A month in the life of Courtney Wood, our Online PR Apprentice
Posted on Tags: PR, Strawberry Academy
Our new PR Apprentice, Courtney Wood, joined us at the end of March 2011. To help her develop the writing skills she needs to make it in the world of PR, we asked her to write a blog post about her first month with us. We think she did a great job and we are sure that by sharing her experience, Courtney will help to inspire future Strawberry apprentices. So here it is: a diary of Courtney’s first month with us!
My first month as an Online PR Apprentice, by Courtney Wood
When I left school, I was fixed on going to Sixth Form and presumed that I’d carry out the whole two years there, but after a few months, I soon realised that it just wasn’t for me! I attended St Mary’s Sixth Form studying Maths, Psychology, Sociology and Religious Studies for six months. Although I really enjoyed the social aspect of college, I found the learning aspect of college not so enjoyable and just a bit too much like school.
Studying at St Mary’s School for five years and being at the Sixth Form there for six months resulted in it becoming a bit too familiar; it wasn’t exciting or fresh anymore. I wanted to experience something different; I was eager to have a change. Although I was cautious about stepping out of my comfort zone, I decided that I had to leave college. I stepped off the educational path and started to head in a different direction. It was important to me to find something that I would enjoy more, yet would still be rewarding and beneficial to me.
After I decided to leave college, I applied for several full-time positions in administration while working a couple of extra days a week at Tiger Leisure – my Saturday job. After a month job-hunting I soon recognised that this wasn’t the right option for me at the moment, mainly due to the fact that I’m inexperienced, young and don’t have a lot of qualifications. It soon became apparent that a job wasn’t going to be an option for me, so I was forced to go in a different direction… again.
Plan C: apprenticeship. I’d never really known about apprenticeships before I started looking for one for myself. I was under the impression that all apprenticeships were for more manual jobs such as engineers, hairdressers and bricklayers! However, I soon realised when I went to Hull Business Training Centre that you can get apprenticeships in more office-based jobs such as business administration, customer service and IT. This was ideal for me and it was exactly what I was looking for.
Within a week at Hull Business Training Centre, I’d had two interviews and had secured myself a position at Strawberry. Fantastic! It had all happened so quickly that I didn’t really have time to be scared about it; I was more relieved that I had finally gotten a job! Naturally, I had a few nerves but they were soon gone after I realised how supportive Strawberry are and how they cater for people like me with the Strawberry Academy.
Before I started, shamefully, I knew absolutely nothing about Strawberry. However, once I’d had an interview and did a bit of research, I saw what a huge impact Strawberry has on the local community through the various charity events they have organised such as the 24 hour website build for The Smile Foundation. My first impression of Strawberry was that it had a nice working atmosphere and that it would support and help me to learn. During my interview with Strawberry, the company seemed very friendly and came across as very professional.
Week One:
I was clueless about what PR was when I first came to Strawberry, so on my first day I was unsure of what I would be doing! Naturally, I was apprehensive about that aspect, but I was looking forward to learning about it and I’m eager to learn more in-depth about it.
Attending Hull Business Training Centre half a day a week allows me to learn everything I need to know to achieve a level 2 NVQ in Business Administration. In my first week there I learnt about the postal system and communication. I wanted to do this course because it will help me in the future and if I keep progressing with it I could even get into university (although currently I don’t want to go to university, it’s still nice to know that the option is still there if I change my mind).
An apprenticeship seems the perfect balance between college and the workplace, because you receive the benefits from both - qualifications, work experience and a wage. I’m hoping that my apprenticeship will give me skills that I require for a job in the future. Apprenticeships are like a stepping stone into the world of work.
In my first week I was getting to know the staff and their roles within Strawberry; I learnt about all the different departments, not just PR. I’d never even heard of some of the jobs that the staff do before, I didn’t even realise that some of the jobs were done by people, for example with Google AdWords, I thought Google just decided which website went on which part of the search engine - I didn’t know that people could influence their rank on a page. I didn’t even know people worked for Google! I thought Google was just a massive clever computer!
During my first week at Strawberry a large majority of my time was spent researching the clients, finding out what work we do and who we do it for. It was important to get a good understanding of these companies so I knew a bit about who we were writing Facebook statuses and tweets for. During the induction process, I learnt about a lot of new things and found it all very interesting!
