Our virtual work environment currently spans 13 countries, including Bulgaria, Ethiopia, India, Kosovo, Ukraine, Romania, Argentina, Macedonia, the Philippines, Egypt, Mexico, Scotland, and the United States. This representation empowers us to connect with top talent around the world, and more authentically with diverse audiences by bringing fresh perspectives to our search engine optimization (SEO) and digital marketing strategies.

Because we know diverse backgrounds and experiences enrich our agency, we foster an inclusive culture that fuels innovation, creativity, and inclusion.

“We recruit top talent, ensure our culture is inclusive, and that everyone feels a sense of belonging. Retention is a natural result, and our clients benefit from a talented and experienced team. In fact, our turnover this year is a record low,” Jill Wenk, Vice President of People Success.”

In this post, we will explore the impact that diversity plays in digital marketing and hear from team members at Hennessey Digital about what it means to them in their careers, and how it fuels innovation, expands horizons, and drives our collective success.

The Power of Diversity in SEO and Digital Marketing

Expanding: Our Global Reach & The Evolving SEO Landscape

Digital marketing is constantly changing how companies and consumers connect and exchange information – and at a rapid pace. What worked a few years ago might not be applicable today. Diversity among our team members at Hennessey Digital allows us to approach SEO challenges from multiple angles, which enables us to stay ahead of competitors for our clients and on top of the latest changes in SEO.

To stay relevant, businesses must adapt strategies and consider the latest trends or changes, such as algorithm updates and the rise of AI & ChatGPT. Incorporating unique perspectives, fresh ideas, and innovative approaches is a necessity to effectively tackle the complexities of algorithm updates. Drawing from diverse knowledge and experiences globally, this approach results in improved rankings and increased organic traffic for our clients. Embracing diversity in digital marketing ensures that our strategies remain relevant to targeted audience segments, ultimately maximizing our impact and generating superior results for our clients.

“Diversity helps in the work we deliver because it brings people with different perspectives together on how to solve a problem. This type of collaboration has shown to produce some really creative solutions.” – Stanislov, Senior Data Scientist (Bulgaria)

“Digital Marketing became my career choice because there was less pre-defined work with more experiences and things to explore that this field has to offer.” – Abhishek, Senior Local SEO Specialist (India) 

“Diversity has a crucial role in digital marketing since people from different parts of the world and different cultures think differently in terms of marketing in general. For example, creating a campaign for advertising coffee in Italy and in Turkey can be very different – the types of coffee that people drink in the two countries are different (espresso in general in Italy, Turkish coffee in Turkey), how and when they might consume coffee, and also the age limit for coffee drinkers. The way to look at the market and target audiences will not be the same. So in cases like this, having culturally diverse team members can be very helpful in developing successful marketing campaigns.” – Aleksandar, Software Engineer II (Macedonia)

“Since digital marketing requires engagement from potential customers, the background of this audience is a factor in the results. It is best to be considerate of the diversity in the world for maximum results.” – Ermiyas, Software Engineer I (Ethiopia)

Hiring the Best & Brightest: Expanding the Talent Pool

We pride ourselves on shattering geographic boundaries to find the best talent no matter their location. In order to remain at the forefront of digital marketing, our agency needs to have experts who have the skills, knowledge, and passion to drive results for our clients. This global mindset is threaded throughout the company in a very natural way which allows us to learn from each other and collectively elevate our own expertise to push the boundaries of what is possible in the digital marketing space.

Breaking Geographical Barriers

Personally, it is an incredible experience to hop on a Zoom meeting and chat with team members in Bulgaria or Kosovo, or even across the country at Hennessey Studios in Los Angeles. Removing geographical constraints allows Hennessey Digital to attract experts who bring a diverse range of skills, knowledge, and experiences to the digital marketing table.

“When recruiters only look in one city, there is a limited pool of applicants. Often managers must pick the best candidates of what is available. When recruiting globally, the size of the candidate pool is unlimited, allowing us to select the best and brightest candidates from around the world. This definitely achieves a better-qualified candidate, often with more precise experience,” Wenk notes.

