Fifty-second week! (21/12/20 - 25/12/20)

 This week I was on annual leave.

Fifty-first week! (14/12/20 - 18/12/20)

 This week we had a few more meetings to finalise our new G-Cloud pricing document before having a final meeting with Will from the CCS to sign it off. Our new pricing document has now been uploaded to all of our G-Cloud 12 services and we also made some changes to the MSF pricing on the live page so it matched our pricing on the document.

This week I had a meeting with Simon to discuss my new L4 job description. I had already created a document with new tasks and responsibilities based on the apprenticeship description but we added some more together. I am going to be creating a presentation based on this to deliver to a few people on our latest sales meeting when I am back from annual leave.

I had a meeting with Simon and he wants me to create a 'company timeline' of all our achievements/history graphic for us to use on presentations and possibly on a fancier 'about us' page on the website.

We have pretty much finalised the e-Rostering collateral now, Zaheer will be checking it over when he comes back from annual leave and then we will send it to Simon for his final approval.

With the help of Ahmed I created a Christmas themed letter to be sent to clients regarding support during the Christmas period. We made this on Canva and it was sent out on Mailchimp.

We have another Showreel review meeting at the beginning of January and me and Ahmed have been working on making the improvements Rob and Simon suggested in the last one.

I created and posted some new NCA announcement posts this time actually mentioning the Northern Care Alliance name, since the ones we did before didn't mention it.

John our Chief Technology Officer created a cute little Merry Christmas from Premier IT GIF for us to use on social media and I have scheduled this to be posted on all our platforms at 1pm on Christmas Eve.

Fiftieth week! (7/12/20 - 11/12/20)

Me and Simon have still been working on finalising our new pricing document and we had another meeting with members of the G-Cloud team on Thursday. We have now come up with a new design that works with the framework rules, we just need to make sure everything is as accurate as possible and matches the listings on the Digital Marketplace - me and Tim had a meeting to make sure the MSF pricing was accurate as well.

I helped Simon make changes to some Heads of Engagement PDF files.

We had our quarterly meeting about RCPath and me and Simon are still working on the letter together.

We are going to release some new social media posts about NCA but this time we are actually going to mention their name!

Me and Ahmed had a meeting with Simon and Rob to show them our new and improved showreel. They said that it was much better than the last one I made which is great - they gave us some ideas for improvement that we will work on in meetings together and we plan to catchup with them about it on the 22nd.

Lewis asked me to design an Amazon eGift card graphic to use to send to all our employees on the 17th of December.

I started writing up my new role job description and me and Simon have a meeting to discuss this next Tuesday.

I have completed quite a few more courses on HubSpot Academy and finally bypassed 379 hours on Skilsure.

Fourty-nineth week! (30/11/20 - 4/12/20)

This week me and Ahmed took our monthly metrics for the website and social media. November had lots of green numbers and hardly any reds, being our best month for ages! Simon was very happy. I also wrote my monthly report as usual.

We have been emailing the CCS back and fourth to try and fix some typos on our G-Cloud pricing document. This week we had a meeting with 2 of the G-Cloud team members to try and find a solution to make our document compliant. We have 2 weeks to fix our document, so me and Simon have been researching competitors on G-Cloud to see what theirs look like for ideas. 

Simon gave me a list of headlines to use in the new version of the showreel with Ahmed. We've been working together daily to make it as best as possible and next week we're going to update Simon and Rob with what we've done.

This week I finalised our Christmas newsletter and sent it out to the PReP clients on Mailchimp with the help of Tiff and Tim sent it out to his MSF clients. I'm going to write a report on this.

On our team meeting we used the 'game grid' I created for our 2 minute talking game, and I picked a topic out of names in a hat. It was quite fun.

On Tuesday I caught up with Zaheer about the e-Rostering collateral. It's nearly done, we have finalised the text and the diagram but now I need to create the features/benefits infographic.

I had a catchup call with Emma this week where my discussed my progress and next steps. As mentioned I am going to be writing a report on the Christmas newsletter.

I submitted our G-Cloud management information this month - no business.

Fourty-eighth week! (23/11/20 - 27/11/20)

We noticed some errors in our pricing document on G-Cloud and found that we cannot change them on the digital marketplace listings. I contacted their helpdesk and they responded saying we should send them a word document with tracked changes and the newly updated PDF. Me, Simon and Zaheer are going to make sure it is totally up to date before we send this over.

We had a meeting where I showcased the showreel demo so far. Simon, Ahmed and Rob gave me lots of feedback for improvement and Ahmed is going to be helping me develop it further.

On our trello board meeting we went over our tasks as usual.

This week I didn't attend our usual weekly dream team meeting because I was on a call with Simon and Will to a potential job planning customer giving a demo.

I also attended a presentation call to the Ministry of Defence where we showcased PReP. I helped with the design of the presentation and organisation chart.

We had our usual weekly team meeting. Simon wants me to create a 6x6 grid with topics on that we will randomly choose to talk about for 2 minutes in our meetings now instead of 

Me Ahmed and Simon had our weekly meeting about social media to discuss posts and results.

I finished off our RCPath research and presented my findings and results in our quarterly meeting. I'm going to be working with Simon to create a letter for selective approaches.

Our website was down for a few days! There was a problem with the database it's stored on, so we contacted John and sent him a screenshot of the error screen. He managed to fix it.

Speaking of the website, we're planning to make some changes to our 'About Us' section, we've been analysing what competitors have on their website and have stolen a few ideas.

I sent Nikki the login details for our social media platforms so she could login at the weekend and continue posting our Sepsis countdown posts.

I have started creating our Christmas newsletter to be sent out next Monday and it honestly looks really good! 

Fourty-seventh week! (16/11/20 - 20/11/20)

I had a catchup with Simon and Ahmed on Tuesday to discuss what we're working on we've decided that we're going to start having regular social media meetings to discuss ideas and check progress.

Regarding meetings we had our usual weekly dream team meeting, team meeting and our fortnitely Sales Plans meeting.

I filled in for Simon on Thursday on an important CFEP meeting and took some notes and tried to contribute where possible.

I had a catchup with Aaron where I showed him my new version of the infographic they asked me to create - I sent it to Nikki who gave me a few ideas for improvement before she sent it off to Ian West.

On Friday we had our first Trello board task meeting for a few weeks! My current tasks are the following:

• RCPath research - I'm nearly finished with this. On Thursday next week we have a catchup meeting so I'm aiming to have it done by then.
• Showreel demo - I still need to start making the Showreel demo. I've booked in some time next Friday to show Ahmed, Simon and Rob my progress so far.
• e-Rostering collateral with Zaheer. We have the main body of the collateral sorted and Zaheer has written the text, now it's my job to put together some diagrams to go with it all. I've made some rough ones that Zaheer has yet to approve.
• NCA announcement - This week I've been working on some social media posts about our recent Northern Care Alliance win...when I get the green flag that everything has gone through I will post them!
• Press release/newsletters - I plan to start creating the Christmas edition of our newsletter next week.
• Portals research - still not started. 

The e-Learning team has asked Ahmed to work on a UK Sepsis Trust social media campaign as we have now partnered with them. I've been helping him every now and then with design ideas.

Simon asked me to create a fancy new signature to use at the end of our emails which promotes our recent procurement of G-Cloud 12. If you send me an email, you will see it when I respond!

I have finished the Jamiesons steo-by-step guide which I made changes to, but we might have to make some extra changes in the future.

Everyone is currently working on a potential Job Planning win at Dorset CCG. I helped contribute to our presentation for this by creating an updated organisation chart, and I also gave Will a link to a website from some good royalty free music to play in the background.

Fourty-sixth week! (9/11/20 - 13/11/20)

 This week my escalla certificates arrived for Principles of Coding and Online/Offline Marketing. I signed the receipts and scanned them and sent them back to Nicola. I also uploaded and mapped them to Skilsure.

I have started making a criteria index for all of the TKUS and TC's etc to keep track of what I have and haven't got evidence for.

