This year, our Seedlings took on BrightonSEO 2022! Fortunately, many of us bagged some tickets to the fringe events held before the official BrightonSEO event. We collectively attended many talks, including Measurefest, Paid Social Advertising Show, PR Show, and the Search Advertising show.
For some of our Seedlings, it was their first time experiencing a BrightonSEO event, namely our social team! Find our thoughts, experiences, and snippets from our favourite talks below.
Lauren
This was my first time attending the Brighton Fringe talks; previously, I managed only to get tickets to the main BrightonSEO event. However, I was surprised at the variety of shows we could attend, so I felt very spoilt for choice!
One talk, in particular, I found very insightful was from Alice Tonks in the Search Advertising Show on the importance of SEO and PPC working together. Alice presented ways of identifying “lone ranger” keywords that essentially mean you don’t have to spend as much on paid activity if you already rank for a particular search term. A win-win for saving money for clients. She even took it one step further and went into the details and benefits of pausing PPC brand activity, which turned into a debate between the other presenters! A great atmosphere in the room.
I also thoroughly enjoyed the ice cream truck, cuddling the dogs from Pets As Therapy, and watching Ben win his Google Chrome Cast (after many attempts!).
Steph
This year I went to the Paid Social Show, one of the Fringe events at Brighton SEO, with team #PaidSocial. The spectrum of topics under the umbrella of Paid Social is pretty broad – with a myriad of channels to start, but also in terms of the different aspects required to build a successful campaign. So, topics on the day covered subjects far and wide – from strategic ways to fight back at the algorithm, to talks about how to make your copy enticing and exciting (plus best practices regarding creatives).
The day’s most exciting talks were Rebecca Holloway’s “Why thought leadership must be part of your LinkedIn strategy” and Sarah Sal’s “Creating Content as Irresistible As Ice Cream On A Hot Day”. Both speakers highlighted the importance of being confident enough to present a unique voice in copy and design. In a competitive landscape, platitudes and generic promises don’t cut the mustard – be brave, stand out, and be unique!
Marie
It was pretty exciting to attend the Brighton SEO Paid Social Show for the first time! It’s always quite reassuring to know that whatever struggles you have in your job are shared by the entire industry. I appreciated the different tools that Nadya Birca shared in her talk “Why short-form video rules: the difference between reels, shorts and TikTok.” God knows social media people need all the help they can get – be it for video editing, post scheduling, or reporting!
Rebecca Holloway’s talk about “Why thought leadership MUST be part of your LinkedIn strategy” inspired me to rethink the content that we share on Seed’s different digital platforms. I’d definitely want to attend again next time!
Beth
Brighton SEO Paid Social show did not disappoint! I took a lot away from the day (7 pages of notes and maybe a few merch goodies) and had a lot of inspiration of methodologies to trial with accounts I work on.
As an insights nerd, Becky Dickinson’s Meta audit talk was right up my street. A thoroughly engaging walkthrough of how we can utilise audit accounts to ensure we are getting the most out of our set-up – critical elements of the audit included Tracking, Audiences and Creative audits.
I also really enjoyed Jack Brown’s refreshing take on why CPA and ROAS are vanity metrics and why we should be optimising towards effectiveness metrics such as leads, lifetime value and POAS (profit on ad spend). His methodology utilised a combination of calculations, technical optimisations and cross platform data and has shown tangible results.
Montana
As an apprentice, this was my first time at BrightonSEO, so I was walking around all wide-eyed, and it was like nothing I’d ever seen! There were so many people buzzing about learning new information and techniques about the industry, and I’ve got to say, it was infectious.
A talk I was very engaged with was given by a good friend of mine, Angelo Cosma Galluzzo on “Understanding the Impact World Events Have On User’s Search Behaviour ” speaking at Measurefest. His talk spoke about a tool we could soon use to target search queries based on seasonal or cultural events, and then automate that process to predict search trends in the future. It’s hopefully something I’ll be able to utilise in my work.
It made me feel proud to be a part of the industry when I was at BrightonSEO, surrounded by like-minded people. And reconnecting with my friend forced me to brush up on my networking skills! It was an experience, the first of many. All I can say is, bring it on next year!