“For me, marketing is connected to everything: creativity, technology, and culture. I believe diversity has a key role, particularly today, where everything is connected and people from all parts of the world are getting more together than ever.” – Salvador, Content Writer (Mexico)

Connecting Through Knowledge Sharing and Fostering Innovation

Being a smaller agency means our talented team members touch multiple projects. and many are cross-trained allowing us to provide better service to our clients. This collaborative approach means we’re continuously working with and learning across departments, experiences, and backgrounds to share best practices, insights, and emerging trends. This diversity of thought allows our creative juices to flow and sparks innovative ideas that enable each department to overcome challenges with fresh strategies and solutions that achieve success for our clients.

This collaboration has resulted in innovation and new products such as HD Translate. Ideated and developed in-house, our proprietary cutting-edge website translation tool helps reach multinational audiences while boosting SEO. Leveraging AI and ChatGPT technology, HD Translate optimizes your web pages for indexing by Google in multiple languages. This boosts your visibility in search results and ensures native-level, natural-sounding content across different languages.

“I am drawn to the competitive digital marketing industry because it offers dynamic and creative jobs, a high learning curve scope, and the opportunity to work on different projects. Moreover, digital marketing has become an integral part of every company today, and I want to be a part of it.” – Mohammed, Software Engineer I (Egypt)

“I love the creative side of digital marketing, how brands choose to represent themselves, and where I personally can explore and bring new ideas to life. The diversity of digital marketing means it’s always evolving which provides the possibility to always learn something new.” – Teodora, Content Strategist (Romania)

By embracing our global workforce in all its forms, everyone’s unique perspective is valued and celebrated, ultimately leading to inclusive digital marketing strategies that have an impact. It allows us to better understand and cater to the unique needs and preferences of our clients, drives innovation, enhances SEO strategies, fuels creative campaigns, fosters our work environment, and propels our clients’ businesses to success.

Diversity is part of who we are at Hennessey Digital, and embracing global diversity is one of our strategic advantages. Are you looking to work with the best and brightest? Harness the full potential of Hennessey Digital, a global, diverse digital marketing agency where we deliver exceptional results to our clients through digital marketing excellence.

The post Embracing the Power of a Globally Diverse Workforce appeared first on Hennessey Digital.

Recently in this space, we shared our tips for working remotely. Taking it a step further, we asked the Hennessey Digital team in Slack:

What are some “remote work quirks” or examples of things that could only happen in a virtual work environment?

A few key themes popped up in our team members’ responses.

Your relationships get stronger

“Having the ability to take a pause between calls and go into the other room to have lunch with my daughter!” – Crystal McCane

“So many great benefits, but my favorite part about working from home has always been seeing my kids off to school and being here when they return home!” – Rob Coleman

“There are so many great benefits working from home. Getting to connect and interact with people from all parts of the world. Having a healthy work life balance allows me to be more productive and happy at work.” – Charlie Arboleda

“For me, the benefit of work-from-home culture is joining a company that is 8,000 miles away from my desk.” – Abhishek Bittu

You get creative with technology

“Creating unique emojis in Slack!” – Natasha Guy

“Turning the expression on someone’s face when their screen freezes into a Slack reaction emoji.” – Cindy Kerber Spellman

“Hearing about all the private channels I am not included on whenever we meet in person.” – Blin Kazazi

Looks like the web development team is busted.

And you know your team truly is global when, on the same day, Blin Kazazi posted “working from Albania this week” and Arthur Radulescu posted “working from Egypt this week,” both with pictures to prove it.

Not bad, guys!

Your coworkers might look different

“Pets contributing to work meetings by, say, knocking things off of the dining room table the minute you get onto Zoom.” – Celia Daniels

“When your dog starts barking in the middle of a meeting or when a roommate, family member, or loved one doesn’t realize you’re in a meeting and starts asking questions or walks into the camera view.” – Anthony Fournier

“Cats on camera, cats on the keyboard… CATS!” – Scott Shrum

“Pet coworkers!” – Ilona Townsend 

“My latest remote work issue is having to check under my chair before getting up. We have so many blankets and cat beds, but this little one likes to stay close no matter the risk.” – Mary Martinez

“I’d be shocked if this would happen in a non-remote work environment: having to push my cat’s butt out of the way before a call. I’m gone for two minutes and find him like this.” – Teodora Radu

“When your dog only makes an appearance by bursting open your office door out of excitement when he hears the voice of the same co-worker on Zoom (Liz Feezor) or to bark at a different co-worker (Scott Shrum). The same two, all the time.” – Cindy Kerber Spellman 

Your space is fully customized

Natasha Guy likes making her work space her space…

“We get CUSTOM work spaces we get to design ourselves and we don’t have to tolerate annoying coworker habits (I’ve had to sit next to hummers, loud typers, fiddlers that jiggle the connected desks, a poor allergy plagued coworker whose nose ALWAYS ran lol). Being able to fidget/hum/etc. without bothering others and existing without being bothered by others is pretty great.”