I have been helping Zaheer make changes to a tender for a potential client using Acrobat a lot recently.

This week I also made some changes to the product collateral, they now all have anecdotes on them.

Fourty-fifth week! (2/11/12 - 6/11/12)

 This week I was on annual leave.

Fourty-fourth week (26/10/20 - 30/10/20)

This week I had a review with Emma and we discussed my progress, what further evidence I need and what I need to do next to prepare for my EPA. This includes writing a personal statement, my synoptic project, getting all my off the job training hours up and more. Eek!

We had our weekly team meeting as usual and our dream team meeting.

The press release template is 100% completed and ready to be edited when we send out our quarterly emails. This month however we forgot to create an Equiniti newsletter, so I made one quickly the day before and it was only a one-pager. Whoops! I was focusing too much on the emails.

Zaheer has been having trouble accessing Adobe Acrobat to work on tenders so I have been in contact with Carl to allow him to use theirs as I have been.

On our Cliff Richard show meeting we went over our Trello board tasks as usual.

Ahmed is back next week! Me and Simon had a meeting with him to talk through what's been going on and what we're doing and what he'll be working on.

I reported this months reporting information for GCloud 12 - no business yet!

Nicola from escalla emailed me asking to confirm my address for my certificates and I made sure I did.

I had a quick meeting with Rob and Simon about a request for quotation we got from someone who found us on GCloud - we discovered they were already a client of ours! They're both now working on a renewal for them.

Rob asked me to quickly make up one of the product selection graphics for PReP and MSF. I made one and quickly sent it over.

I made some changes to the RCR document I have been making for Simon which we are sending out soon.

Fourty-third week! (19/10/20 - 23/10/20)

This week I had a meeting with Simon where he showed me how to research the Royal Colleges for our RCPath project. I have created a spreadsheet to record my findings on and log any contacts I find. He has given me until the 12th of November to finish this - Ahmed will be helping when he gets back from furlough next month. I am also currently making a flyer based on the USP's for this project.

I had a quick catchup with Zaheer regarding the e-Rostering collateral which we still haven't managed to finish. He has promised that by next week he'll be able to help me with writing the content as we have the design finished but no text! I also showed him how we are all currently using Zoho, the Audit log etc.

In our weekly Cliff Richard Suggs show meeting we went over and set new Trello tasks as always and we discussed a potential meetup on the 20th of November. My tasks are as follows:

-G-Cloud 12 Report MI (monthly)

-The Showreel (I'm currently making demo's of what the actual showreel will look like since we have received appropriate screengrabs to use from colleagues)

-Patient Feedback Infographic - I am going to use the Future of Patient Feedback piece of collateral I made to create a new infographic outlining the steps.

-e-Learning Campaign - I am still working on the brochure and such for the e-Learning team.

-Press Release email - Me and Simon are working on bespoke press release emails.

-Portals research - Simon has given me until November 16th to get this done

-Courses and G-Cloud 12 Report - Before my review with Emma next week I need to make sure I have completed some courses and made a start with my G-Cloud 12 report.

I booked annual leave on Friday afternoon so I could go and take my driving theory test and I failed! So I've booked annual leave again for the afternoon on the 12th to retake it.

Fourty-second week! (12/10/20 - 16/10/20)

This week we decided we need to start separating the contacts on Mailchimp to prevent as many people unsubscribing as possible. For example we were sending the all Premier IT newsletter to every single contact - we have now decided we're going to tag the relevant contacts to send.

I asked Natalia to send me a list of USPs for our RCPath win - I've made a spreadsheet to record all the research I find about the potential clients from the Royal Colleges. There are 23 of them, so I need to dig deep into their websites to find out what software they are already using.

I submitted a summary of what I have done since my last review to Emma and she used this to complete my monitoring and progress review.

I completed and uploaded my TC5 evidence report and Metrics/Google Analytics report to Skilsure and made any required changes.

I had a meeting with Siva Singh from escalla and Simon to take him through all of the new collateral I have created recently.

With Simon, we completed my USAB testimonies and these have been signed off on Skilsure.

On Friday a few of us ventured up to the office again. We went through our tasks on Trello boards and discussed further action points. I also discussed my future at the company with Simon. He says once my apprenticeship ends, he's going to interview me again and I'm expected to present to him in a job description/business case/presentation what I want to do for the company as a Level 4 apprentice. He knows I'm not confident with this kind of stuff but I do want to overcome my fear so I have no problem with it.

During Friday's meeting I received an email from someone interested in our Job Planning. I alerted Simon and Will and we are in the process of yet another new client!

Matias from LevelUP Networks asked me to send him the newsletter that his company featured in last month so I did so.

I have also done some small tasks including converting our heads of engagement documents from PDF to Word (thank god for Adobe Acrobat!) and other documents.

Fourtieth week! (5/10/20 - 9/10/20)

This week the main priority has been finishing and submitting our HSSF Response. I worked with Zaheer and Simon in meetings throughout the week to make sure everything was answered and we submitted it on Friday before the deadline of 12pm. Now we just have to wait until the end of October to find out if we have been accepted.

We had a meeting where John showed us the updated MAG lite form on one of our systems and I worked with Tiff, Rob and Tim to create an email to go out to clients to inform them about the changes.

I had a meeting with Simon to go over the recurring service revenue poster that I created.

Instead of our weekly dream team meeting, I joined Simon, Tim and Rob with David Jamieson - we're working on some campaigns together.

This week Zaheer did his sales plans presentation, the last of them. Simon asked me to change the recurrence of these meetings to every 4 weeks so we can check progress.

In the weekly team meeting this week I did my own 'welcome to my world' presentation where I spoke about myself, my background, my role and what I'm working on. It was nerve-wracking but I got through it!!!

I made some changes to the PReP heads of engagement and turned it into a template so it's easier to make changes to when we have a new client.

We had a meeting to discuss our RCPath win - I've been given the task researching other colleges and facilities to see what systems they're using. We also need a list of USP's, which I'm going to ask Natalia for. We want to create a flyer/poster about the trainees portfolio.

On our weekly 'Cliff Richard' meeting on Friday we went through our Trello board tasks. For me, tasks such as the Showreel, the e-Learning brochure and e-Rostering collateral were put on hold to focus on the HSSF Framework submission.

I've used Mailchimp to start creating our press release style email to replace the newsletters. For now we have just filled it with content from previous newsletters but the style and design looks pretty good. We're going to keep on working on this as well as bespoke ones to send to trusts on the 1st of November.

I collected our September metrics and wrote my monthly report to Simon.

Thirty-nineth week! (28/9/20 - 2/10/20)

 This week I have mainly been trying to finish off the HSSF Framework since the deadline is October 9th. Zaheer, Andy and Simon have been helping me - it's not as long as GCloud but still is a lot of work. We've had many meetings trying to complete this and have another to review it on Monday.

The newsletters for this month have been finished off and the Equiniti one has been sent - Natalia was supposed to send out the Premier IT but I've decided I will do it myself on Monday. We finally got Zaheer's e-Rostering pieces and Rob's Remote Consultations piece.

I had a nice catchup meeting with Zaheer to discuss the creation of e-Rostering collateral (this is a target from my last escalla review)

Simon still wants me to become the Champion of ZOHO - I'm holding a 'workshop' at the end of the month for the key people who use it/should be using it. I had a brief meeting with Rob and he showed me what he currently does and uses on the system which was really helpful. I'm going to continue teaching myself in my own time.

Also on the meeting with Rob we chose some more Shutterstock clips to use for the showreel for each product. He's going to look at the best parts of each system to showcase then we can put the together for a demo.

And as usual we had our weekly team meeting - next week I have to do my own 'welcome to my world' piece next week to talk about myself and what I do...

We had our usual dream team meeting and Friday meeting where we went over our Trello board tasks.

Thirty-eighth week! (21/9/20 - 25/9/20)

Our newsletters for this month are nearly ready! We have Zaheer's e-Rostering piece for both of them so the Equiniti newsletter is complete. We just need Simon to write an intro for the Premier IT one as well as Rob's Remote consultations piece.

