#NAW2014 - A day in the life of social media apprentice, Nathan Youd

Four weeks ago, I was working as a part time Barista at Sainsbury’s after leaving a Journalism course at Salford University, and I wanted to get a foot-in in the media/PR industry.

I took a look at what www.apprenticeships.org.uk had to offer, and The Juice Academy advert caught my eye. I applied, got through Boot Camp, and the rest is history.

So here I am now, at my desk as a junior account executive at Tangerine PR.

My average day starts with checking my emails and my timetable, noting down any meetings on my office calendar.

The biggest part of my job is monitoring engagement and writing tweets for my clients on their social media channels. This can vary every day, which is the beauty of the role. You never know who is going to engage in conversation with you on social media, and it’s great to have different topical conversations with customers.

After monitoring engagement, I begin planning and writing content for the week(s) ahead. I really enjoy searching the web for those all-important sporting fixtures and events and deciding which ones make it into the content planner.

After deciding the content for the planner, it is sent over to my mentor (or mane-tor), @weirdhorse, who looks over it at the stables with his jockeying, professional eye. I reward myself with a nice brew.

Next up is scheduling the content into HootSuite. I try to schedule content a week in advance to make sure everything is prepared and ready to go, so I can be organised and crack on with other jobs.

Next is lunch, which I spend checking over today’s sporting headlines, and checking Mashable for exciting digital content.

After lunch is usually when the meetings occur, this is when the team covers any client requests, important events or topics and sets the plans out for the next few weeks.

Recently, I’ve been taking a bit of time out to do some work on an upcoming staff meeting presentation for The Juice Academy. Myself and fellow apprentice, Rebecca, are tasked with showing the rest of the team what we have been up to at The Juice Academy. This is a great way of improving presenting skills and getting myself out there in front of senior team members.

Representing The Juice Academy whilst undergoing my apprenticeship is also a great way to network and to get the name of the academy, and myself, out there.

When my tasks are done I head home for some well-earned rest after a jam-packed day.