Week Two:
In week two I was starting to get used to working full time and I was familiarising myself with the social media accounts that I help to look after. I carried out a lot of research and created a few spread sheets.
My second week at Strawberry included being introduced to Jade. She has had a similar experience to me as she too was an apprentice at Strawberry, worked part-time at Tiger Leisure and went to Hull Business Training Centre. It was good to see the success that an apprenticeship can bring you and it motivated me.
Since my role at Strawberry involves Twitter, I even joined Twitter myself to help me understand more about it! I followed lots of interesting celebrities which resulted in me understanding the world of Twitter and the different language and hashtags that are used. I got to know all the do’s and don’ts of twitter and I gradually started to get my head around it all. I read an interesting book called ‘Twitter Power’ which gave me an even better insight into the complicated Twitterverse!
Not only did I look at Twitter, I also looked at Facebook. I found it very strange to look at Facebook from a business perspective rather than a personal outlook - it was no longer just a place where you talk to your friends, it was a place where businesses would market their products and reveal the latest in company news. I also learnt a lot about blogs and did online research to help out Sarah, Strawberry’s PR Manager.
Researching Google AdWords was another key task of week 2, I was learning about click-through rates, keywords, campaigns, search engine optimisation and quality scores. This obviously took up quite a bit of time because there is so much to learn!
I wrote a press release during this week as well about my appointment at Strawberry and had my photograph taken by a photographer to go with my press release and to go onto the Strawberry website.
Putting my postal skills that I learnt from Hull Business Training Centre the previous week into action, I learnt how the postal system at Strawberry works. I used these skills to post bottles of Rio Rosa Mosqueta beauty oil to reviewers in order for them to give their verdict on the product over Facebook for others to see.
Week Three:
I really started to get stuck in during week three, I was writing draft tweets and statuses for the social media for a brand new client. I was handed the responsibility for posting regular updates on Twitter and Facebook, which meant that I had to manage my time and monitor activities on the accounts. I learnt how to use new software and technology such as TweetDeck. In week three I’d been given more responsibility over administration duties and I had to think about writing skills and how to write for different audiences.
In my course at Hull Business Training Centre that week I learnt about what duties a receptionist has such as answering the telephone and how to deal with customers. Also, I learnt about waste in a business environment, how to reduce the amount of waste that you make and what alternatives there are to using paper in an office environment such as emails and using scrap paper instead of fresh paper.
I had my first client meeting in week three; I was quite nervous as I’ve never been to a meeting before but I found it very interesting and learnt a lot about the company we went to meet. It was exciting to see a company in the early stages of starting their social media and was great to hear the ideas both Sarah and the company had – it gave me a fantastic insight into the social media aspect of PR.
Week Four:
This week consisted of me keeping on top of updating the Facebook and Twitter accounts for companies. As Sarah was on holiday this week, I had to reply to the public’s social media enquiries to our clients which I was a bit nervous about because I didn’t want to make any mistakes or give out any wrong information!
I also made my first phone calls to the companies during week four which I was apprehensive about because I was nervous that they’d ask me something that I didn’t know the answer to. But it was absolutely fine and I realised that I didn’t really have anything to worry about.
At Hull Business Training Centre that week, I learnt about different types of office equipment, how to use them, what to be aware of when using them and what not to do when using them. I also learnt how to write documents such as memo’s and letters, this involved trying to improve my typing skills. Everything I learn at Hull Business Training Centre is relevant to my job, this is another perk to having an apprenticeship because you’re learning about stuff that you actually need to know and will become useful to you, rather than at college where you’re learning things that you perhaps won’t need in the future.
I’d been studying online for my diploma in social media marketing and had completed the studying for it in week four, so I took the exam, and passed it! This diploma will help me at Strawberry as it showed me how to use various programmes more in depth such as Facebook, Twitter, WordPress and Audacity.
My first month at Strawberry…
Obviously starting anything new is going to come with an element of apprehension but I’ve really enjoyed my first month at Strawberry. I learnt lots about PR and find it very interesting and I’m enthusiastic to learn more. I’m glad that I’ve come to Strawberry for my apprenticeship and I’m looking forward to see where it’s going to take me.