Everything Else · The Lori Diaries
I used to think being good at digital marketing meant coming up with a nice idea, designing something that looked good, writing a caption, and making sure it went out on time. All important things, of course. But the longer I work in marketing, the more I realise that publishing the post is often the smallest visible part of the job. There is everything that happens before it, everything that happens after it, and a surprising amount of time spent trying to understand why something that made perfect sense in my head isn't working quite the way I imagined.
When I first started working with social media, I liked the feeling of finishing something.
A caption was written. A visual was ready. The post was scheduled. I could tick it off my list and move on to the next one.
There was something satisfying about that little routine, especially when I could see the finished result sitting neatly on a page.
I still enjoy it. I love a well-designed visual, a sentence that finally sounds right, and that moment when all the pieces of a campaign start looking as though they belong together.
But somewhere along the way, I started asking different questions.
Who is this actually for? What do I want someone to understand after seeing it? Where will they go if they want to know more? And how will I know whether any of it worked?
Those questions have changed the way I see my job.
A Pretty Post Is Not a Strategy
I love design. Give me a good colour palette, an interesting layout, and a little room to experiment, and I can happily lose track of time.
But I've learned that liking a visual isn't the same as knowing whether it's doing its job.
A beautiful post can still leave someone wondering what I'm trying to say. A clever caption can sound wonderful to the person who wrote it and mean very little to someone seeing the brand for the first time.
That doesn't mean creativity matters less than I thought. It means creativity needs a reason.
Before I begin designing, I try to think about the person on the other side of the screen. What are they looking for? What might they be confused about? What would make them stop, read, and care?
Sometimes the answer is a striking visual. Sometimes it's a useful article, a short video, or a much simpler message than the one I originally had in mind.
I've become more interested in getting that part right than in making every single piece of content look impressive on its own.
A post doesn't exist in a little bubble. It's part of a much bigger conversation between a brand and the people it's trying to reach.
The Website Changed How I Think About Content
Working with WordPress and SEO opened up a completely different side of marketing for me.
On social media, a post appears in someone's feed and might disappear from their attention a few seconds later. A website asks for a different kind of thinking.
Someone might find an article weeks or months after it's published because they've searched for a question they want answered. They don't necessarily know the brand. They might not have seen a single social media post.
All they know is that they're looking for something, and the page in front of them might be able to help.
I started paying closer attention to titles, headings, links, search terms, and the way one page leads to another.
I also discovered that publishing a blog isn't quite the finish line I once imagined. There are pages to check, descriptions to write, links to fix, and older articles that deserve another look.
It's less glamorous than choosing the perfect cover image, perhaps, but I find it strangely satisfying.
There's a particular kind of pleasure in making a page clearer, easier to find, and more useful to someone who has never heard of you before.
And it has changed how I write for social media, too. I no longer think of a blog and a LinkedIn post as two completely separate tasks. They can be different ways of helping someone understand the same idea.
Then I Opened the Analytics
If you had told me at the beginning that I would spend time looking at charts and wondering why one page gets impressions but so few clicks, I'm not sure I would have believed you.
Yet here we are.
Google Search Console and Google Analytics have made me much more curious about what happens after I press Publish.
I might think a topic is interesting, but what are people actually searching for? Is a page appearing in search results? Are people choosing to click on it? Once they arrive, does the experience give them a reason to stay?
I like that the numbers can challenge my assumptions.
Sometimes the piece I spent the most time perfecting isn't the one that attracts attention. Sometimes an older article quietly brings people to the website while I'm busy thinking about the next big idea.
It can be humbling.
It can also be genuinely useful, provided I remember that a number isn't an explanation by itself.
If a page receives plenty of impressions but few clicks, I can look more closely at the search queries, the title, and the description. If people reach a page but don't take the next step, I can think about whether the page answers their question clearly or makes that next step easy to find.
I'm learning to treat analytics less like a report card and more like the beginning of another question.
A post going live tells me that I've finished making it. What happens afterwards tells me what I might need to learn.
Knowing a Little About Everything Helps Me See the Whole Picture
One of the things I enjoy about digital marketing is also one of the things that can make it feel overwhelming: there is always another skill to learn.
I might be writing an article one day, working on a visual the next, and then trying to understand a Google Ads setting or a website issue that sends me down a completely different rabbit hole.
