• 07 Aug 2015
  • 4 Min read

My first month at Glass Digital: Chris Thompson

I didn’t know what to expect when I started working at Glass Digital. I had never worked in content marketing before in an official capacity, only in my spare time with personal projects, so had no real experience or expertise in the industry. Although I had been writing at a professional level for years, search engine optimisation is an entirely different world to expressive writing. I had concerns that I would find it difficult to conform to the structure and style that good copywriters follow so effortlessly.

My first week at Glass Digital was spent being introduced to the process and systems that are used company-wide, as well as learning the basics of SEO. Although I had already undertaken some independent reading around the role, the training material I was provided with was very useful and did a great job of contextualising what I was learning.

I quickly learned that Glass Digital is a very client-focused company, and as such have systems in place for interacting with clients real-time, which is consistently honoured throughout the business. I was impressed with the attention that is paid to each client’s needs, and it appears that clients embrace this attitude judging by the amount of client interaction I see on a daily basis.

While my first week was reasonably paced, in my second week I was afforded much more of an opportunity to practise what I had learned on a number of different projects. I was assigned tasks in copywriting, research, and optimisation, each of which concerned a different topic, which certainly kept my work fresh and engaging. I was given feedback on each task and additional tips — I feel this style of on-the-job learning is the best kind of training.

The copy team at Glass Digital has a very relaxed but diligent attitude. We proofread each other’s work to an ultra-high standard but bear no malice or ego in our amends. We understand that the client’s best interests are what we have to consider, not our own, and that is definitely reflected in our style of quality control.

While I feel my writing is fairly strong, I learned that my punctuation could definitely use some work. As well as being given a helpful presentation on the house writing style, I was recommended some excellent independent reading which was very helpful, I feel these things have already improved my writing considerably.

In week three I was assigned a much longer project, which accounted for 25 hours. Although the task was initially quite daunting, I was excited to put all I had learned into a bigger project. There was a very heavy research element to the assignment, so I had to learn to balance my time between research and actual copywriting to ensure I kept within the allocated time for the project. It was great to work on a long assignment, as I could come to work in the morning knowing what I was going to do throughout the day.

I began to settle more into my job during week four. I was becoming a much more prolific copywriter and not necessarily taking the same amount of time to formulate ideas as I had in the previous weeks. I think a lot of the time if you start writing about the things you know, you’ll eventually find an angle, by which point you already have quite the chunk of good content to work from. The important thing is to communicate with the team and other departments to check whether you are on the right lines and whether you can be doing anything helpful. We are all working towards a common goal and I think the collaborative approach is definitely good for morale.

My biggest fear in becoming a professional copywriter was that I would lose my passion for writing, but in actual fact, I would say that the job has had the adverse effect. Learning more about the technical side of writing has encouraged me to write more in my free time, and I have already started to apply my knowledge of content optimisation to things I post online. My time at Glass Digital has been very enjoyable so far and I look forward to learning more about copywriting and SEO as I am trusted with bigger and more complex tasks.


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