A lot of my tasks as the Marketing Assistant at Dv8 Sussex revolve quite heavily around social media. I help manage our Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube accounts. Before Dv8 I was already using social media sites daily such as Twitter and Facebook. But social media in the workplace and at home for leisure are two completely different things. Here at Dv8, social media is a very powerful marketing tool that allows us to advertise and promote ourselves better. It allows us to target audiences that we may not be able to reach without the help of these sites. Where at home I may tweet/post to my friends and followers for the purposes of fun and general social interaction, at work I tweet to other organisations that we can reciprocate with and together reach a wider audience. Having an Apprenticeship in Social Media and Marketing is giving me a better understanding of how social media sites are much, much more than places to have a gossip and a joke.

I use a site called Hootsuite to manage all of our social media accounts at once – which I didn’t even know was possible. Again, from a marketing perspective it’s a very useful and powerful tool. I am able to post a status/tweet across all the social media sites I have listed at once. It saves a huge deal of time and even if I think I need to post something later but won’t have the time for it, I can schedule when I want it to be posted!

One of the skills that my Apprenticeship is definitely enhancing is my communication skills. I have to email a lot of people about the courses that we offer. I’ve started to write blog posts on the Dv8 website. I also answer the phone a lot which I used to dread. But all of these tasks not only improve my communication skills but boost my self confidence too. All jobs are giving me a great deal of independence and responsibility. One of the things I most want to get out of my Apprenticeship is actual working experience in the media industry. I spent two years studying A level Media Studies at BHASVIC. It’s one thing to understand the media industry, but it’s another thing experiencing it for yourself. Getting an Apprenticeship is one of the best things I have done in my life, and is an incredible way of continuing my education whilst experiencing the wider working world.

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