The A to Z of being a DMP
August 27, 2011 12:43 PM   Subscribe

I'm about to become a Digital Media Producer! Awesome! Help me do really well in a role that is new to me.

I have been offered a role with a digital agency and I'm pretty sure it's my dream job. I'm going to be one of a team of Digital Media Producers (DMPs). The role as it has been explained to me combines project management, copywriting, working with clients and essentially being the man in the middle that sits between the account teams, the client and the web developers and designers.

The agency that is hiring me know that I have done all of these tasks individually in previous roles, but only two or three times within the scope of a single digital project. I'm coming from a more traditional advertising agency background where I was a communications consultant that sometimes worked with a digital team. I'm going to go through an induction with the new agency and be trained in their way of managing projects (which no doubt will improve on my own self-taught project planning and management skills), but I'm keen to find out more about what I can expect from this role and what skills I should be looking to develop.

- Are there any MeFite web developers (or account people) out there who have worked with a really good web producer or DMP and can tell me what made them good?

- Any MeFite DMP's or people in similar roles care to share what their job involves and how they manage it?

- Finally, I'd really like to become proficient enough with HTML and CSS (I can figure out what a block of each does at the moment, but my actual coding and troubleshooting is quite basic at the moment) to be able to work closely with web developers. Can anyone recommend good blogs, books and other resources I can use to build my knowledge? Equally what are good resources on the web standards, accessibility and UX side?

This agency is in the UK and is under 40 people with what seems from the interview process to be a really friendly, supportive culture, if that has a bearing on answers.

My job history - 2.5 years with a big IT consultancy doing training and comms, then just shy of five years with a recruitment marketing firm doing all kinds of communications projects, a lot of copywriting and a lot of workshops and client facing stuff. Been on the internet and fiddling about with Wordpress and things since my teens.
posted by Happy Dave to Work & Money (2 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Try Lynda.com for html/CSS resources. I'm a web producer. The skills and strategies really vary from person to person and company to company, but I learned a lot from picking up those Dummies guides to project management. I had a boss that would work through the topics in the book with me, which was really helpful. It's also good to get to know your team and understand how everyone likes to work and communicate. Some people don't mind if you come up to them and ask questions while they're working, some people hate it, but they still need to find a way to update you on status that works for both of you. That's the key for what you need out of people, status, status, status, and to know what's going to cause a problem *before* it happens. Always ask for two solutions to a problem, and understand the implications of both.
posted by sweetkid at 7:27 PM on August 27, 2011


Response by poster: Thanks sweetkid. Anyone else? Shouldn't have posted this on a weekend, silly me.
posted by Happy Dave at 7:37 AM on August 29, 2011


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