#NAW2014 - A day in the life of social media apprentice, Rebecca Parker
With so much stigma attached to the word ‘apprentice’, I wasn’t sure whether it was the right choice for me. I had gone through school and entered my first year of sixth form with the intention of going to university, but a two year period of having tonsillitis meant my grades dropped and getting to university would be an even bigger struggle.
I’m not one to be deterred by hard work, but this made me question the reason I was going to university – would I even enjoy it?
I came to the conclusion that university was not the right choice for me. I had no set career plan and didn’t want to waste at least £27,000 doing a three year course to gain an irrelevant qualification, leaving me in a similar position to the one I was already in.
I finished my A-levels, coming out with three good grades, and started looking at the National Apprenticeship Service. I found one course in particular that really got me interested: the UK’s first industry-led social media and digital marketing apprenticeship. Sounds good already, right? I applied for three of the companies that were hiring an apprentice at The Juice Academy’s ‘Bootcamp’ day and, thankfully, got the position at the company I wanted – Tangerine PR.
I love my job as a social media and digital marketing apprentice, working as a part of the B2B (business to business) team. I am doing something that I enjoy and working with a great range of people.
A typical day for me entails getting in to work in the morning and opening Hootsuite before I do anything else. It is from here I control the four social media accounts I am responsible for; British Gypsum, Alterra, Michelin UK and The Juice Academy. I look through each of the streams and engage with people that are getting involved in our conversations or directly talking to us.
I create content planners, which are a small schedule of the content that will be posted from an account, sometimes even creating images and videos too. Depending on the account, the plans can be anything from a couple of days to two weeks’ worth of content. Once this content has been approved by an account director, it is my job to schedule it all in.
I write blogs for different clients, mainly British Gypsum. The BG blogs tend to be about architecture or happenings in the construction world as they are a plasterboard company who target plasterers, construction workers, architects and designers.
Other tasks that I have been given during my five months at Tangerine PR are:
Writing press releases
Doing social media research audits for new business pitches
Blogs for The Juice Academy and Tangerine PR
Going out and networking at many events
Evaluations at the end of each month
Running competitions for clients on their social media channels
I am also a part of the Tangerine PR charity committee
I have been given so many different opportunities through working at Tangerine PR and I am sure there are many more to come. Although there are things that I do on a day-to-day basis, I can almost guarantee you that every day will be different, as social media is so unpredictable.
Doing an apprenticeship was definitely the right decision for me, and I am extremely glad I did it!
