Emilia Lingwood is a senior social and paid media manager at ilk Agency, a Leeds-based integrated agency.
Lingwood joined the agency in 2022 from Blueclaw, a search marketing agency based in Leeds, where she worked within a paid media team specialising in Google Ads and digital advertising platforms.
Since joining ilk, Lingwood has been working on a number of multi-channel paid media campaigns and has since relocated to Barcelona.
From tackling time differences to navigating reactive TikTok’s, she shares a recent week in her life…
Monday
I live in Barcelona, so my working day looks a little different to most of my colleagues based at our HQ in Leeds.
I started working for ilk in summer 2022 whilst still living in Leeds, but made the move to the Med in mid-2023. ilk have been incredible in supporting my move, and I now work remotely (aside from popping back every couple of months for bigger client meetings and social events). It’s something I always dreamed of doing, so I still can’t believe it’s my reality!
I have a membership at a coworking space, and on a Monday there’s free coffee and pastries which is always enough to tempt me out of the house. The week always starts with a catch-up with our integrated comms team of 11, where we discuss main priorities for the week and delegate tasks.
I then moved on to influencer content approvals – we’re working with a couple of influencers in the gaming space as part of an ongoing government-backed campaign called Generation Logistics, designed to spread awareness of the sector across Gen Z and drive recruitment.
For the same project, I also had a call in the afternoon with the automotive brand McClaren, who have offered to work with us as part of a series called ‘Moving Mountains’, where we set out to tell the logistics stories behind interesting products or events.
We spoke to their Trackside Logistics Team Leader for Formula One, who had some incredible stories to tell! As a big Drive to Survive fan, it was so cool to hear about the rapid turnaround and transport of the cars and parts from one race and country to the next. We’re planning an interactive on-site asset to tell this story, with supporting social video content too.
Tuesday
Tuesday kicked off with a brainstorming session for our client Sanctuary Bathrooms – there were so many fresh and exciting PR and social ideas to come out of it which we’ll soon be presenting to them.
I also had a mentoring session with another of ilk’s social managers, Lauren, running her through some Google Ads search campaign optimisation tips. At ilk we run our own Google Ads activity to generate new business leads, so we set up an experiment to test the effectiveness of some fresh USPs, including shouting about our two recent wins at the Northern Digital Awards! We also posted a quick, reactive TikTok off the back of the Grammy Awards which happened the night before.
Wednesday
The time difference in Spain means I don’t start work until 10am, so I used the extra time in the gym at my coworking space. I always feel so much more productive in the mornings when I’ve moved my body first.
A lot of Wednesday was spent planning next month’s social calendar for Generation Logistics. We brainstormed content ideas as a team, looking back at last month’s performance to detect trends in our strongest performing posts. We’ve been seeing a steer towards people-first content, so have been making an effort to prioritise this, whether it’s by working with more creators, or encouraging self-filmed content from those actually working in the industry.
That day we’d been sent some footage for a couple of ‘Follow me around…’ style TikTok videos, so I spent time in CapCut editing those together.
Thursday
Along with a couple of regular weekly client catch ups, I spent Thursday morning planning out a YouTube Ads campaign for client Tomato Energy, a sustainable energy company.
They’re currently developing a TV ad, and we’ve decided that it’s best to trial the ad’s performance on digital channels before committing to the bigger budget TV campaign with Sky. I sent that off to the client for their thoughts, then in the afternoon my Head of Department and I held an interview for a new executive to join the team since we’ve had some exciting new biz wins recently!
The afternoon consisted of planning a series of social videos for our new client UNCLE, ahead of their new apartment building opening in Leeds city centre. The reels are designed to show off all the easily walkable bars, cafes and independents close by. I caught up with our videographer to run him through the plans and to help make stylistic decisions, before relaying them to the client via email for sign off.
After work I play a game of padel with a few friends. They have courts all over the city, and it’s getting more popular in the UK too!
Friday
The social team had an onboarding session on Friday morning with the account manager of our new influencer management tool, Tagger.
With influencer marketing becoming an increasingly integral part of what we do at ilk, we felt like it was time to implement an insights tool to achieve the best possible results through collaborations for our clients, as well as free up some of our time. It was such a useful session and I can tell already that Tagger is going to be so helpful.
Once a month on a Friday afternoon, the social team get together to chat about the best social campaigns we’ve seen over the last month. Literally anything goes, from RSPB’s Bird of the Week TikToks (if you’ve not already viewed, I highly recommend) or Duolingo’s sarcastic replies on X. A great way to feel inspired by other brands killing the game
For the last working hour of the week I took myself up to the rooftop of the coworking space to get a bit of Vitamin D on a company-wide call, listening to everyone’s favourite parts of the week as we always do. It’s the perfect way to wrap up the week.
