4 Questions with Sleeping Giant Media’s Danny Windsor
Who is Danny Windsor? (FE: What do you do? work, hobbies, passions etc)
Danny is the creative vision behind the brands Sleeping Giant Media and Giant Campus. As Brand & Marketing Manager, Danny focusses spreading the GIANT digital message far and wide, with his trustee team of creatives. Promoting the brand and delivering kick-ass social media content (what do you mean you don’t follow us #giantcampus?). As Head-Boy for Giant Campus, he drives the educational values for the training business and delivers projects like writing content for Google’s multi award winning Digital Garage platform.
With a degree in Fine Art from the Surrey Institute of Art and Design and a background initiating educational startups, Danny has launched a new GIANT product in Giant Campus and driven Sleeping Giant Media into their 10th year as a business. Outside of work, Danny is a dedicated father, taking advantage of Shared Parental Leave to spend time with his two girls and to spread word of the importance of daddy time.
An avid drawer and painter, Danny produced his own work for exhibition and private commission and can often be found at lunchtime sipping a triple shot mocha and people watching.
What is the most important piece of advice you can give businesses about Digital Marketing? The most ‘important piece of advice’ has to be top level, doesn’t it? Like, ‘Be online in the first place’ that’s the best advice. But once you are there I guess the best approach to take would be to max out on the free stuff, like SEO, local directories, competitions and social media. Good old fashioned PR… but online. This is before even considering the paid side of things.
In order to really make paid work (by paid I mean Pay Per Click ads and ads you might see on Facebook) you need to know your audience and their behaviour, and this you can learn through the free routes mentioned above.
My other piece of advice is education. Learn, learn and learn some more. Elearning resources like Google Digital Garage (ahem), and Facebook’s Blueprint, as well as regular content from providers like Moz and Search Engine Land are crucial to staying up to date. Nothing can replace learning hands-on from a professional human-to-human, and that’s why we have Giant Campus, but that pitch is for another day.
What are the biggest mistakes that businesses make with Social Media?
Not taking it seriously
Giving it to the apprentice or ‘young’ person
Thinking its about shouting their message as loud as they can
Listening to so-called ‘influencers’
Trying to hack or cheat the system
Ignoring that… if you don’t like your content, it’s probably crap
What could a reader go away and action right now that could make a difference in the way they market their business online?
To start with, have a website and make sure it ranks for more than just its brand terms. For example, if you run a coffee shop called ‘Cool Beans’, you want to rank for ‘Coffee shops near me’ as most users search on mobile in towns etc. Using services and directories help on a local level and setting up GMB (Google My Business) will give you a top result in search engine results, even if your website doesn’t rank itself.
How can readers get in touch with you if they have any questions?
Get in touch with me anyway. Find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter. Alternatively, grab me when you see me at local networking events and throw me a question. I love being put on the spot! Better still, book on to a Giant Campus course and see me in my natural environment.
