2022… What a great year it has been! With a New Year right around the corner, the seoplus+ shows some love to some of the best moments this year had to offer. Here is our version s(eoplus+)potify’s wrapped. So, grab a coffee (tea, water, sparkling.. ok, you get it) and your favourite snack, and let’s dive in.
🪄 Sweet magical tools
Game-changing resources for departments
Every year, it’s all about figuring out ways to elevate your department, processes, and team, and often when you find something to test out, it’s a game-changer.
Here are tools and resources that helped each of our departments elevate their game.
Efficiency
Cision helped us cut down on outreach/planning time and make things much more efficient.
PandaDoc saves the team tons of time!
A combination of a re-tooled Salesforce to help the progress and accountability of our everyday sales and Zoominfo for prospect gathering and increasing the speed of information.
Implementing daily standups for my team reduced the time we spent updating each other during our internal meetings and helped us centralize communication and prioritize tasks effectively.
Frase! My favourite feature is how it pulls the headings of the top-performing pages in search results— a huge time saver when putting together content recommendations.
Collaboration
Figma! – it has made collaboration between departments so seamless.
Surfer SEO, Ahrefs, and in general, just following influencers and incorporating their advice into our department.
Picking each other’s brains has been the most important and fruitful resource I’ve noticed this year in the SEO department. I’ve learned a bountiful amount of actionable information from other team members. For example, I’ve learned how to implement schema site-wide, and on individual pages, I’ve learned to take my ability to analyze on-page SEO best practices to the next level, and I’ve learned some e-commerce tips.
Maximizing the value of tools
2021 was a year of major tool/software transition, from onboarding with an HR software to migrating to a new project management software. This year, it was about maximizing these core tools’ use.
Having previously worked with Adobe XD for web design, it was amazing to start using Figma and learn all of its features. I’ll never go back to XD again!
Typeform is such a great tool for building forms and surveys. We’ve been using it for web and brand onboarding, and so far, it has been great.
This year, we introduced Shape.io as a budget pacing tool to the Paid Ads Department! This tool gives us more control over campaign budgets, maximizes value from our spending, and predicts performance at various spending levels. And the best part is it allows us to automate budget pacing across multiple platforms like Google, Microsoft, Local Service Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Twitter and Pinterest Ads.
🎶 Funky hype up
seoplus+ listening personalities
Are you the type of person that starts the day with the same song, enjoys variety or resorts back to that ONE song when you need to pump yourself up?
Our seoplus+ team responded to their “#1 work pump-up song”, and the responses are funky, to say the least.
Run the World (Girls) – Beyoncé…. STRONG choice
Boulangerie – Recent Rumors…. Croissant anyone?
Downtown – Macklemore
I Want It That Way – Backstreet Boys
We Ain’t Playin’ – Gangsta Boo
Run The World – Dayglow
As it Was – Harry Styles (it would be weird if I didn’t pick a Harry song)…. As their #1 fan, yes, it would be
Any of the Big Bootie Mixes… ANY.
Narco – Timmy Trumpet
My Buick – Live Sesh – Louis Cole
Happy – C2C
Karma – Taylor Swift
Ride the Lighting – Metallica
Definition – Mabel
Or we just have the chaotic indecisive….
Honestly, this changes every day – it all depends on my mood, LOL hence my 89,607 minutes listened to this year…..
🔥 Happy upbeat celebrations
seoplus+ accomplishments
The end of the year is always a good time to reflect on the past 12 months…(a moment of, so what just happened?) and see how much you’ve accomplished. It’s an excellent motivational moment to see how much you can achieve and how much you can continue pushing yourself and your team forward, putting in even more effort for better world-class work and planning how you can make the next year EVEN better.
Now…..what are some projects, tasks and accomplishments our seoplus+ team is most proud of this year?
Client campaigns
Paid Ads
A Paid Ads Audit project for a well-known Canadian college! This was the largest audit project the paid ads team has ever completed. It was one of the most collaborative projects we’ve ever done, too, with 4 different paid ads team members working together on different pieces of the audit.
Web
A huge website project that was launched in December! It was fun seeing this project through from beginning to end. The client was great to work with, and I think it will be a great spotlight for the company!
Digital PR
Very proud of the results we’ve achieved for two Digital PR clients. These two campaigns exceeded expectations in their campaigns and have achieved impressive results!
SEO
Taking on an Ottawa-based personal injury client. I accomplished our goals a whole quarter early, and we received a 5-star review from the client on Clutch.
Getting to be a part of the largest SEO audit we’ve accomplished to date. It had many moving pieces with contributions from several team members and departments, and I’m glad I was able to have a small role in it.
Process improvements
We launched OKRs for the first time. This company-wide initiative took a lot of thought, planning, creativity, and accountability from everyone on the team, and I am so grateful for the trust and buy-in.
Creating the Digital PR Strategist and Media Relations Specialist streams in the PR department! We have really seen the benefit for our team in task delegation, and it has significantly increased our results
I am very proud of creating a brand new social media package in my first three months of being at seoplus+
Updating Salesforce for the sales team. Realigning the historical data of our clients, our current opportunities and changing how we forecast our deals.
