My first three months as Communications and Content Assistant have flown by, and passing my probation this month has been the cherry on top of a very busy month at Pearson College London. It was an exciting month, allowing me to gain plenty of experience in more areas within Communications and Content and across the wider External Relations team, during the busy clearing period. Some of the things I have been getting on with this month have been:
Business to Business Degree Apprenticeship Guide
The main project I had the opportunity to work on this month was a guide about our degree apprenticeship programmes aimed at businesses who might be interested in taking on degree apprentices with us as the education provider. Degree apprenticeships are a fantastic alternative to the traditional university route for students that wish to earn a salary whilst furthering their studies. However, it is true that a lot of companies are not utilising the Apprenticeship Levy to their advantage and therefore it is vital that we educate these companies about the potential benefits of employing degree apprentices. Creating the guide has allowed me to write copy, gather quotes to support my points, work alongside the B2B Team and think creatively about how I might like the guide to look at the end.
Clearing Social Media
With clearing at the forefront for August, the social media content that we used had to be consistent with the rest of the clearing campaign messaging;during clearing we also had to compete with social media content from other higher education institutions across the UK too, so we needed to develop assets that had cut-through, so we posted engaging and unique content every day.
Below are some of the graphics we used to be specific to our schools...
We also created some videos for our Facebook channels to vary our normal content and also to answer frequently asked clearing questions and give a campus tour. We used current students for the videos and also got some students to explain why they chose to study at Pearson College London.
Social Media Influencers
An intern joined our team recently and during the course of her internship she completed some extensive research about social media influencers and how we can encourage students within the college to post about their learning experiences and tag us when necessary. A few of our students have a large following on social media, so this is a great way to increase awareness and alter the way we generally market ourselves. In order to take her research forward, I have contacted the students that we believe to be influencers so that we can work together going forward.
Photo by Thought Catalog / Unsplash
Enquiries
I completed my General Enquiries and Salesforce for Enquiries training this month, allowing me to cover Enquiries for a couple of different days throughout the month. This includes responding to email queries, phone calls and LiveChat. It can be nerve-racking at first because sometimes you don’t know the answer immediately and a high quantity of procedures need to be followed so that tasks are performed sufficiently. However, it was a fantastic way for me to learn more about the different processes that a student might take here at Pearson College London, which I think will help me in the future not only in my role, but also in my studies.
Publications Research
Another aspect I desired to develop this month was my skill level within PR to understand the significance of PR within my role as Communications and Content Assistant. Therefore, I have been familiarising myself with the publications that we already work with alongside our PR agencies. Also, I have looked into new publications that we could work with in the future to pitch to going forward. It's important to be familiar with relevant publications so that I have knowledge of the latest stories in the higher education sector.
Photo by rawpixel / Unsplash
YouTube Tasks
Another task I was able to get involved with this month was reviewing ourYouTube accounts and making recommendations. Rather than the usual monthly reports that I complete, this also involved looking at some other important elements:
- The thumbnails we use on each video as some of them are outdated and need to be updated.
- How we use the videos on the website: deciding what works well and how we can better organise these videos effectively.
- The descriptions of the videos and what tags we can use to maximise search engine optimisation.
- The names of the playlists and how we can better organise the high volume of videos on our corporate YouTube channels.
This has been interesting for me to get an idea of how we can effectively use video content both on our YouTube channel and on our website and is beneficial for the wider team as we should see some positive results as a result of the recommendations made.
Reporting for Ghost
Finally, I was introduced to Google Analytics and how we can use it to track our blog content and evaluate what performs the best on our blogging platform. From the data I obtain, I now create a monthly report about the blog content we have published and identify what has performed well and what hasn't, suggesting improvements and making recommendations for the future. Observing how long someone reads a blog for, how many people read a blog, and the types of content that people seem to engage with most is very insightful when brainstorming future content to post!
August has been a very action-packed month, exposing me to many new areas and allowing me to further develop some of my current skills. I can't wait to start my studies so that I can apply them to my work and vice versa!
If you have any questions about our degree apprenticeships, feel free to use the discussion section below. To sign up to our degree apprenticeship vacancy waitlist, go to our website.
