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!