The Pixel Workshop - Carl Rydings

As part of my MSc Digital Marketing at The University of Salford I embarked on a three-month internship at The Pixel Workshop, a pioneering company based here in Manchester, they provide computer-generated images (CGI) for property marketing and obtaining planning permission. Founded in 2006, they work with property developers, architects, interior designers and estate agents to produce images and animations for use on website, brochures, hoardings and more.

The main objectives of this project was to create a digital marketing strategy which included editing and updating the company’s website and landing pages to improve its search engine optimisation (SEO). I also implemented a multi-channel content strategy across the companies blog and social media to bring more visitors to the website. This brief was the perfect way to put the theory we had been learning over the last year into practice on a live brief.

I worked closely with the Business Development Manager and the rest of the team at the companies office in Manchester to understand the clients and put together a digital strategy. I worked from 9 am to 5 pm Monday to Wednesday on a range of tasks, including analysing their current marketing activities, researching their competitors and undertaking keyword research. After collecting all of my analysis together, I discussed my finding and recommendations with the team and started updating the company’s website to improve both its search engine optimisation and its usability.

I put together a blog and social media strategy to help bring more visitors to the website and improved the landing pages to cover more keywords, making sure that everything was trackable and including a call to actions. This was important when I moved onto the final part of the project, analysing the data to see what worked and what did not.

While at The Pixel Workshop, I used my video editing skills to help edit some CGI animations and fly-throughs they had, to help show off the different videos the client would receive as part of their order. These were used to send to potential clients and are hosted on the companies YouTube channel. Additionally, I helped make 'The Process' a way of showing the client each step of how a CGI or animation is created and what they should expect along the way, this has proved to be a great sales tool for the team.

This project really showed me that you can only learn so much about how a business is managed on a day to day basis in a lecture hall. The opportunity to work as part of a team in a real work environment has been a great experience. Being able to incorporate the brand's mission statement, values and culture into the tasks you are undertaking and seeing the outcome gives you great confidence in your skills.

I want to extend a big thank you to my lectures, the staff at Salford Business School who helped me secure my internship, my supervisor and the team at The Pixel Workshop. I couldn't have finished my degree without you all.

"Carl Rydings worked as an intern at the Pixel Workshop for three months in 2019, as part of his Masters qualification of Digital Marketing at Salford Business School. From the outset Carl was an absolute pleasure to work with. His understanding of digital marketing and web technology was outstanding; he began by assessing our situation as it was then and then putting together a strategy which would raise our SEO position for our most important key word groups. He then worked very hard to implement this strategy, gaining a real understanding of our business very quickly. He used his creativity and technical knowhow to restructure our website, set up new social media channels such as instagram and twitter and created 60+ keyword related landing pages. The end result was staggering; our position in several of our key word groups rose from being pages down the list to being on page one. Two of them even came first."