Friday meetup points - conversing with neil, joshua package, creating agenda

Our G-Cloud 12 application has been countersigned and will go live for selling on Monday! Whether we will get any sales however is questionable...

Everyone loves the comic book style content me and Aaron have been creating for announcements and new wins. For the next round of newsletters, we've been thinking of doing them in a similar style to make them more engaging.

I had to fill out a questionnaire about working from home for John as part of ISO 27001 to prove that I'm working remotely in a safe environment on a suitable device.

The e-Learning team have added me into a Teams group chat with them so I can message them for help whenever I need to which is nice.

My idea to use a Trello board to keep track of everyone's tasks has proven success! Every Friday we go through everyone's lists to see what we're working on. It's really useful because you can set due dates, at checklists and more.

I approached Simon hoping to convince him to let us subscribe to Canva Pro for marketing content and collateral creation. It's only 10.99 a month, and he agreed! whoopee!

I'm still working on the e-Learning brochure and infographic, they'll be done very soon.

I have also been asked to research Portals and make sure we're on all the right appropriate frameworks. 

I'm still working on the e-Rostering collateral with Zaheer and the PReP benefits email with Simon, we'll be creating a press release style email to go to all designated bodies. We're going to develop bespoke versions for different target trusts.

Thirty-seventh week! (14/9/20 - 18/9/20)

This week Simon has asked me and Aaron to come up with a fun and competitive way to announce news wins. We're using a comic book style 'Simon vs. Ian' theme which works very well.

The Equiniti Newsletter for this month is nearly done, we're just waiting on a Migration Update piece from Tim and a piece on e-Rostering from Zaheer. We have received LevelUp Networks' piece and it's now in the newsletter.

Simon has completed with exam witness testimonies for coding and online/offline marketing and I've made sure all my mock exams for these have been submitted to Emma.

I've had multiple meetings this week with Aaron this week to discuss the e-learning infographic and brochure. He and Michelle are giving me lots of design ideas which is nice of them. I've started the first 7 pages of the e-Learning brochure.

We've officially arranged our meetup for Friday the 25th at the office. Looking forward to seeing all 7 of us that are going! I spoke with Neil to make sure we would have access.

For some reason, we were asked to sign off our G-Cloud application again for it to be countersigned. Not sure why, but we did and now we just need it to be countersigned before we can start selling.

We have decided not to go forward with applications for RM6221. It was such a big application process and we weren't even guaranteed to get it in the end. Only 12 of the most prestige businesses! And we had to bid, as in pay money, to get access. No way!

I'm still working on the recurring service revenue poster to be sent out to clients.

I'm starting work on new e-Rostering collateral. I have the layout and logo but just need the text from Zaheer.

Thirty-sixth week! (7/9/20 - 11/9/20)

This week I have helped to rebrand some collateral from MSF to Premier IT, this was easy to do since I now have access to Adobe Acrobat.

I had a meeting with Nikki to discuss the brochure for e-Learning I will be creating and I'm making a start pretty soon.

I'm applying to the RM6221 framework with Simon and it's a lot more complicated than we thought - it's nothing like G-Cloud...this is a big priority at the moment

At the first of our new weekly catchup meetings on Friday we came up with the following actions points:

• Trello – MC to create a shared board for everyone to use which should be up and running by the 1^st of October
• Email to Premier IT clients about EQ MSF – TD to send over spreadsheets with names
• PReP benefits email – MC/SM to alias? SM to incorporate into his “catch all campaign” NOTE; HOW BEST DO WE PULL ALL THE ADDRESSES TOGETHER FOR THIS (DB’s?)
• CEA and Pay Progression modules – how will we market these items
• MC to arrange London meeting within 2 weeks
• Collateral – all in one place (https://premieritpartnership-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/mclark_premierit_com/Evg8JOZXwF5Ioa2zOPiX7wEB2HL-J7SkfA_UoexKOe5Qng?e=2Qwo7E)
• SM working on the Recurring Service Revenues piece

Ian has asked that I recreate the e-Learning infographic I made for Nikki into a brochure...so I have a meeting with Aaron soon to discuss this.

It's been announced that I will be allowed predicted grades for the 2 exams I have left...yay! All I need is some passed mock exams, some evidence and a few more bits and it's settled.

I'm in the process of designing a poster for Simon about 'recurring service revenue.'

The Equiniti Newsletter is nearly ready, we just need Tim to write a Migration update, Zaheer's e-Rostering piece and LevelUP Networks' piece, then I can start working on the Premier IT one.

This week we got an email saying our G-Cloud 12 application was successful. We had to sign it off one final time and we are now waiting for the CSS to countersign it so we can start selling.

I created a piece of FAQ collateral to be sent to the new MSF clients.

I made a piece of collateral based on 'The Benefits of Client Feedback" based on a PowerPoint slide Simon created for a meeting.

I also created a poster on the Benefits of PReP to be sent out.

Finally, I designed letter to be sent to MSF clients. Lots of content creation this week!

Thirty-fifth week! (1/9/20 - 4/9/20)

This Monday was a bank holiday.

On Tuesday I had a pre-dream team meeting with Tim and Rob to catch up on what we'd done before Simon came back from annual leave and questioned us. We have the following updated action list:

• Rob/Tim MSF collateral – think about right target market
• Produce MSF testimonials – Tim
• All client email about MSF – Tim/Rob
• PREP benefits letter to ROs/EQ client update

• Showreel – Include e-Rostering
• 2^nd newsletter for just Premier IT
• Golden service - charging clients for an enhanced service of running reports, adding users etc. Position to clients: ‘e.g… getting overwhelmed with calls from people who are working on the COVID line’
• Something I’ll be working on with Rob/Tim…meeting to be scheduled, also unsure
• 60 second update – weekly
• CFEP collateral

Me and Simon have arranged to meet up in London on the 15th of September for a catch-up in person. It will be good to see him after so long.

We sent out our 3rd Equiniti Newsletter with a special 3rd page for John's amazing article. Regarding newsletters in October we are planning to send out a Premier IT Newsletter as well as our Equiniti one, which means double the work for me! I am currently creating a new template.

On Friday I had a meeting with Matias and John from LevelUp Networks to discuss a section they want to include in it. Nikki has also said she is happy to help with proofreading the newsletter and wants to be involved so she can e-Learning pieces.

I have tried to contact the Crown Commerical Service about the contact details update and Customer ID number, but any emails I send aren't going through. We haven't sold anything on the digital marketplace and have no record of a customer ID number, so I'm confused.

We are definitely going ahead with the RM6221 Digital Capability for Health framework and I'm setting us up an account to apply. We have also found someone who is willing to help us from outside the organisation.

We're also working on sending out an email about PReP to clients to force feed them the benefits, we were inspired by something Node4 sent out. 

As well as this I helped design a PReP benefits letter for end users.

I have a meeting with Nikki next Tuesday to carry on working on our e-Learning marketing campaign.

I made a new win document for Roche, who have joined us and are using PReP and MSF.

On Thursday I had a review with Emma and Simon, we discussed my progress and new reports and targets.

I also sent Simon my monthly report for August and the August social media/website metrics.

Thirty-fourth week! (24/8/20 - 28/8/20)

 On Monday I had another Zoom call with people from CFEP in Australia with Simon and Rob to discuss progress. I'll be honest I still don't 100% understand what I am doing, all I know is that I'm going to be working with their marketing team to create some collaborative collateral, but I haven't been given any information on what will actually be in it. On the 9th of September, we have another meeting so hopefully we'll get started then,

We were supposed to have our Masterplan update meeting on Tuesday the 25th but since Simon was on annual leave it was cancelled. I imagine this will be rescheduled when he is back.

We didn't have our weekly dream team meeting either again because of his absence, but our weekly team meeting still happened.

I had a brief call with Zaheer this week because he needed help carrying out a mail merge. I have never done one myself either so he asked me to research it and learn how to so he can send out an email next week. I had a quick scroll through a tutorial and it seems pretty simple, you can use Word.

