learn comes from online resources, blogs, thought leaders and innovators in each respective field and these are always accessible no matter where you decide to base yourself.

A more recent client is the IPA also known as “The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising”

Widely recognised as the world’s most influential professional body for practitioners in advertising and marketing communications.

I’ve been helping behind the scenes at the IPA with their digital marketing qualifications and examinations this again forces me to be on the cutting edge of changes in the industry.

A slightly more fun and rewarding project for me was The Algarve Surf School and camp based in the South West of Portugal. I ended up staying with these guys in return for my services and we had a fantastic summer boosting their web presence across all channels. We encouraged and allowed all staff and long term guests to upload directly to social channels to increase engagement. A particular highlight was the end of summer boat party video which was a first for me in terms of video editing a large amount of footage.

We also created a few SEO friendly and socially shareable articles to funnel traffic to the site like this one below.

Another example of an interesting company with a true physical footprint would be Brasserie Blanc. Brasserie Blanc (Or BB) is Raymond Blanc’s chain of Restaurants with a variety of locations across the UK where I’ve been working remotely on a consultancy basis.

I’ve encouraged videos and socially shareable content to be produced as well as completing an audit and recommendations for the site in terms of analytics, social and SEO.

I’m currently available for any projects you may have so do get in touch today to discuss your digital Marketing needs.

Joe@bitbybit.co

www.linkedin.com/in/joesharp1