Two months into my role as Communications and Content Assistant, and the time has gone so fast! From meetings to more responsibility, I have really built my knowledge of a variety of platforms and methodologies and how they work within the team. I have been very busy in July, completing a whole host of tasks and activities...

Social Media Responsibilities

This month, we had a meeting with the Product Team about the organic social media content, in which we decided that the Communications and Content team would take full responsibility for the organic social media activity on our channels. I am now responsible for:

  • Escape Studios Twitter
  • Pearson Business School Twitter
  • Pearson Business School Facebook
    I have really enjoyed scheduling and seeing the success of some of the social media content on the different channels, especially when we get positive engagement from followers.
    An phone with the Facebook app open next to Scrabble pieces arranged in the words “social media”
    Photo by William Iven / Unsplash

Communications and Business2Business Team Meeting

At the very start of July, the Communications and Content and B2B Marketing teams came together to run the full External Relations Team meeting. We proposed an idea which will be really exciting if it gets put forward, and encouraged team collaboration by having everyone split into groups and divided up to aid us in answering some vital questions. If we are able to put this plan into place, it will be an exciting business opportunity for the future and will support our Future Is Creative Campaign messaging too!
future-is-creative-with-stats

Press Releases

This month, I also had the opportunity to write two press releases, which was really interesting as Journalism was always a career interest of mine from a young age.

  1. Highly Commended at the Heist Awards - On Thursday 12th July 2018, the Pearson College London External Relations team attended the 2018 Heist Awards. The team were shortlisted for 4 awards: Marketing Team of the Year, Best Low Budget Initiative, Best Website and Best Undergraduate Student Recruitment Initiative. We were highly commended for our partnership with L’Oréal for the 2018 Heist Awards: Best Undergraduate Student Recruitment Initiative... because we’re worth it!
  2. Escape Studios Saturday Club Strikes Again - Escape Studios, a leading provider of VFX, Games, Animation and Motion Graphics courses, have further committed to the future of the creative industries. Escape has launched free Saturday workshops for 13-16 year olds, as part of the National Saturday Clubs, and have just opened recruitment for the next intake of Saturday Club students, who will embark on their great escape from 3rd November 2018

Both of these then also get uploaded onto our internal Company intranet within Pearson College London, so that all of the staff members and students are able to view the recent news items too.

AlfredPR Visit

I got the chance to visit Alfred PR this month, one of the agencies that we work with on the Escape Studios side of the business. They took us through a typical day in a PR office. It started with a team meeting whereby we went through all of the news for the day, picking out potentially relevant stories for Escape Studios, for example:

  • Education
  • Creative Industries
  • VFX, Animation or Games stories, such as films that our alumni might have worked on
    It was really interesting to get an understanding of how a PR consultancy works and how they have helped their different clients with various campaigns. It was also insightful to discover more about Alfred PR in particular and how they operate as a business.

Reporting

This month, my line manager also gave me my reporting responsibilities. This is a really interesting part of my role because although some may find it boring and tedious, it is a really insightful method for gathering and evaluating data, with the goal of improving and achieving excellence in my work. Some of the reports I need to complete are:

  • Monthly Youtube Analytics for Escape Studios and Pearson Business School - this involves looking at how videos are performing daily, weekly and monthly and the total success of the channel.
  • Monthly Report of all Escape Studios Social Media - this looks at how we are performing across all of the channels and how we can improve by looking at what is working and what is not, in terms of imagery and copy.
  • Quarterly Report of Escape Newsletter - this will be a report that will cover three Escape Newsletters from the quarter, my first evaluation being Q3. Using A/B testing and different subject lines, I will be able to test what is going to stimulate open rates and click throughs with the newsletter.
  • Blog Content Analytics - through Google Analytics, I am going to begin analysing what blogs are performing the best on the website and which are not, so that I can make informed future decisions about the types of blogs to post online and at what times of year. Also, we can track the source of the data so that we can see where the person has clicked onto the blog from, steering potential marketing techniques.

Enquiries

Finally, I have been trained in Enquiries, which focuses on the phones and LiveChat. This was a nerve-racking experience at first, especially for the phone enquiries, because you become the first voice that someone hears on the phone and you want to portray the college in a positive manner and ensure the call is directed correctly in order to keep the customer satisfied. With LiveChat, it is important to be helpful and informative, with prompt responses, as the person enquiring can rate you at the end.

Photo by Piotr Wilk / Unsplash

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