I finally finished off our Newsletter, this months edition has an extra 3rd page because John our Chief Technology Officer wrote an amazing article about 'Ever-Changing Environments'.

The Commercial Director at LevelUP Networks contacted me and asked to arrange a call next week to discuss collateral in our next newsletter. I have arranged a Teams meeting with him.

Before Simon went on leave he asked me to send an update of our details to the Crown Commercial Service. They wanted an email address, our office address and our Customer ID number. I had no idea what our customer ID number was so I contacted Andy who works in the finance department, and he told me not to worry about it because they are a supplier not a customer and we're not a customer to them so we don't have a number. I'm going to tell Simon when he is back. 

I also scheduled a meeting for when Simon is back to discuss our RM6221 Digital Capability for Health framework.

I sent out a letter on Mailchimp to our PReP clients talking about the reintroduction of appraisals.

Thirty-third week! (17/8/20 - 21/8/20)

In my weekly dream team meeting, we discussed the following action points:

Set Wednesday 12^th

 

• Rob/Tim MSF collateral – think about right target market
• Produce MSF testimonials – Tim
• All client email about MSF – Tim/Rob
• PREP benefits letter to ROs/EQ client update

 

Set Wednesday 19^th

• Newsletter – MSF did you know ✓
• Showreel – Include e-Rostering
• 2^nd newsletter for just Premier IT
• ‘Getting overwhelmed with calls from people who are working on the COVID line, golden service?’ – Simon was talking about this but unsure what it was for
• Something I’ll be working on with Rob/Tim…meeting to be scheduled, also unsure

I finally completed and summited 2 reports for Principles of Coding and Email Marketing. Emma gave me some tweaks for POC and I resubmitted it and it has now been approved.

My next review with Emma and Simon has been scheduled for Thursday the 3rd of September.

I completed the infographic Nikki requested for her email and sent it over to her, she was more than happy.

We are still filling up our Equiniti Newsletter to be sent out on the first working day of September.

I have been working on a letter to send to PReP clients using Mailchimp next Monday.

I made some slight tweaks to our Job Planning for AHPs collateral as requested by Will.

Simon suggested that I sign up to attend a Post COVID Bounce Back with Digital Marketing Webinar on the 3rd of September.

This week there have been a number of complaints coming into the marketing inbox regarding software not working which I forwarded to the Support desk and correct members of staff to help solve.

This week Steve Murekezi our Support Lead recorded a 60-second update video and I scheduled and sent this out using Mailchimp and on social media.

I helped Alice Roche create and set up her email signature.

Thirty-second week! (10/8/20 - 14/8/20)

 This week I had a meeting with Simon and some people over in Australia to discuss collaboration for a project 'PCN Strategy.' I'm going to be working with their marketing team to produce some collateral for this, exciting! I'll admit I don't entirely understand what it's about but we have another meeting on the 24th to discuss more.

I had another meeting with Rob, Simon, Nikki, Tim and Zaheer about our new 'Masterplan', as expected I will be helping to create marketing materials for this including new e-Rostering collateral.

I'm helping Nikki to create an e-Learning infographic for their new services whilst she is on leave to be used in an email sent out to clients. It's looking good so far.

I had someone email the Marketing inbox asking for information on our CPD software, I forwarded this onto Simon and now we have a new lead!

I created another NEW WIN document to send out to everybody as Metropolitan Police - Command and Control are a new client of ours, they bought Cortex!

A few months ago Carl Lamb from escalla's Marketing team gave us the login details for their Adobe account...from this I have been able to access Premiere Pro, After Effects and Premiere Rush, which encouraged me to work on the showreel more. We have created some tests using watermarked Shutterstock footage, and when approved we will buy the HD clips and create the full thing.

Matias from LevelUP Networks enabled me to send on behalf of Simon on Outlook so I could send out an RO letter I designed. This will be handy for other things in the future.

We have a skeleton for Newsletter 3 but it still needs to be filled. We're going to write a piece on MSF and get John to be our star team member, but we have until the 1st to finish it.

Simon did our weekly update video again and I arranged and scheduled this as usual.

In my 'dream team' meeting with Simon, Rob and Tim, we came up with the following action points:

• Rob/Tim MSF collateral – think about the right target market
• Produce MSF testimonials – Tim
• Newsletter – MSF piece, who to feature in meet the team, who will write the intro
• All client email about MSF – Tim/Rob
• 60-second update video – Simon
• PREP benefits letter to ROs/EQ client update 

We gathered some handy feedback from a client called Andy on our Cortex and e-Learning services which will be useful in the future or on our website.

Thirty-first week! (3/8/20 - 7/8/20)

This week on Tuesday I had a catch-up call with Emma to discuss progress and new targets. I just need to complete my email marketing report, my principles of coding report, some Udemy and Fure Learn courses and update my OTJ training log for now. Regarding Citizenship, we have decided in order to cover the USAB's in full, I should gather some Witness Testimonies.

In my weekly meeting with Tim, Simon and Rob we discussed ideas for Newsletter 3 and the showreel, and we had our usual weekly team meeting with everyone on Wednesday. Simon asked me to create a PowerPoint template for us to use in these meetings when we are chosen to talk about what we've been up to recently.

On Friday I had a meeting with Nikki to discuss deadlines for the new e-Learning campaign we're planning. We have decided to prioritise the collateral and get that sorted first, then we can use it to update the website and create the showreels. She is going to set me a task to do every week.

I'm also going to help Zaheer create some e-Rostering sales collateral.

This week I was in charge of recording the 60-second update video. It was scary! I did about 10 takes!! This was scheduled by me as usual.

Thirtieth week! (27/7/20 - 31/7/20)/Principles of Coding Week 2

This week I scheduled, designed and arranged the weekly update video, Scott Walker recorded one for us this week whilst he works remotely in New Zealand!

I had a meeting with Nikki and Aaron on Wednesday about a new big marketing campaign. We're going to create emails, make website changes, new collateral and create some showreels.

I finished off the second Equiniti newsletter and Tim is going to send it off for us on Monday the 3rd. 

I didn't get any time to work on the showreel with Rob, but we're doing this next week.

We had our weekly team meeting as usual and Simon has asked me to talk about what I'm getting up to in marketing next week.

On Thursday and Friday, I had my final training for Principles of Coding with Stuart. We covered:

-Algorithms

-HTML

-JavaScript and CSS

-Web Stacks and Compatibility 

-API and Widgets

-Logic Gates

-Flowcharts

-IF and Functions

I also completed a mock exam for Principles of Coding. I got 11/15 which is a pass.

Is the internet an 'out-of-control monster?"

The World Wide Web is now 30 years old, with millions of websites and growing. But without it, the Internet would not be as global as it is now.

I don't think the internet is an 'out of control monster' but I can see why people would think that. It has scarily become a major part of our lives, and the way society is now is so different to when I was a child.

I first started using computers when I was 8 years old, and I would spend hours on our family one until my eyes would hurt. I would wake up early on the weekend just to catch a few more sneaky hours before my parents threw me off or my brother wanted a go. I had a Facebook account (when I wasn't supposed to) and other social media, and I started speaking to loads of 'strangers' who I met on virtual gaming websites, some of which are still very good friends to this day who I have met up with! Some would argue I was exposed to the Internet too young, but if anything, it's given me years of experience and I now love everything to do with tech, social media and digital content.

It can be a scary place. So many things could have gone wrong as a young child on the Internet, but back then it wasn't as developed as it is now. I'm glad that I'm not a 8 year old right now in 2020. Things are so different.

Would I give up the internet in exchange for 1 million? Definitely not! I would be bored out of my brains, and that means I wouldn't be able to do what I love or work in my dream job. Although 1 million would probably mean I'd never need to work again, I wouldn't be able to communicate with my friends who live in different countries, I wouldn't be able to stream my favourite movies and TV shows on Netflix and Disney+.

