Meet the Team – Head of Digital

It’s been almost five months since joining the SHINE team as Digital Marketing Manager, and it’s been fantastic working with a small team that are all experts in their own area. I’ve been keen to better understand how our team has evolved and got to where it is today, so I’ve been sitting down (sometimes via Teams!) to talk through what it is that motivates and excites us in our individual roles.

This week, I spoke with Peter Johnstone, our Head of Digital.  

How did you get to where you are today?

My first job was as an IT Support Tech for a product design agency in Edinburgh. I had dabbled in websites via a university course, and through that my boss asked me to rebuild the company site! My next job was with a PR Agency in Glasgow, again as an IT Technician, and we realised that most of our PR clients needed websites – it was through this that the website arm of the business was born. I finally moved to Shine around 10 years ago with the job of growing the digital side of the business, and we are now working on large scale web projects for businesses across the UK!

What’s the best part about your work? 

The best part of my role is the diversity. No day is the same and can involve working in hospitality, house building or a charity. You also meet such a wide variety of people in my role, which I really love.

What project have you really enjoyed working on and why? 

I really enjoyed working on Meldrum House. Both the client and Susan at 24Keys Marketing were superb to work with and made the project go really smoothly. The final result was a superb website that since its launch has been getting some fantastic ROI – which always makes me happy!

What do you find challenging? 

The challenge for any digital agency is keeping ahead of the curve, this could be the way you build sites or the hosting platform you use to house your client’s sites. We always have to be looking ahead in this business!

How did the pandemic change your work? 

I feel the pandemic has in no way affected how we as a business work – we still communicate regularly on Teams, but being able to choose to visit the office or work from home gives me a good work/life balance. Working from home has its advantages and allows me to see my children far more than I did over a year ago. I can also go the occasional run at lunchtime which is great! I think going forward a mixture of office and home working will be a good thing for us all.

What advice would you give to a young person wanting to get into digital work?

The key for any young person coming into this industry is to stay ahead of the game and make sure you are knowledgeable in modern web techniques. I would also say this as a WordPress based agency, but I would get involved in this CMS and learn how to code within it, with over 60% of the web now powered by WordPress sites a large number of agencies now work with the platform and having experience and knowledge of WordPress will help get further in the industry.

Well, I’ve certainly learned a lot from Peter just from that quick chat. If you’d like to learn a bit more about Peter and his work here at SHINE, click here.