And Greg Herrmann loves the no-wait nature of working from home versus commuting to an office.

“I used to always have to wait for things like the fridge or the sink when trying to get my lunch or clean things up at work. Being at home by myself there is absolutely no wait for lunch time or when I need to clean up. Heck, even the bathroom is always available!”

Oscar Stan puts his feet up at work, literally.

“Feet up on the ottoman, table, or just your plain old footstool, with or without flip-flops or socks while doing some work. Oh, and the occasional trudge, sprint, or race to the fridge to grab a drink or an apple if you’re health-conscious. ”

Ash Baker customizes her calendar to maximize her time.

“Getting to do chores on my lunch break so my after-work time is for relaxation only.”

And Kristine Hyman sums up a work-from-home philosophy observed by many, myself included:

“Business on the top, loungewear on the bottom. #pjsforlife”

Expect the unexpected when you work remotely

One of the most surprising things about meeting coworkers in person for the first time? People’s heights.

Jasper Prince explains their experience working with a virtual team and what it’s like meeting for the first time in real life.

“Meeting folks in person for the first time and seeing how tall or short they are! Plus, people’s faces just look a little different in person. It feels like having a bunch of internet friends you finally meet at a convention. There’s so much energy, lots of hugs and excitement. It almost feels like a dream when you get back home and start interacting online again!”

And Gerri Turner warns us to expect the occasional at-home mishap.

“When you accidentally lock yourself out of your office/house during lunch and can’t get back to your computer so it looks like you’re having a leisurely looooooong lunch while you’re sweating and trying to find a way to break in!”

Sometimes technology works against us, as Angela Gennovario reminded us. Lest we forget the audio sync issues that plagued our holiday greetings…

Happy Holidays From Hennessey Digital – hennesseydigital

But tech can also bring us together in fun and unexpected ways, as Amy Heigel remembers.

“In my time here I’ve been on a handful of zoom meetings with different people and Jason Hennessey randomly pops up in their background and says hi!”

Do you work for a remote company? What would you add to our list of remote work quirks? Fill out the form below and tell us what we missed.

The post What Are Things That Could Only Happen in a Remote Work Environment? appeared first on Hennessey Digital.

Create a routine for self-accountability

“Schedule time in your calendar for YOU. We all schedule meetings, lunch, etc, but rarely do we schedule time for ourselves. Make it official – even if it’s 5 min to just breathe!” -Kait Willis, CRO Data Analyst

“For me, it’s making a routine I follow… I just do what I did when I had to work at an office. The bonus is having a dog, he needs to go out every 1.5 hours to 2 hours and gets me to get up and walk a little at least.” -Anthony Fournier, Paid Search Specialist

“I always shower, get dressed, and eat something before I start my work day. In that way, my morning routine is exactly the same as it was before I started working from home. I don’t like working in my pajamas, and the morning routine sort of acts as my ‘commute’ when I transition from home time to the work day.” –Scott Shrum, President & COO

Leverage technology

“I swear by Google tasks to keep reminders for myself and updates on where my clients are at!” –Angela Gennovario, Associate Account Manager

“If you can’t manage two separate devices, I highly recommend utilizing Google Chrome Profiles. I have one profile for my @hennessey.com address and another for my personal @gmail.com address. This allows me to keep unique bookmarks for work separate from my personal bookmarks.” –Greg Herrmann, Senior Manager of Learning & Development

“Biggest tip I can give is: more monitors, less tabs. At least two monitors will help give you more space to work on, but I know a lot of us have a ton of tabs open all at once. I used to fear closing tabs because I’d forget or lose a page. I found closing out all my tabs any time I’m done greatly increased my organization skills. That’s just me though.” -James Cant, Local SEO Specialist