If the web had not been invented, it's hard to say whether life would be worse or if it would be improved. Let's compare:

Improved

• People would be forced to socialise and meet in person, which I think is healthier than hiding behind a screen all the time.
• There would be no toxic social media influencers, trying to get you to look and dress a certain way and make you feel bad about yourself. This is something I feel strongly about because if someone looks 100% perfect on Instagram, it's normally a lie thanks to Photoshop. People would be more confident with themselves, instead of feeling insecure by constantly seeing this stuff everywhere.
• We would be all-around healthier. The Internet can be addicting and being able to think freely without a keyboard warrior attacking you online because they don't agree with your opinion is just messed up.

Worse

• I and a lot of others would never have met our close online friends. Sometimes I think they're even more trustworthy than the friends I see every day.
• The internet has allowed us to be a modern society, we rely on the Internet for lots of jobs these days because it allows us to do things in more advanced ways. If the internet wasn't around, we would all still be working in offices or other boring jobs.
• The internet has helped lots of extraordinary things happen that wouldn't be possible without it. It's hard to imagine a world without all the things we have right now. We're lucky.

I think giving the rest of the world access to the Internet would definitely improve their lives. It would allow them to feel included with the rest of the world, and really feel part of something. Right now they have absolutely no idea what's going on with the rest of the world, they're completely isolated and aren't informed about major events that's happening.

Twenty-nineth week! (20/7/20 - 24/7/20)/Principles of Coding Training 1

This week was a rather short working week as I had training on Thursday and Friday.

On Monday, our G-Cloud 12 submission was sent off! No more G-Cloud! It feels like I've been working on it forever honestly. Our services are going live in September after they review our application.

As Nikki requested, I made some updates to the e-Learning parts of the collateral. We now have 2 pages, one for Bespoke and one for Off-the-shelf content. I have also been conversing with Nikki and Aaron about coming up with an e-Learning marketing campaign, we're having a meeting next week to talk this through.

I've been helping Simon with some Pipeline data, I put it into a word document then transferred it into a pretty PowerPoint presentation.

Tiffany also suggested that I create a new Mailchimp account to just use for our weekly videos, as people have been unsubscribing because they don't want to see them. This also means that people wouldn't receive release notes! Making a separate account for marketing makes sense now. Simon made the update video this week. I had to redesign the template because I couldn't transfer it from the old account, and now I can't schedule emails in advance! I'm going to have to wake up at 8am to schedule the emails on Friday.

Lewis has suggested that we post on social media about one of our colleagues Scott when he is working whilst travelling. We're coming up with ideas for posts at the moment.

Newsletter 2 is coming along nicely... I designed a nice golden looking congratulations to Poole who has won 12 months free Job Planning from the last competition. We're sending it out on the 3rd of August, the first working day of the month.

This week we were also told our Citizenship Project has been cancelled due to Covid-19.

On Thursday and Friday, I had the first part of my Principles of Coding training.

 During these 2 days we covered: The History of the Internet, Hosting, Web Servers, SEO, File Formats, Web Indexing and Crawlers, Cookies and Building Websites.

Although coding isn't a major part of my job role, knowing about how websites are made is useful when making changes to our own website and working with SEO. Learning about web indexing and crawling is also useful when it comes to SEO as well, in regard to what information from our website shows up on search engines.

I have been completing the HTML5 course on Codeacademy and saving the badges to put into my report as well.

Twenty-eighth week (13/7/20 - 17/7/20)

This week I was on Annual Leave, but the week before I made sure to schedule the 60-second update video for Friday on Mailchimp and social media.

I also completed a short COVID-19 Return to Work course for City & Guilds, I uploaded my certificate to Skilsure and my badge can be seen on my work signature and Linkedin profile.

Twenty-seventh week! (6/7/20 - 10/7/20)

This week I've been making a few adjustments to our website because some of our testimonials are now out of date, I have now removed all of the ones from past clients and replaced them with new feedback, including a quote from Sangeeta from Barts, one of our most dedicated clients.

I worked with Nikki and Zaheer on completing our G-Cloud 12 applications for e-Learning and e-Rostering this week. We finally completed it! Monday the 20th at 5pm our submission will be sent off and I am on annual leave next week so we will be going over it again quickly sometime on the day.

Nikki has also asked me to create new diagrams and update the e-Learning part of the collateral. Before we had just one diagram for 'off-the-shelf e-learning' now we have one for 'bespoke' as well. I will be working on this when I am back from my leave.

I helped Zaheer with a presentation he and some others were doing to a potential client, I rebranded the slides and made them look prettier.

We have now booked a hall in November for our 'comeback event'. We still have lots of things to decide on for this, but time is on our side.

We had our marketing catchup on Monday and our weekly team meeting on Wednesday as usual.
Team meeting

Twenty-sixth week (29/6/20 - 3/7/20)

This week I finished the first Equiniti newsletter for the new clients with the help of Simon, and Tim sent it off on Wednesday. In this newsletter, we are running a competition to win prizes including free job planning for a year. We're using SurveyMonkey for people to apply. I've also made sure to create awareness for this on social media.

On Monday I had a catchup call with Tim, Simon and Rob to go over the collateral. All done! Apart from the fact we forgot to include e-Rostering...which I was never told, and we need to create features and benefits for MSF.

On Wednesday we had our usual weekly team meeting. Simon wants me to do a 'marketing update' on the call next week! Just great! I am very nervous.

G-Cloud 12 is due on the 20th of July so we have 2 weeks to get the e-Learning section done. Nikki has started doing it and I'm going to help her when I can.

I have a meeting with Will next Tuesday about ZOHO.

Regarding the demo slides, we have now created a vision and I've made a table of trusts. I'm just waiting on Rob to send me the PowerPoint so I can add these and make them pretty to use.

Rob did the update video this week. As usual, I scheduled this and posted it to social media.

As Tuesday was the end of the month I also collected our social media and website metrics, as well as writing my monthly report to Simon.

Me and Rob have new ideas for the showreel, and we've created 'dummies' using PowerPoint so show how it will look. We're looking at clips to use for the products, e.g. a nurse on a computer.

I helped Jane by sending her the latest Cortex collateral, and I corrected some spelling mistakes. I also sent all of our Job Planning collateral to Simon.

There was another small email Rob asked me to make pretty into a template to send as well.

Finally, Aaron added me into a LinkedIn group with escalla and others where we ask them to like and share our reports in return for likes and shares.

Escalla
I finally finished bksblive *properly*, I had 2 more English parts that needed to be to level 2.9. I did a progress check on both and got to it! Yay!

I filled in my review document from my review with Emma with my answers and feedback.

I also finished off my Business Principles report and submitted it to Skilsure. Emma gave me some feedback and corrections to go over.

Twenty-fifth week! (22/6/20 - 25/6/20)

This week I've been working a lot on the newsletter and marketing collateral as they needed to the completed by next week. The main collateral and separate collaterals are now finished, and I have a meeting with Simon and some others to finalise them on Monday.

The newsletter is coming along nicely, still waiting on some contributions from a few people, but apart from that, it's done! We're looking at sending out one on the 1st of every month from now on.

On Thursday I had my review with Emma, and we went over old and new targets and discussed my progress. Turns out I still have a few bksblive tasks to do but nothing that will take too long! I'm going to start working on my email marketing report now and focus on finishing on my business principles report.

Now that the collateral is out of the way me and Rob are going to get to work on the showreel properly.

This week I've helped design a couple of email layouts for Rob and Simon as well as scheduling and organising the weekly video as usual. This week Tim did it again!

I also fiddled with a couple of slides for Simon for a presentation he's doing, and created a new 'Premier IT vision' slide which I'm very proud of,  I'm attaching it to this post.

I've been working on getting loads of Udemy courses done that Emma set us on the training week for our off the job training log!

We now have a weekly meeting with me, Simon, Tim and Rob to go over marketing and what I'm doing which is reassuring.

Digital Marketing Business Principles Training Week 2/Twenty-fourth week! (12/5/20 - 19/5/20)

This week training has been delivered online again using GoToMeeting. Emma has been a star, she's provided us with many courses for our off the job training log and the worksheets she has made for us are so easy to understand.