Ϭ Uplifting impactful motivation
seoplus+ lessons
We love a good lesson to help you reflect, help you grow, and keep you going on this journey called LIFE. What are some of the professional and personal lessons the team learned this year? You tell me, these folks are not short of sharing some uplifting impactful motivation……
“I learned that I need to make the most of every opportunity I receive and never let a chance to learn to pass me by.”
“If at any point you’re not challenging yourself, you’re not living up to your potential.”
“Feedback is given for growth, not for criticism.”
“Teams are stronger when everyone works together. From cross-department collaboration to brainstorming with your teammates, with a team of world-class specialists, you can achieve just about anything.”
“You cannot control everything. Sometimes, it is out of your hands when something fails. It’s best to step back, assess the situation and find the best possible solution.”
“Slow down. Things get better when you take a step back.”
📚 Glowing transformative content
Book, article & podcasts recommendations
Have you ever just read a piece of content or listened to a podcast that just transformed your life, and you want to share it with the world….and your team? Here are a few books and podcasts the seoplus+ team recommends you add to your reading or listening list.
Books
Radical Candor – Kim Scott
Fierce Conversations – Susan Scott
The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni was by far my favourite book this year (S/O to Catherine for the recommendation!)
The 6 Types of Working Genius – Patrick Lencioni
7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen Covey
The Little Red Book of Selling: 12.5 Principles of Sales Greatness – Jeffrey Gitomer
Podcasts
Discovering the podcast Ologies
How I Built This with Guy Raz
Girls in Marketing
Coaching Real Leaders by HBR Presents
😎 Adventurous discovery hype
Favourite discoveries this year
Nothing like a solid new discovery, from food to coffee shops to travelling, to new artists, to moving, to new habits. The seoplus+ team was an adventurous bunch and found some great things this year, let’s see what they were.
Foodie vibes
Traveled to Italy for the first time and discovered I love Italian food. Started making gnocchi at home.
I learned how to cook Chinese restaurant-style braised eggplant.
Mezcal. A true well made spirit. Not the touristy stuff.
Z3 Coffee Shop
Some big life events!
My trip to London & Paris this year with my mom and discovering all the amazing art and history those cities have to offer
Our cat Willow! I have never really wanted a pet, but she has become an instant family member. And she keeps me accountable for my vacuuming, with all her fur…
Yoga! While I had tried it a few times before this year, it has become my passion this year, and I’ve consistently practiced yoga multiple times per week for the past year! 🧘
TV show vibes
White Lotus has been an amazing show
The TV show The Bear
Finally caved and decided to watch an episode of Gilmore Girls, and two weeks later, I watched every single episode. I have no regrets.
🥰 Sweet lasting memories
Favourite seoplus+ memory this year
The seoplus+ crew loves a good social event, but which ones did team members enjoy the most this year?
The Halloween party! It was great to debrief with colleagues I can only see when I visit Ottawa.
Halloween Party & filming TikToks with the team.
The HOPE beach volleyball tournament. Sun, sand, and fun coworkers— no complaints (not even the sunburn…oh, the sunburn).
Golf.
Brandon T icing Frank at the Halloween party, followed by Jonathan blocking his escape.
Sam’s moustache……enough said.🥸
Getting to meet with many team members for the first time over the summer and the team lunch. Good times!!
Being able to share in the celebration of our “Best Paid Ads Campaign” at the 2022 Global Search Awards, which was announced in the middle of a virtual meeting with our team leads around customer service training. It was a perfect snapshot of our values of play, accountability, and collaboration, as we were committing ourselves to improved customer service but also took the time to enjoy the moment and live together as a team.
Joining the team. Life changing to be a part of this group.
Adding an additional team member to the PR squad. Our team of 4 is now really able to elevate results for our clients!
The Team Lead Retreat we had in the summer (also the same day as the Rogers outage). Having no connection to the online world made for an interesting and memorable day!
📈 Level up 2023
seoplus+ professional and personal excitement for 2023
The end of the year means looking forward to ways to level up and grow in the New Year. Here are some ways the seoplus+ team is excited to accomplish in the New Year!
I am excited to grow my skills and department along with it.
I’m excited to see the social media department grow with new clients and to see myself grow as a leader.
Continuing to grow in my role here and delivering world-class design work to amazing clients! Also pretty pumped about some of the internal initiatives I’ve been a part of. Looking forward to seeing these launch!
I’m excited to continue on my data science learning journey of completing my intermediate Python course and getting to the next stage in the program! I’m also looking forward to participating in my first mentorship program as a Mentor for young women looking to start their careers in marketing/business.
Now that’s a WRAP. Thank you, everyone, for checking out the seoplus+ wrapped 2022 and for being part of our journey this year. We wish everyone a wonderful holiday season and here is to more success, and world-class results in 2023 – we can’t wait to see you there!
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PS: Huge #kudos to Graphic Designer Andrew Newby for his incredible work on the imagery for this seoplus+ Wrapped post.