“I would say make sure that you ‘schedule’ 5 or so minutes on team meetings for smalltalk. Since we don’t have in-person meetings, the connection with team members can get lost. This way, you’re still keeping in touch with work friends and have a personal connection with people!” –Amy Heigel, Marketing & Communications Manager

“If possible, keep all your work on a separate non-personal computer.” –Brandon Caballero, Director of Analytics & CRO

Optimize your physical space

“The lighting in my office is challenging, so I keep a few items, like lip gloss and blush at my fingertips so I don’t look washed out on Zoom.  It helps me feel (and appear) more put together, even though I am not spending 30 minutes on makeup and hair.” –Jill Wenk, Senior Director of People Success

“It’s also important for me to create a space I want to work in! I still have a long way to go on decorating this office, but every piece of art, every pretty rock I have near my desk makes it that much more pleasant to spend time in the office.”-Jasper Prince, Graphic Designer

“1. Keep healthy snacks in sight. I’m less likely to raid the pantry for junk food if I know there’s a better choice. 2. If you have clingy pets, don’t fight it. Redirect it. I put a cat bed next to my computer so Dusty can keep an eye on me without getting in my way. Interactive toys are also a great way to encourage the pets to entertain themselves.” – Mary Martinez, Content Editor

Promote a clear work/life distinction

“I highly recommend making a habit of doing something to help distinguish between work time and relaxing time after-hours, especially if you’re like me and you generally prefer staying at home. For me, I have string lights around the house that only are on during the weekend. I also like to get changed and start dinner right at 5pm when my work day ends. This helps me cleanly separate from work and leave my work anxieties for the next day.” –Jasper Prince, Graphic Designer

“I like to ‘commute’ to work so whenever the weather permits I take a 10-15 minute walk before I start working. Excited that the weather is getting nicer and I can finally start doing this again!” –Blin Kazazi, Chief Technology Officer

“At the end of each work day, I almost always go for a 2-3 mile walk. I started doing that instead of going to the gym when the pandemic started, and I found that it kind of served as my ‘evening commute,’ helping me transition from the work day back to home mode.” –Scott Shrum, President & COO

Remote work and company culture

Remote company culture is a tricky thing. Without a physical presence or an office everyone goes into, it can be difficult to create a sense of camaraderie among remote team members. Our founder and CEO Jason Hennessey wrote about this very thing for Entrepreneur last year!

We’ve found that having purpose-driven activities and consistent, clear communication move us in the right direction towards our Vivid Vision while maintaining the culture we want for Hennessey Digital.

Activities like RAK Week give us the opportunity to help each other and our communities. We meet up in person at legal conferences and events and at leadership team retreats in our hub cities.

What are your best tips for working remotely? Tweet us at @HennesseyDgtl and give us your ideas.

(And the featured photo for this post is what VP of SEO Steve Guberman thinks Local SEO Specialist James Cant is running Windows on as this third monitor. Good-natured jokes and gags are a great way to strengthen your remote team’s work culture—and specifically called out in our 127 Code of Honor!)

The post Our Best Tips for Working Remotely appeared first on Hennessey Digital.

Virtual work arrangements are here to stay, and we’re sharing our best practices for how to build a strong organization in a remote work environment.

Work and COVID-19

First, let’s address the elephant in the room: COVID-19. Of course, many organizations were forced to move to a virtual model when the pandemic hit in the spring of 2020. Companies scrambled to figure out how working remotely “could” or “should” look for them: policies had to change, video calls replaced in-person meetings, and home offices had to be set up.

While COVID-19 forced many organizations to move to virtual work environments, it was business as usual for us. There were, of course, some changes that occurred due to COVID, but we used to Zoom meetings and instant messaging all along, so we had a head start on the “all-remote work” thing. Our founder and CEO Jason Hennessey recently shared our remote work strategies on the CallTrackingMetrics podcast: listen in to learn how we’ve found success as a virtual organization!

Over the years as a global, 100%-virtual company, we’ve tested various strategies and tactics, learned from our mistakes, and celebrated our wins together. Here are our top three tips for how to build a strong organization in a virtual work environment, no office required.