We covered Branding, Hashtags, Customer Service, Effective Communication, rules of social media, digital etiquette, social selling, audience types, copyright, personal branding, industry developments, 2020 trends and continuous professional development.

We caught up on our Citizenship project and have assigned new tasks to get working on. We're going to create a Trello board to help plan and keep track of what we're up to.

We also met Billy for the first time.

I managed to schedule our weekly update video too as usual. Lewis spoke about mental health and work-life balance this week.

Twenty-third week! (8/6/20 - 12/6/20)

This week I had a G-Cloud 12 review with Simon to check all listings and information were correct. We still need Nikki's help with the e-Learning part but we have until July 20th so there is no rush.

I had to cancel our Canva Pro trial before we got charged a lot, so we have lost access to a few features, as well as our Hootsuite trial. We'll make do though.

We had our usual team meeting, Nikki was in charge telling us all about the new e-Learning developments and wins.

I had a quick meeting with Simon and Tyona to discuss the 3-month notice period and excel spreadsheet about invoices because there was a lot of confusion, now it's all sorted.

I also had a meeting with Will and Tim Cresswell about ZOHO, just to become familiar with the software.

Me, Simon and Rob had a meeting to discuss some demo slides we're working on for a presentation. I made some notes on what to work on, I'm going to help Simon create a table with metrics and such and gather some photos of staff.

Simon wants me to create a weekly newsletter for the company - the first one is about Equiniti and it's due to be released on the 1st. I'm training next week but I'll make sure it's done!

He also asked me to look into starting a competition for the company!

I've started creating the separate marketing collateral for PReP... the main collateral document is finished (in my eyes) I still need Simon to review then I'll start focusing on the separate collaterals more.

Me and Rob still haven't properly started the showreel... it's hard to work on not in the office. But it WILL be done!

We've realised we need more testimonies for the company... I've been asked to update the website with one from Edgecumbe.

I also made a couple of emails and letters to send to clients for Rob and Simon. We had a new win this week, MYA Clinics LTD!

Nikki Humber was our star for the 60 second update video this week! As usual I scheduled the email and social media posts for this.

We were considering partnering with a company for a webinar but they charged so much for it, so we decided not to go ahead with it.

Twenty-second week! (1/6/20 - 5/6/20)

This week I have been working on finishing the marketing collateral still. We want to have it finished by the end of the month as well as the showreel. I had been working on diagrams for each product and these are now all finished!

We now have the company credit card details in the Shutterstock account so we can buy the footage we need whenever we need to.
Me and Rob had a meeting with Simon to discuss next steps and changes to the document. We're also definitely going to start working on separate collateral for specific products.
This week Rob did the update video again and I scheduled them to be sent out on Mailchimp and social media. I will be starting my report on this email marketing very soon.

I sent out the Premier IT letterhead to a member of staff for them to use, as well as helped assist someone who used to work for a client get access their appraisal.

We also considered partnering with CloserStillMedia for a webinar, but it cost wayyyy too much so we decided to not go through with it.

And finally something rather important. Simon wants me to monitor the renewals spreadsheet and let him know 3 months in advance when they are due to be invoiced. I still don't 100% completely but hopefully I'll get the hang of it more when I do more work on it.

Is online socialising as good as meeting in person?

Erin Klinenberg the American sociologist said:

"As meaningful as friendships we establish online can be, most of us are unsatisfied with virtual ties that never develop into face-to-face relationships."

I have many online friends who I've known since I was as young as 8 years old, thanks to YouTube, Moshi Monsters, and lots more similar interests. The thing is... now we are in isolation, I barely talk to the people I used to see all day every day. In fact, I talk to my online friends more! I've never met any of them before, and talking online is all we can do because some live in different countries. I personally believe my online friends are more reliable than my real-life friends because of this, surprisingly. So no, I'm not unsatisfied with not meeting them. If anything, I'm unsatisfied that my real-life friends seem to have forgotten I exist when we're not working together/meeting up!!

I have, however, set up online socialising activities with family and friends and they've been successful! Just the other week I did a Harry Potter makeup themed quiz with my friends, and I've done 2 more with other people from work. I would do group FaceTimes with my friends when lockdown first started but we don't really anymore... eventually it's going to be my turn to create a quiz though!

There aren't many more online socialising activities that I want to try... because I can't think of any! Apart from quizzes and face-timing and zoom calls, anyway.

If I could choose any 6 people in the world to invite to a virtual supper party, I would invite the 4 girls from Little Mix, Brendon Urie from Panic at the Disco because they're my favourite band and he's my favourite male singer, and Lady Gaga because she has been my idol since I was 8 years old and I admire her work so much!

Once lockdown is lifted, I can't WAIT to go down to the pub with my friends (particularly Wetherspoons), go shopping for clothes in proper stores, go out to restaurants, and go back to work! I miss being in the office so bad, I feel so lonely working at home, especially when the other apprentice in my department is on furlough! If only things could go back to normal sooner...

COVID-19 - catastrophe or a golden opportunity?

Has the pandemic been a catastrophe or a golden opportunity for my business?

Well, since we're a healthcare software company and most of our clients are NHS hospitals who are key workers during this time, we've not exactly gone out of business! If anything, we're busier than ever, and it's critical that our software is working all the time! Looking at it that way, it does seem like a golden opportunity, especially regarding the fact we have gained way more clients during the pandemic than we normally would.

It's also been a golden opportunity to work on our social media strategy, because even though we have the same working hours while working at home, it also feels like we have more time!
A lot of people are either furloughed, working from home or out of work, meaning they will be scrolling through social media platforms more. I've personally noticed an increase in activity on Twitter in the healthcare sector.

Stores online are going to be benefitting from the outbreak because their online sales will be increasing like mad! Although you can still go food shopping, most people prefer to have it delivered to there doors at the moment, and since clothes shops and cosmetics stores aren't open people are going online to buy as well! I've personally been buying LOTS more clothes than I normally would do since lockdown, my friends too. Which is interesting. I doubt the stores are complaining though!

Will things change in the future from what we have learnt in these weeks? Maybe. I know that I'm still going to be using hand gel like my life depends on it... but when I go back to work I'm going to have to be pushed up against random strangers on the tube again! Nothing has changed there.

I reckon stores will probably be cleaning more often than they used to be now this has happened, in case something occurs again in the future. I'll probably still feel obliged to socially distance myself when I'm out in public as well... but who knows. Let's just say this time has been an interesting experience!

Twenty-first week! (26/5/20 - 29/5/20)

This week's working week started on Tuesday because Monday was a bank holiday.

I have mainly been working on the new marketing collateral with Rob Green still. We decided the second page needed more of a 'vision', so we scrapped it and came up with something new. I also created some graphics using the product logos, we are thinking of creating separate 2-3 page collateral for the products as well as the big combined document, and the graphic 'selects' the product the document is discussing in colour and the rest are greyed out, to make the customer aware of the other products we provide as well.

I completed my bksblive Maths and English, I am now at least level 2 in both! Thank goodness.

I have also been completing the courses Emma set us on our last training week and uploading certificates and adding off the job training hours, and I have written my TikTok blog. Today I am going to write my response to the Covid-19 blog Emma also set.

I helped Alice Roche who has joined us from SARD with some marketing materials.

I used Google Analytics to take our monthly social media and website metrics, I feel way more confident using it now that I have taken those 2 courses from the training week, and I have written my monthly May report to Simon.

This week Simon did the weekly update video again and I scheduled and sent it out on Mailchimp this morning. I have now started to collect data from these for my email marketing report.

Lewis wants to record a video discussing Microsoft Teams and such to send out on Monday to try and encourage people to sign up for the Cortex/Teams webinar, which I think is a good idea. I'm going to schedule it after I post this blog!

TikTok - would it really work for my company?

Could TikTok work for marketing at Premier IT?

