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.