Amanda Walls is a director at Cedarwood Digital, a Manchester-based performance marketing agency.
Founded by Walls in 2016, the agency has previously worked with a mix of clients such as Patient Claim Line, Watches2U and Hayes Garden World.
Here, she shares a recent week in her life…
Monday
Can’t believe the weekend is over already – seems to absolutely fly by but Monday is a super early start as it’s one of my in-office days. I’ve always been really lucky and for the last 10 years I’ve woken up without an alarm – I was told that if you wake naturally it means you always wake out of your light sleep cycle and feel ready for the day, people often look at me surprised when I say that I don’t have an alarm but it’s always worked really well for me and I find I naturally wake at about 6:30am anyway!
Mondays are always the busiest day of the week – so I jump on the train to work in the office for a whole host of weekly meetings – kicking off with our internal business meetings with our head of operations, Anna, followed by the weekly digital PR catch up and then the weekly SEO catch up. Once all of this is over, it’s time for lunch and I try to have lunch with the team on the days I’m in the office. There’s something really nice about taking a full break for lunch and it’s also a nice opportunity for us to catch up socially from the weekend and discuss various shows on Netflix.
The afternoon for me is full of catching up on emails and putting some final preparations into our upcoming event Manchester DM, it’s on Thursday night so I’m finalising the deck, organising and setting up with sponsors. It’s also a busy week for new business so I’m setting up two pitch calls and also coordinating audits with our PPC team for a couple of clients in America.
About 5pm I’m finished in the office and head home for the day, the evening is filled with a dog walk, cooking dinner and then getting an early night ready to start all over again tomorrow.
Tuesday
Tuesday is the first of my run days during the week – I’ve recently been trying to improve my times so I tend to run four days a week with Tuesdays being the first and longest of these. My Tuesday runs are usually around 45 minutes so I get up and get that done, I have three different running routes so try to mix it up (and keep it as flat as possible!!!) – I’m hoping to increase from 5K to 10K in the next few months so fingers crossed!
Once I’m home I usually start at 8am on WFH days to try and get through emails and admin before the world switches on. I also use this time to check our rank trackers and review client performance, thankfully the August Core Update was kind to us!
Today is fairly quiet for calls so this allows me to get through some business admin, LinkedIn updates and also organising doggy day care for my dog, Ted! In the afternoon I have a couple of new business calls so the morning will be spent reviewing the relevant websites and prepping for those, in addition to touching base with the SEO team to discuss client strategy and next steps.
Tuesday evenings are always quiet so it will be a nice early night to recover from my run earlier!
Wednesday
Wednesday morning starts off with another usually shorter run, this time around the local common, this is also a great spot to meet lots of friendly local dogs, it’s actually where I got introduced to the local golden retriever owners group of 125 local retrievers – the meet ups are something else!
I start this morning by finishing off a deck for a Digital Marketing Superchat that I’m delivering next week on SEO For YMYL websites – I love talking about this topic but there’s been a few of immediate points of data to add from the recent algorithm update and some new tool features so these all get added to the deck, I then rehearse through it to check on timings (I am notorious for speaking too much!) and make sure I’m at least a few minutes under to allow for Q&A.
I also work to update our Manchester DM material to include new sponsorships and check in with each of their speakers to get their speeches set up. We’re also in reporting week which means I have to review each of our client reports – this also usually means fixing a connector in Looker Studio as something always seems to break on the reports – plan for next month is to make these a little more robust.
Wednesday is also long dog walk day – I usually take Ted to one of the local National Trust sites so we do a nice long walk together and he has a big off-leash run around, this is quite nice as a way of breaking up the week and also keeping my mind fresh – I always feel great when I get back!
The afternoon is a pitch with an American brand looking for Google Ads & SEO – we’re the last to pitch and they asked us to bring it forwards to it’s been all hands on deck for this one.
Thursday
Thursday is a super busy day this week as I’m out in west Manchester for a new business pitch and then driving back home to then come into the office – I would usually take the train but they have been so unreliable lately that I have taken to driving to all pitches to ensure that we are there on time!
On the road at 8:30am as I’m picking up a couple of team members en route, we’ll do the pitch and then hopefully grab a bit of lunch to debrief before I had back to drop the car off.
Once I’m back from the pitch I take Ted for a quick walk before answering some emails and running through the deck for tonight one final time – this is just to check that all the slide interactions work and check there aren’t any technical issues. I also do a quick run through to check we have everything we need – last time Anna had to make a last minute dash to Curry’s for a clicker and our SEO team to get some paper plates, so I feel we are a lot more organised this time.
I then finish pulling together another new business deck for a potential PPC client as well as putting the washing out to try and make the most of the tiny bits of sunshine that we get! I then finish reviewing another batch of client reports and notes ahead of our monthly calls to ensure that everything is aligned and try to evaluate how we are going to get a grip with data with the issues we’re currently facing in GA4.
I also submit a speaker pitch for an upcoming event as I’m trying to get more involved in the community.
I head into Manchester about 5pm for Manchester DM – looking forward to a full night of networking ahead and listening to some great talks!
Friday
The last day of the week starts off with another run – Friday is usually speed day so this means interval training, which is a nice change from the longer runs! Once I’m back I generally start again at 8am to get through any emails, I also set up a couple of LinkedIn posts for the next week, this can include promoting events we are running, showcasing case studies from recent client work or just general thought leadership.
Every last Friday of the month I have a call with my mentee who I met on the WTS mentoring program – we used to do it weekly while the program was on but decided to keep going afterwards, we get along really well and I really enjoy the sessions – it was one of the best things I did!
I usually use Fridays to get done most of my offline work – so that’s either lining up the LinkedIN posts, writing thought leadership articles or doing some work on the Cedarwood website. Testing SEO ideas out on the Cedarwood website is one of my favourite things to do, with mixed rounds of success – but it’s a lovely, relaxing way to finish the week!