The role of communication

In any industry, communication (or lack thereof) can make or break your company’s level of success. At Hennessey Digital, we’ve found that clear, frequent communication is what differentiates us from other agencies.

As a high-growth company, we also know that purposeful, high-quality internal communication leads to successful outcomes within the agency. Each department within the organization works hard to deliver excellent work to our clients, but sometimes it’s difficult to know what’s happening outside your own department—or how what you’re working on might affect other functional areas.

Information silos happen, and that’s why we started a regular meeting cadence with company leadership to share wins and progress towards our annual goals, discuss ideas and projects, and learn about initiatives that affect multiple departments to prevent rework and miscommunication.

At the same time, we are careful not to overload schedules with meetings: before we send out a meeting invite, we remind ourselves to ask, “Can this meeting I’m about to request be an email? Should this email I’m about to draft be an instant message?” Always consider the urgency level and need for efficiency when sharing information with others.

And because the internal ties closely to the external, our communication practices also affect how we work with our clients. Our work involves strategy, content, and technical aspects working together, and when clients can tie our efforts directly to leads coming to them, they can clearly see the value of their investment. We frame issues and ideas from the client’s perspective: we know what matters to them, so when we communicate the activities and steps we’re taking on our clients’ websites, we connect it back to the ROI that these activities yield for their business.

Technology and virtual work environments

Closely tied to communication, connectivity via technology is another factor in making virtual work environments successful.

Our team is connected through multiple channels throughout the day. As we shared earlier, it’s important to consider which platform is appropriate for different types of information and the urgency level of the message.

We use Slack internally for instant messaging between individual team members, among departments and project groups, and, occasionally, to the entire organization. Our #general channel is used for company announcements and celebrating work anniversaries (“Henniversaries” in our world), birthdays, and new team members joining us.  We also use specific channels for projects, departments, and personal interests.

Email is reserved for non-urgent items and things that require more lengthy explanations like an announcement of a new program launch. We also use email to correspond with clients and outside vendors. Anything that requires an “official” paper trail like a digital signature or acknowledgement goes through email.

Our Director of People Success Jill Wenk sees a shift in expectations on different communication channels. Jill shares, “We find that this is an adjustment for many new hires: at many companies, emails are still the main form of communication. Here, it’s more limited to company business.”

Zoom is another tool we use quite a bit. In a virtual work environment, many of us have never met in person! Without an office, we miss out on those face-to-face interactions you get when you work in the same physical space together, so video meetings are the next best thing.

We encourage everyone to turn their camera on when we’re on Zoom calls (including clients!) whenever possible. Seeing everyone’s facial expressions is another way to connect with each other and pick up on nonverbal cues we’d miss without a video feed.

Training and project management

Aside from written and verbal communication, we use Asana for our project management tool to keep everyone up to date on the details, deliverables, and deadlines for client projects and internal work. Staying organized is as equally important as staying connected, and with multiple clients and projects happening concurrently, you need a good tool to track it all.

Not only are we connected through technology; the technology itself is connected through integrations. Slack is integrated with Zoom and our Google Workspace, so we can check availability and initiate meetings quickly within our messaging tool. We also use 7geese (now Paycor) for performance management, and when we give a fellow team member a shout-out for a job well done, it’s integrated into Slack so we can instantly see kudos come across in our #recognition Slack channel.

These are the tools that work for us: there’s no “special system” or magic bullet that works perfectly for every organization. (And we should mention that we’re not paid by any of these companies, but our Venmo is open if they’re feeling generous!)

Proper implementation and training is key to any new process or technology’s success. Investing in training is something we take seriously, so we have a full-time Learning and Development professional on staff. They create valuable training modules through Lessonly for everything from new team member onboarding to keeping up with compliance standards and training on new processes. We truly believe in living by our guiding principle to “never stop learning!”

Knowledge is power, and empowered employees make for a strong culture.

And speaking of culture…

Virtual work environments and office culture

While some leaders are bemoaning the loss of office culture with the rise of remote work, we’ve found that “culture” has less to do with physical location and more to do with frequent communication, sharing information with each other, and having fun while we work.

Creating a strong culture in a remote work environment means we feel connected to the mission, vision, and values of the organization, are engaged in the work we do day-to-day, and are invested in one another’s success, which involves time, effort, and intentionality.

