Genesis of a Tech Marketing Agency

There's no point keeping this a secret any more- I'm currently trying to change careers from public sector admin to public relations. I'll go into more detail about this another time, but for the moment, let's say I've had my eyes open. So when I got a message through Meetup from Write the Docs, a global tech writing organisation stretching through Australia and Europe, I thought I had nothing to lose.

I dropped into their Wednesday 20^th event, 'Genesis of a Technical Marketing Agency.' They offer 'social meetups for technical writers, developers, testers, writers of all sorts, and anyone who is interested in learning more about documentation.'

It was held at Colony CoWork, a trendy office space in Jactin House in the Northern Quarter.

What a great crowd!

Looking forward to the next one..#CoWork #CoCreate #Creative #Digital #Mcr #Manchester #Community #StartUp #Freelance pic.twitter.com/kGS54ef7pn

— COLONY (@ColonyCoWork) March 19, 2019

I'm not going to lie, it was heavier than I expected. I'm not a techie person at all, despite having ran a blog on social media for over a decade, so I should have guessed from the title what I was in for, but I still picked up some knowledge. The featured agency, Read Modify Write, was formed in 2017 by Matt and Helen Fleming, who were both key speakers on the night. They delved into content writing, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), linking to other places to garner pageviews, and how to start a business in this field.

The panel moved on to the research stage, discussing the act of finding other businesses doing a similar thing ('steal everything' was their advice, relating to processes, of course, not hardware). They also name-dropped helpful sites like Upwork (for freelancers) and Unveil, which appears to be a dating app, but I understand is a safe open source site used to help people find other people for work, either as a payer or payee. Buffer also got a mention, a site which 'makes it easy for businesses and marketing teams to schedule posts.' (It wouldn't surprise me if Twitter had banned it- they're being an arse about third party apps these days.)

An interesting night in a great venue with some knowledgeable speakers- it was a little different from what I currently write about, though, and to what I'm aiming to get into.