Video editing asks me to think about pace. Design asks me to think about clarity. SEO asks me to think about what someone is searching for. Ads ask me to think more carefully about the audience and what happens after someone clicks.
Each part of the job changes how I approach the others.
I don't think that means one person should be expected to do every marketing job, and do all of them perfectly. Specialists exist for a reason, and there's a lot of value in knowing when someone else's expertise is needed.
But understanding how the different pieces fit together has made me more thoughtful about my own work.
A great ad won't fix a confusing landing page. A beautifully written article may struggle to reach people if the website makes it difficult to find. A social post might attract attention, but the message needs somewhere useful to lead.
I used to think of these as separate tasks on a to-do list.
Now I see them as parts of the same experience.
AI Can Help Me Work Faster. It Can't Decide What I Mean.
It's impossible to talk about digital marketing in 2026 without talking about AI.
There are tools that can help me brainstorm, organise ideas, speed up repetitive work, and explore different ways to approach a piece of content. I find that genuinely useful.
But the more these tools become part of everyday work, the more I think about what I don't want to hand over to them.
I still need to know who I'm writing for. I still need to check whether something is accurate. I still need to decide whether a sentence sounds like the brand, whether an image feels right, and whether the finished piece says anything worth someone's time.
AI can give me options. It can't know which option reflects an experience I've actually had or a promise a business can genuinely keep.
Search is changing, too. With AI-generated features appearing in Google Search, it's tempting to wonder whether every familiar SEO habit needs to be thrown away.
What makes more sense to me is to keep coming back to the fundamentals: make the page accessible, write something useful, answer the question clearly, and give readers a reason to trust what they're reading.
There may be new tools and new ways for people to discover content, but I don't want to confuse being quick with being good.
If anything, having more ways to produce content makes me want to be more careful about what I choose to publish.
I Don't Think the Goal Is to Know Everything Anymore
Earlier in my marketing journey, I sometimes felt as though I needed to become good at everything as quickly as possible.
There was always another platform to understand, another tutorial to watch, another setting I hadn't noticed, and another person online making the whole thing look effortless.
The trouble with that mindset is that digital marketing never reaches a point where there's nothing left to learn.
Something changes. A campaign teaches me that my first idea wasn't quite right. I discover a better way to organise a page. A report raises a question I hadn't thought to ask.
I still want to improve, of course. I want to be more confident with the technical side, more thoughtful with strategy, and better at turning complicated ideas into something people actually want to read.
But I'm trying not to measure progress only by the number of tools I know how to open.
I'd rather understand why I'm doing something than collect another skill simply because it looks impressive on paper.
There's also something comforting about admitting that I won't always know the answer immediately.
Sometimes the work is researching, asking someone who knows more, testing an idea, or discovering that the problem I thought I was solving wasn't the real problem at all.
That doesn't make the process less professional. It makes it more thoughtful.
The Part of the Job I Value Most
I still love the visible side of marketing.
I love seeing a finished design, publishing an article, and looking at a page that finally feels like it says exactly what I wanted it to say.
Those moments haven't become any less satisfying.
What has changed is that I now enjoy the work surrounding them, too.
The research that changes the direction of a piece. The small edit that makes a headline clearer. The question in an analytics report that sends me back to an older page. The conversation with a colleague that makes me realise I've been looking at something from only one angle.
I think that's what working in digital marketing has taught me more than anything else.
The job isn't simply about making things and putting them online. It's about paying attention, connecting ideas, and being willing to change your approach when you learn something new.
If someone asked me today what it takes to be a good digital marketer, I wouldn't hand them a list of software and tell them to master it all.
I'd talk about curiosity. About caring enough to understand the audience before trying to get their attention. About being creative without losing sight of the purpose, and being comfortable with data without pretending it tells the whole story.
I'd talk about knowing when to ask for help, when to try something different, and when a piece of work needs another look even though it's already been published.
I'm still learning all of those things myself.
And maybe that's the part I like most: there's always something new to figure out, but I no longer think I have to figure it all out at once.
If you work in marketing, I'd love to know which part of the job surprised you most once you started doing it. Was it the creativity, the technical side, the analytics, or something nobody thought to mention?
xoxo,
Lori
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