Maybe, maybe not. At first glance it doesn't seem like an app our target audience would use. But the following facts could persuade my manager to give it a go:

1. There are over 800 million active users worldwide! Lots of potential business, and way more people than Twitter, LinkedIn and Snapchat.

2. Over 1.5 billion downloads on the app store!

3. The average TikTok user spends more than 50 minutes per day on the app.

4. It has localised content

5. It's the next big thing!

I've investigated whether our target audience/customers ARE on TikTok...and they are! Lots of NHS hospitals have jumped on the trend and created accounts, which means probably lots of NHS health workers and nurses are too. This means it could be suitable for our customer segment if we create the right content. Maybe something funny/relatable/trending somehow related to our products? It would take some clever thinking. Because at first glance to someone not involved in the healthcare sector, appraisal and revalidation doesn't sound too interesting.

There are a number of different forms of advertising on TikTok. On ads.tiktok.com you can create your own ad. I have tried to do this but it says it's not available in my region yet! I have signed up to be notified when it is though.

But in the US, TikTok ads start at $10 per CPM (cost per 1000 views). And they require you to spend a minimum of $500 on a campaign. This is because TikTok recently received a major investment from SoftBank's Vision Fund and was ranked as the current most valuable startup.

I have carried out some hashtag research... #revalidation (481 views) , #medicalrevalidation (no views), #appraisal has 848.2k views!! If we were to post a video under this hashtag this means we could get quite a few views, even if it's just a few hundred at first, because this is clearly a popular hashtag, as well as #nurses with 260.9m views, and doctors with over 600m views! Wow.

A lot of doctors and nurses, dentists and surgeons are on TikTok and they share interesting medical facts and demonstrations. One man from the Instituition of Human Anatomy is using TikTok to share videos of the human body and it's insides... using a real dead body! Freaky!

Regarding out expected ROI, looking at the number of views the hashtags we would use get, I reckon it would be much better than other social media channels especially Facebook and Instagram, where we are barely getting any activity! We may not make more money, because we would only be posting videos for fun and not paying for ads,  but it could create bigger brand recognition.

Regarding our key performance indicators, it would be good to have an increase in reach, interaction, sales and get more positive customer reviews.

I think it's worth a try, like I said, at first we wouldn't have to spend any money, we could just do it for fun, but if it turns out to be successful we could integrate it into our marketing plan officially and start running some ads.

How often we would post is hard to pin because for our business creating engaging, interesting content to do with healthcare software could be hard! We're not really a big business so at the beginning maybe we could just post whenever we find a relevant trend we can respond to.

Overall, TikTok is definitely something we could consider.

Twentieth week! (18/5/20 - 22/5/20)

This week I have been posting about our webinar on Friday at 12pm to try and encourage as many signups as possible, and I have been sending daily registration reports to Zaheer Khan. On Thursday we had a practice run to make sure all logistics were working. We have 7 people registered which is much more than last time!

I have been working on creating some marketing collateral which we can send to leads when they ask who we are and what they are about. We had a meeting on Monday to discuss this. Simon has assigned this task to me and Rob Green and we have to finish it before the 3rd of June. I have created something but we have decided it needs more visuals and diagrams, so I have started creating some.

Tim Cresswell from Equiniti has recorded the update video this week and I have once again scheduled the email and social media posts to be sent out.

Laura West from escalla also asked me to send out another email promoting escalla's latest Teams webinar on the 9th of June.

Rob and I are still working on the showreel, we've gathered lots of Shutterstock footage we want to use and are now going to create a rough storyboard so we know what is going where.

This week I finished the Hootsuite Academy Social Marketing Training course but I couldn't take the certification exam because it cost more than £100! I also completed the HubSpot Academy Email Marketing certification and passed the exam to get my certificate. I have uploaded this to Skilsure, added it to my LinkedIn profile and my Business Principles report.

I also had my own go at creating a Google Ad for my business (it didn't go live) and I have added evidence of this to my Business Principles report as well.

Unfortunately, me and Simon still haven't had the G-Cloud 12 overview because he is always so busy and we have to reschedule but we have until July to sort it out so it's okay.

We had our Weekly Team Meeting as usual and we got to meet Steve Murekezi who is working on the Helpdesk alongside Paul and Joshua.

Nikki sent me a Publisher template to use for future collateral and I helped her by sending over a white PNG version of our logo.

Nineteenth week! (11/5/20 - 15/5/20)

On Monday this week, I had a quick catchup phone call with Emma to discuss my progress and we set new targets. I've also been finishing off my Business Principles report and doing the courses we were set on the last training week in my free time.

I organised the weekly update email on Mailchimp and scheduled it for sending out on social media, this week Simon did the video again to talk about our recent acquisition of Equiniti.

I helped create a new signature strip to use on our emails to introduce Rob Green and Tim Creswell to the company, as well as create a PowerPoint for Simon to use in a presentation covering Premier IT and Equiniti, which involved asking them to write 50 words each.

We had our usual weekly team meeting, I really enjoy these sessions as I realise that I miss my co-workers!

On Thursday I attended a Supplier Engagement for RM6221 Digital Capability for Health webinar to get more information on G-Cloud 12, and it was really useful despite going on for hours and hours!

We're also planning another webinar for next Friday, I have set it up on GoToWebinar and helped send out the invitation emails. I also created social media posts to promote and encourage people to sign up. 

And earlier today I had a meeting with Simon to review our G-Cloud 12 application one final time.

I've been conversing with Rob Green who is going to help me spruce up the showreel and he has some great ideas, I can guarantee it's going to be amazing.

And my Indeed job search was successful! Steve Murekezi is joining us on the helpdesk on Monday. This is the second person I've helped the company hire so I feel rather chuffed.

I also finally finished my CNO Summit Birmingham report despite some difficulty with file size and PDFs...

I've also done some admin work such as branding letters and the usual for Simon.

Tim is going to be creating the update video next week and he's giving me the list of the new clients to add to Mailchimp.

I created another poster to send to the team to announce Virgin Care are a new client.

Digital Marketing Business Principles Training/Eighteenth week! (4/5/20 - 7/5/20)

This week was our first Business Principles training week. Since Friday was a bank holiday the training week ended on Thursday, and since the Coronavirus pandemic is still going on we still had to do it online!
On Monday we went through Digital and Social Media Strategies, PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns and email marketing.
On Tuesday we discussed our Citizenship project and assigned new tasks, as well as writing a blog post to follow this up. We then looked at blogs and apps and made our own app using Appshed to demonstrate our skills.
On Wednesday we looked at SEO (search engine optimisation), social media and company specific platforms, and the features, limitations and risks of digital technologies and social media platforms.
On Thursday we looked at Google Analytics and I completed the beginners and advanced courses.
Throughtout the week Emma was also giving us blog post ideas to write including one about TikTok and she gave us many stretch and challenge courses to complete for our off the job training log.
All of this will help me in my job role. The courses will help me to use these marketing techniques in my job role and the techniques will help me bring success to my company.

Citizenship

For my apprenticeship, I have to complete a citizenship project where I do something for the community using my digital marketing skills.
I am in a group with Ahmed, Fraser, Georgia, Daisy, Billy, Lucie and Jacob.
Our initial idea was to raise money for a mental health charity and create awareness for mental health. We decided we wanted to represent Mind and we brainstormed some ideas which included having a non-school uniform day in schools to fundraise and we would create a presentation to be used in an assembly on mental health during the day, as well as create posters to be put up in the school. Unfortunately due to the Coronavirus we probably won't get to do the schools idea so on our recent GoToMeeting training call we discussed a new idea where we sent out virtual posters about mental health in emails to people in our workplace and these will be sent when we are back in work. Initially I was responsible for contacting Mind and we now have a contact who we can go to for any help and support.
In our most recent discussion, we discussed roles and what we need to do before the next training week. We have a WhatsApp group with everyone to keep in touch.
This is what we decided:

Seventeenth week! (27/4/20 - 1/5/20)

We have still been sending out weekly update videos using Mailchimp and posting them on social media. This week Zaheer's video went out and next week John is going to do one!

