Did you know your marketing can support your sustainability goals?

So I used to think merrily how, being digital,?we were the good guys.

No printed flyers filling up wastepaper baskets as a result of Sookio 's marketing efforts. We don’t manufacture anything, and we don't have fleets of salespeople driving?around the place or flying to trade shows overseas.

Then I was going through the tender process for a large public sector job, answering all those fiendish questions that people in procurement just love to set. And one of them was:?What's your carbon footprint?

"Pah!"?I said to myself. "We don’t have one of those."

Then I set about calculating it purely to make sure we'd filled in every section, and I quietly realised…hang on a sec, we kind of do…ah.

This is me, Mrs Smug-Vegan-Always-Buys-Cruelty-Free-Makeup-And-Really-Loves-Nature. I think I’d had a bit of a disconnect. Being a paperless business means you're scoring highly in the sustainability stakes by default, surely?

It’s a topic I became more and more interested in from that point forwards, delivering a talk on the subject at Digital Leaders last year and encouraging the team to build?sustainability practices into our work and share tips on the blog.

There is so much you can do to make a difference, for example:

• Streamline your website. Fewer pages;?smaller file sizes for images. Do you really need video to autoplay on every single page?
• Only gather the data you actually need. Then?use?this to finetune your campaigns so you reach the right?people?with less digital waste
• Use local suppliers and build sustainability requests into your briefs.

What else can you do?

1. Join us on 25 January for our first Untangler , which will see us sharing lots of tips on sustainability in digital marketing. Clients only I'm afraid! Message me to grab your spot.

2. Head to the Sookio blog and read posts like: Digital marketing has a carbon footprint: Here’s how to reduce it

3. Download our new?Sustainability in digital marketing tips sheet. Go!

Curiosity, sparked

Listen: "If 2023 was a lesson on the curriculum of your life, what would the subject be?" Oooh, that's a good one. This podcast from Kris Plachy offers?a series of questions designed to help you reflect and plan for the year ahead. Take it with you on a dog walk, a drive, or simply at your desk with an open notepad.

Read: While we’re in forecast mode, find out what Nesta have to say about the environment and digitisation in Future Signals , their post on the tech and trends to watch in 2024.

Observe:?New York Times sues Microsoft and OpenAI for 'billions' . I’m keeping a close eye on legal precedents being set around AI, while also having fun experimenting with new tools. How we get the balance right is going to be very interesting indeed...!

Now's a good time to...

Enter the National Business Women's Awards. Take a look at the categories now.

Sharpen up your formatting techniques. Especially if you're being lazy and getting ChatGPT to write it all for you (did I say that out loud). Nielsen Norman Group have tips on making your content more readable and accessible.

Say hello to Claire Bland , our new Administrator! She's got off to a cracking start in 2024 by joining the Sookio team.

With her background in floristry, confectionery, residential?property, plus stints at the Ministry of Defence and Cambridge County Council, I'd say she's very well suited for the continual variety of agency life!