In February, KWSM hosted its first ever KWSM Summit, where a few team members from each office location (Atlanta, Las Vegas, Orange County, and San Diego) met together to vision cast what the future looks like for our agency and discuss the exciting changes and industry challenges to come.
What Is the Purpose of the KWSM Summit?
As we all know, digital marketing is an ever-evolving industry – best practices, platform features, industry regulations, and algorithms are constantly changing, and it’s our job as marketers and brand journalists to stay ahead of the curve, both to serve our clients and maintain our competitive advantage as an agency.
The KWSM Summit consists of presentations from our Leadership Team that inform us about changes like those mentioned above, as well as factors that aren’t directly digital marketing related, but have the potential to impact all of our clients and the work we do for them – the state of the economy, global affairs, national news, etc. This level of agency-wide awareness and preparedness is exactly what allows us to pivot quickly when it’s in the best interest of our clients, and gives us the sensitivity to make wise marketing decisions on their behalf.
The KWSM Summit also serves an internal purpose by building up leaders at all levels of the agency with new skills and insights into the best-performing content and digital marketing trends. And, it aligns us around a common vision for the future of the agency and how we will serve our clients.
The KWSM Team Works to “Embrace Our Inner Coach”
One piece of this common vision that we discussed at the Summit was increased accountability on both an individual and team level.
For example, here at KWSM, we have a standard that every project needs at least two sets of eyes on it for quality assurance before it goes to the client. While that system does help catch small mistakes like typos and misspellings, its bigger purpose is to make sure every deliverable aligns with and contributes to the client’s overall strategy and goals and that best practices are implemented.
Although we work on it often, accountability is something that can always be reinforced and improved. At the Summit, we held a brainstorm about what accountability should look like moving forward.
We came to the conclusion that, on an individual level, this means each team member must be accountable for knowing their clients’ strategies through and through – from Junior Content Creators, to Copywriters, to the Web & Design Department, to Digital Account Managers, all the way to Leadership, and every level and department in between. And, each team member must take complete ownership for the deliverables they work on – performing their own QA so thoroughly that they believe the project could get delivered to the client even before it gets handed off to the next team member for review. This means triple-checking the accuracy of their work, and ensuring that it provides value to our overall mission for that client.
As a team, we identified the need for shared accountability across all levels of the agency. The phrase we’ve adopted is, “embrace your inner coach.” Each team member is encouraged to provide honest and constructive feedback using radical candor, to call out and celebrate the “wins” we see from our peers, and to give our full attention to the deliverables we review when we act as the second pair of eyes for someone else’s project. With our work being as collaborative as it is, we must commit ourselves to being the best team players we can be in order to see the best quality of work.
Here Are Some of the Digital Marketing Topics We Discussed
We are anticipating (and have already started to see) a number of significant changes in the digital marketing space in 2023, including:
- The increasing importance of SEO
- Google’s new “E-E-A-T” guidelines for good content
- The rise of AI and how effective brand storytelling stands apart
- Best practices for landing pages
- Upcoming changes to Google’s cookies and data tracking
- No-click content and why it’s effective
- How to write pillar content and why Google favors it
- The importance of building a “Storybrand” to solidify clients’ messaging strategies
We’re excited to share more about these trends with you in the next few months. Make sure to subscribe to our blog to stay in the loop.
Other Highlights from the KWSM Summit
One of my personal favorite parts of the Summit was getting to meet the familiar faces from KWSM Las Vegas, Orange County, and San Diego that I’ve only seen via Zoom. Since joining the KWSM team three and a half years ago, I’ve gotten to know, collaborate with, and become friends with
many of my coworkers without ever having met them in person – until now!
The excitement of being present in the same room for the first time brought high energy, productivity, and fun to our discussions, and we also got to enjoy each other’s company after the Summit was over. Some of the crew (including all of us KWSM Atlanta girls who don’t get to see the ocean as often as our Pacific Coast peers) decided to drive to the nearest beach and enjoy the sunset together before our team dinner. Little moments like this were the icing on the cake of the whole experience.
Are you ready to join a forward-thinking, fearless, and close-knit digital marketing team?
Are you ready to join a forward-thinking, fearless, and close-knit digital marketing team?We want to work with people who are passionate about telling our clients’ stories and are excited to be a part of our team. If that sounds like you, we might just be the work-family you’re looking for!
CLICK HERE to learn more about joining KWSM.