I have been helping to create many emails and letters as Premier IT has now bought Equiniti 360 Clinical! Lots of rebranding had to be done, as well as the classic Getting to Know You sheets for new partners.

Today was our Medical Appraisal webinar. Only 1 person who signed up out of the 4 turned up... hopefully in the future we will get more registrants. This is only the second webinar we've done so it's ok!

The production of the showreel has been going quite slow, but Natalia sent me the final demo we needed for MSF and some screen recordings which I have started to put into the video. Even though we can’t be in the office to record more footage, what we have at the moment is pretty good if you ask me.

Will has asked me and Ahmed to help create new intros for the guidance videos on PREP, since the old ones used the old branding. Seem to be getting a lot of rebranding tasks recently! And we have been looking for another Support Lead, I’m using Indeed again for this. I have scheduled 3 interviews already for Lewis to do.

I have finished writing up my report on the Birmingham event. I made sure to include lots of photos, screenshots and videos and go through the process of making the new banner and social media posts.

Sixteenth week! (20/04/20 - 24/04/20)

This has been yet another busy, busy week.
We managed to find a great 60-day free trial deal for Hootsuite, so we can use it for another 2 months at least! Having a scheduling platform then suddenly having to remember time's to post on your own is a struggle!
I've been busy helping Simon rebrand and rewrite a document from Equiniti 360 Clinical, including changing colours, fonts and images, and a lot of meetings on Teams! It looks great and has now been sent off.
I also helped tweak and edit another document for PReP, instructions on how to use the software. I tested that the steps worked and the tutorial videos Will made worked.
I have been on call after call with Zaheer organising our webinar next Friday at 12pm. I've been designing the webinar on GoToWebinar, the registration invite email, and the registration page. as well as posts to promote it on social media which I've now scheduled on Hootsuite. We had a bit of an issue at first, because we have created a new LogMeIn account using training@premierit.com. At first, this wasn't a proper email address and we couldn't access the emails being sent to it, such as the registration invite I normally copy and edit. John helped us after having a meeting on GoToMeeting and he created an email for Training which is now on my outlook. Now, whenever someone registers I get an email notification. So far we only have one registrant. I also finished rebranding the powerpoint he asked me to do.
I also sent out an email to help promote our last webinar with escalla, to help people learn Microsoft Teams. Quite a few people have now signed up!
Our second 60-second update video went out this morning, Lewis discussed what we've been doing with Barts Health to help NHS Nightingale with eLearning and LMS software. We sent out an email and posted it on our social media.
We had our usual escalla meetings with their marketing team. They thanked us for making the tweaks to the presentations and gave us a new task to find the HR contacts of some estate agents and put them in a table. We're still checking the social media of the confirmed people who we were investigating last week.
We had our weekly team meeting as usual, and the directors updated us on what's been going on. Simon also informed the team that a few people have been furloughed.
I also made some changes to a presentation I did to Ian West back in February so I could upload it to Skilsure as evidence, as well as making some corrections to my Online/Offline Marketing report.
I've made a start on my CNO Summit Birmingham report. I'll make sure this is done by next week.
To make it easier to keep track of my tasks I've set up my own Trello board. https://trello.com/b/JAavngqD/megan-to-do
I've started adding the MSF footage to the showreel. Even though we can't be in the office to record more footage it's going reasonably well.
I finally completed our G-Cloud 12 application! We're going to review it on the 15th of May but for now I can forget it exists. Whew.

Fifteenth week! (14/04/20 - 17/04/20)

This weeks working week started from Tuesday due to the Bank Holiday.

I've has lots of meetings regarding G-Cloud 12, including discussing with Nikki whether listing e-Learning is a good idea. We've decided to go through with this.

Simon has been asking me to create some emails and content to send out to new clients when they are being transferred from their old appraisal systems to our new ones, overall just lots of emails!

Including an email promoting escalla's final Microsoft Teams webinar, and the first weekly update video to clients from Simon. Next week Lewis is going to do one covering NHS Nightingale and how we've been involved.

Zaheer has been asking me to help him prepare for future webinars and touch up their powerpoints so they have the right look and feel.

Me and Ahmed have decided that our priorities regarding social media should be Twitter and LinkedIN. We're still going to post to Facebook and Instagram but we've realised we're not going to reach the correct audiences focusing so much time on them. I've personally been struggling gaining and retaining followers on Twitter, but I'm doing what I can.

We've had our usual meetings with the escalla marketing team and we presented our new social media plan to them, they gave us some more tips and advice and ideas. We've also been doing some final tweaks to the rebranded presentations so they all have the same style.

Fourteenth week! (6/04/20 - 9/04/20)

On Monday this week, me and Ahmed had a meeting with Simon to discuss the end of March's metrics. They were all very low and we discussed ways to recover from this. We're seeking advice from Laura, Carl and Matt during our meetings on Tuesdays and Wednesdays but we have also decided we're going to look into paid advertisements for Facebook and Twitter. We also decided Instagram isn't a platform we need to invest too much time in, so we're presenting our new social media plan to Simon at the end of the week.

During the meeting we also discussed the idea of recording and sending out weekly update videos to all of our clients to assure them we're still working as usual and let them know what we're working on so they know we're here when they need us. They are to be posted on social media as well. Simon recorded the first one and Lewis is recording the next, the directors are going to take in turns.
To do this we're using Mailchimp to create a template, we already have a Premier IT account but we have never used it before, so on Thursday Tiff gave us training.

As I write this I have now completed the email template. I have attached it to this blog.

I'm still working on G-cloud 12 applications, I'm trying to get one product's listing done every day but we have an extra 3 months deadline so this isn't a priority anymore.

We're still trying to adapt our social media posts to be more appropriate to the situation we're all in and on Thursday I tweeted a clapping GIF for the #ClapforCarers which was well received.
I am still trying to get to Level 2 English and Maths on BKSB which seems to be taking ages, but I've made sure to complete both assessments for each.

Simon also asked me to design 2 more emails for some work the company are doing.

I have now finished rebranding all of the powerpoints for escalla and Carl has set us the task of *stalking* people's social media who are relating to NHS Nightingale to make sure they aren't posting anything they shouldn't be doing. We are going to check on these people weekly.

Thirteenth week! - (30/3/20 - 3/4/20)

This week we have been completing our second Online/Offline Marketing training week and adding to our report in preparation for our exam, but due to the coronavirus outbreak we have had to do this online via GoToWebinar, which was strange at first but eventually I got used to it, and we did lots of Kahoots and practice exam questions. We still don't know when our exam is but I'm revising anyway.
The Coronavirus may have affected where I do my work and how but thankfully I am still able to carry out the normal duties I would be doing in the office. I'm still able to manage social media, create content using Canva and Photoshop, monitor the marketing inbox, collect metrics and view analytics and send and receive emails as well as a lot more. The only thing I can't do from home is put on the internal Premier IT, and we have created a range of different social media posts in response to the Coronavirus to post online.
Working at home has meant I've had to work independently and use my own initiative since I don't have my manager giving me tasks and things to do, though I can email and message colleagues on Slack if I ever do feel stuck and need something to be getting on with, communication is important when you don't have your colleagues to chat to in the office. I still wake up early every morning to start work at my usual time and give myself regular breaks. I've had to use my thinking skills to come up with engaging content to post in this worrying time.

Twelth week! (23/3/20) - (27/3/20)

My first week of working at home fully!

I've mainly been working on social media posts for next week as I'm going to be on a training call with escalla, as well as rebranding some powerpoints for Carl and going over g-cloud 12 applications with Simon. I also started writing my monthly report. I've had lots of online meetings.

I've been working a lot on the Showreel, we now have footage for Job Planning. All thats left is MSF footage and recording in the office (which will hopefully eventually be done!) and it should be ready!

I finally finished my competitor analysis report, and have continued revising for my first exam - whenever it's going to be due to the Coronavirus I have no clue!

I've been keeping in contact with my colleagues and there has always been work to be getting on with.