Jonathan Brown is senior content strategist at Edge45, a digital marketing agency based in York.
Prior to joining the agency in 2022, Brown previously worked in a number of senior content roles at agencies such as Stickeyes and Sticky Content.
From the importance of flexible working to catching up on recent industry changes, he shares a recent week in his life with us…
Monday
Mondays are not just the start of the work week – they’re the start of the school week. As both me and my wife work pretty much full time, organising the kids is a big part of our day.
Most mornings are the same – up for 7am, dressed and breakfasted by 7.45am (if I’m lucky). Then drop my youngest at nursery (a 40-min round trip). Then get my two boys off to schools, which is thankfully just across the road. Then, on my bike and into work.
Our offices are right in the centre of York in the Guildhall, so the bike ride only takes 15 minutes and it’s usually along the riverside (unless it’s flooded). It’s a great way to start the day, especially in the summer.
We kick off Monday with a team catch up. It’s a good way to check in on all the clients and any new business work or pitches that are ongoing. We usually follow this up with a separate scrum. This is more aimed at the deliverables and any client specific issues.
For Mondays specifically, if I’m working on a digital PR and outreach project, I’ll tend to start emailing my contacts. This gives them plenty of time during to week to get to my press release and allows me time later in the week to follow up.
Other Monday tasks include checking in on all my clients – is the content live, has it been indexed, is it ranking, have we got any coverage over the weekend. Content marketing, especially when working with news publications, is a 7 day a week job so the weekends can see a lot of change. We use a variety of tools such as Ahrefs, SEMRush, Search Console and GA4.
Then it’s home to pick up the kids.
Tuesday
Tuesdays, I work from home. It’s great to work for an agency like Edge45 that allows flexible working. I’m very much a fan of both office work and working from home, and think each has their plus points. Yes, I don’t get as much time with my colleagues when working from home – but I also get distraction free time. And it helps me keep that work / life balance positive.
After dialling in for the morning scrum, I usually use my WFH days to get my head down and plough through a specific task. This could be putting slides together for a review deck or pulling together an in-depth content plan for the next quarter.
One of the most interesting tasks is getting a new site to work on. As someone who’s worked in the industry for over a decade, you can often instinctively see what’s wrong with a website right away. But you then need to go away and dig deep to make sure the data matches your hunch.
Once you’re in the data, then you start to see things you didn’t notice before – whether it’s that a client hasn’t done any PR for years, their email channel has been neglected, or they are simply missing a load of informational content.
With most of our existing clients, we work on 90-day plans. We feel this is a good timeframe as it allows us enough time to plan resources for the coming months but also gives us the ability to be flexible and pivot if something changes. We’ll sit down with the whole team to work out what’s next using our 90-day budget plans.
Wednesday
Back in the office on Wednesday. Again, we have our scrum first thing. By Wednesday, you usually have a good idea how the week is going, whether there’s any issues and if you’ve got enough capacity for your to do list that week.
Wednesdays are a good day to catch up internally on a few projects. I’ll often sit down with Jo Davey, our managing director, to run through new business or client renewal decks, or James Walker, our Head of SEO, to make sure our content and technical SEO strategies align.
Or I might pull together the content team for a catch up on recent industry changes – this could be AI content generation, EEAT, the Helpful Content Update or just an interesting article someone’s read. Sharing knowledge is vital in this industry as there’s something new happening pretty much every week.
For lunch, I tend to eat at my desk – I like to catch up on my stuff. As a bit of a film geek, I’ll check for the latest film news or see what’s happening in the world on The Guardian. Or maybe even fine tweak my Fantasy Football team, if I remember.
The rest of the team often have a game of Mario Kart at lunch – I don’t join in as last time I did I spent the whole race thinking I was doing great before realising I was looking at the wrong character and my car was just bashing itself against a wall in last place. It’s a young man’s game.
We often have a few client calls on Wednesday – it’s good to touch base and make sure everyone is happy. I can’t stress enough how important client comms are in agency life. It can be so easy to just get your task list and off you go – but you need to get client buy in at every step. The more they understand your work and its impact on their bottom line, the more likely they are to support your work in the long term.
Thursday
This is my day off. With three kids and two parents working almost full time, having Thursday off is vital for both me and my kids. It means no after school club for the two older boys and no nursery for my youngest.
I do tend to check my messages on my day off (mainly for office gossip), but only ever respond if it’s something vital. And then it’s usually to flag with a colleague to look after it or to say I’ll pick it up on Friday.
But I rarely get my laptop out. When I’m off with my kids, I’m with my kids. The work / life balance is important. More than ever, as the lines between home and work time blur. Happy workers make productive workers, and if people are constantly worried that they’re neglecting their home life, they’ll start to resent their work life.
Thankfully, Edge45 understand this and were happy to take me on a 4 days a week.
Friday
We try to keep Fridays as free of client meetings as possible. This gives people the chance to catch up on deliverables and get any work finalised before the weekend.
Often, we’ll organise a social catch up on Friday – whether in the office or somewhere else – and have a few rounds of ‘would you rather?’
If it’s at the end of the month, we’ll get together to make sure that we’ve ticked off all tasks for the month and if any are still to do, that the client is aware of the delay.
Personally, I’ll go through my own to do list and check that I’m comfortable with where everything is – making notes on when to do tasks, any blockers and timing issues. We use a time tracker called Harvest, so I can also check how much budget a client has left for the month and make sure we’ve delivered all we’ve promised. Sometimes we go over budget, but that’s the nature of agency life.
We might finish a little early on Friday if everything is in order. Then it’s home for a weekend with the kids – and where the real work begins.