This effort isn’t the responsibility of any one department, either. In addition to being engaged in our day-to-day work, we also love to have fun, and our “Culture Crew,” an ad hoc group with team members from all functional areas, creates and hosts annual company-wide events including “March Meowness” (our pet competition), a Halloween costume contest, and our ugly sweater contest during the holidays.

“You have to be intentional about connecting with team members when you’re not in an office together, because it won’t always happen organically. The Culture Crew is a huge part of creating this intentionality and helping all team members across the globe feel included in our team culture,” Jill says.

Interacting in a virtual work environment

For us, “culture” also refers to our rules for the road and our standards for interacting with each other. Creating our core company messaging helped us define who we are and the bigger “why” behind what we do. Even going through the exercise of writing our core messaging was an expression of our work culture: collaborative, open-minded, honest and transparent, and always innovating and improving on what we do.

Having a stated mission, vision, and guiding principles drives our decision making and helps us live our values through our work. At the same time we were finalizing our core messaging, we also reimagined our existing employee handbook and rebranded it as the “Team Member Playbook.” This new iteration infuses our personality into a document that has a reputation for being dry and boring, which engages team members in the material (and makes referring to the Playbook less of a chore!)

We created our 127 Code of Honor to communicate how we operate and it’s right there on our website for anyone to access. The 127 Code of Honor is not an internal document that only Hennessey Digital team members can see. Because it applies to everyone who works with us, we want clients, vendors, and future team members to understand what our expectations are around behavior and decision making.

Culture add versus culture fit

Speaking of future team members, when we’re recruiting for an open position on one of our teams, we ask ourselves, “Who would be a good culture add here?” Much is said about “culture fit” in recruiting practices, but “culture add” promotes diversity, both of thought and in our team members’ backgrounds. It helps us keep growing and innovating, which is one of Hennessey Digital’s guiding principles.

Another critical part of our company culture is our guiding principles. These are infused into the decision making process at Hennessey Digital and are directly tied to team member performance.

Our four guiding principles are:

• Be honest and transparent.
• Stay nimble; never stop learning.
• Do the right thing, always.
• Make it fun; don’t be a jerk.

When we give a team member recognition, it’s automatically tied to one of these principles. When we shout out a teammate for a job well done, we’re always thinking about how their actions are tied to our core beliefs. Our culture is intrinsically tied to performance, so there are no gaps between what we say we believe and how we’re rewarded as team members.

We make it easy to recognize a team member. Because 7geese is integrated with Slack, we can recognize a team member on one of those platforms and it feeds into the other with full transparency into both systems. Everyone can see who’s recognizing whom, and team members can acknowledge these shout-outs with emoji and comments.

At the end of the day, we’re a digital marketing company. But what makes us different is our willingness to always make things fun around here. Our team is quick to make jokes, share hilarious .gifs in the team chat (and in our bios!) and surprise and delight each other at any opportunity. When you like the people you work with, it makes logging in every morning something to look forward to.

Bringing it all together

“Work culture” is more than just a stated mission and goals or the benefits package offered to employees, although these are certainly part of it.

We think about “work culture” as the feeling we have when we show up and do our jobs every day. There are multiple factors that affect work culture including team structure and management style, the quality and frequency of communication, the level of psychological safety team members have, and “satisfiers” like pay and benefits.

Engaging team members across the globe is important to making everyone feel included and valued. We celebrated International Month in May to spotlight the countries and cultures of our team members outside the U.S. We’re now up to 8 countries represented outside the U.S. and counting!

We also want our team members to be able to give back, so we’re observing a Day of Giving this month for our people to take paid time to do virtual volunteer work for the charitable organization of their choice.

Basically, we show up for each other, we care personally about each of our team members, and we treat them well. Doing this isn’t just the right thing to do: it’s the right way to do business. Take care of your people, and your people will take care of your clients.

Communication, connectivity, and culture drive our remote work environment. What about you?

Do you have a virtual work environment or are your employees fully-remote post-COVID?

How are you creating a strong work culture without a physical office? Tweet us at @HennesseyDgtl and tell us all about it!

The post How to Build a Strong Organization in a Virtual Work Environment appeared first on Hennessey Digital.