For a period of three months, I worked on developing a social media strategy with the aim of achieving three SMART goals:
To increase post engagement from an average of 500 user impressions per week to an average of 2000 per week.
To increase website traffic (by posting website links) by 20% from March 2022 to June 2022.
To improve customer satisfaction in TVMS by responding to 100% of queries and answering customer questions as they appear on social media pages.
The approach I took was to post new content as regularly as possible. I used social media scheduling tools such as Hootsuite to arrange for posts to be released at peak times of the day such as 7-9am as people wake up and 5-7pm as people finish work. These times were identified as when most people would be active on social media and therefore would see TVMS’ posts appear in their newsfeeds. Another technique I used was to develop multi-media content as this would gain more views and interaction. Therefore, I developed high quality promotional videos and published polls for people to get involved with.
One reflective model that I found particularly useful during this campaign was the ERA Cycle (Jasper, 2013). It is a simple framework that can be applied during live projects to quickly learn from mistakes and become more efficient. I used this model when uploading content to the Facebook and Twitter pages. At first, the content I was uploading wasn’t gaining any interaction. I decided to stop and think through why this was the case instead of continuing to persist with this failing approach and came to the realisation that media content such as videos and images receive higher engagement on our competitor’s social media pages therefore I decided to drop the text-heavy posts and adopt a more visual approach.
ERA Cycle (Jasper, 2013)
This was incredibly effective and in the three months since I started the campaign I have achieved all three SMART goals.
The Snappy Christmas Concerts were the showpiece of the year for TVMS. It comprised of over 3000 students, from 24 schools, across 4 venues in Teesside and is the largest and most popular series of events in the TVMS calendar. Naturally, the week-long event requires considerable planning to ensure it is successful. I was a member of the event planning team for this event and my responsibilities were to book the venues and set up an e-ticketing service where people could purchase tickets to the events.
To reflect on my experience working on this high-profile event I will use Driscoll’s What Model (2007). His framework is simple to understand and asks three simple questions: What? So what? Now what?
Driscoll’s What Model (2007)
What?
I communicated via phone call and subsequently followed up by email on booking venues for the concerts to take place at. I followed a specific brief: the venues had to hold a capacity of 2000 minimum, there had to be sufficient car parking facilities and the booking fee couldn’t exceed 30% of the sale of each ticket sold. To meet the e-ticketing requirement I researched a number of online services such as Eventbrite and Billeto and came to the decision to use Billeto as their online transaction fees were considerably less than the competition. I was given guidance by my colleagues in the finance and admin departments on what ticketing system would work as we collectively made a decision on the price of each ticket to ensure we could cover the costs and still make a profit. The overall experience was extremely positive as I secured most venues I wanted to book and set up the e-ticketing account with very little difficulty.
So What?
The e-ticketing system was extremely successful as customers could book and pay for tickets on the secure Billeto site with ease. It was a huge relief for me personally as I had spent weeks researching and trailing different ticketing options and was concerned the site would crash or the transaction fees would be too high but thankfully the system I choose was a success. Snappy Christmas was the first event that utilised e-tickets. Before this, paper tickets were produced which was very costly. The management were very happy with the ticketing process and have agreed to permanently switch to e-ticket for all future events.
Now what?
Reflecting on this experience, I believe my role in organising the event was a success. I had difficulty initially booking venues with the process taking a lot longer than I had thought it would but it was certainly worth the effort as the majority of venues I contacted agreed to my terms and we secured the bookings. Perhaps, one small improvement that could be made next time would be to factor in additional time to secure venues as the deadline was fast approaching when I secured the first booking. Thankfully, I secured tree over venues quickly after that.
Very often, reflective models are used for experiences that are negative and to highlight improvements that could be made. In this case however, after reflecting on the event, there was a positive outcome and I was happy for the experience to collaborate in a small team and to have an impact on the success of the event.
In November 2017, I was offered a full-time position as Digital Marketing Assistant after previously working for Tees Valley Music Service as a Digital Media Apprentice on a temporary contract. This was an exciting opportunity for me; to work in a sector I was passionate about , with a company that valued my work and wanted me to take on more responsibilities. Taking on this role would certainly increase my responsibilities as I now managed the TVMS social media accounts, the TVMS website and supervised the construction of monthly newsletters. Naturally, my role within the company transitioned from an unambiguous office administrator into a public-facing positioning as one of my duties was to lead fortnightly marketing meetings with senior management and the wider Education Hub board.
As an individual who has had debilitating issues with confidence and public speaking this was a very daunting prospect. My concerns proved correct when I led the first marketing meeting in December 2017 as I was overcome with anxiety, prompting senior management to take over the meeting as I couldn’t continue.
Afterwards, I spoke to my line manager and I expressed my concerns about my public-speaking responsibility. He offered me two options: I could renege on this commitment or I could take part in a team building conference to hopefully improve my confidence. I opted for the latter because I believe the more you commit to developing a skill, the more likelihood you will have of achieving it.
Applying personal reflection to Gibbs Model
I have applied this personal reflection to Gibbs’ reflective cycle in order to contextualise and standardised the experience to apply to future self-reflection activities.
Figure 2: Gibbs Reflective Cycle (1988, p.49)
1. Description – what happened?
As part of my role with TVMS I was required to lead the marketing meetings and talk at length at the latest developments for the company’s marketing strategy to a the Hub Board – a group of 15 industry professionals who have a stake in TVMS. During the first meeting I experienced anxiousness and got completely flustered which prompted my line manager to take over the presentation.
2. Feelings – your reaction
At the time I felt completely embarrassed and disappointed that I couldn’t continue with the presentation. I had prepared a long time to deliver it but when I was actually in the room in front of 15 senior professionals, I didn’t have the confidence or the self-belief to carry on. I always like to believe I can take on any challenge I am presented with and public-speaking is certainly a major obstacle for me – one which I desperately couldn’t overcome in that particular moment.
3. Evaluation – what was good and bad?
The main positive I could draw from this experience was that I did prepare thoroughly for the presentation. I had devised cue cards, developed an interactive PowerPoint and had been practising for days leading up to the meeting. The thing that clearly didn’t go so well was that I lost my thought process three minutes into my speech. I was grateful for my line manager, and also the general manager, for steeping in to rescue the situation as it allowed me to compose myself and the presentation was given on my behalf. The Hub Board and the senior management team are incredibly understanding and supportive and although this had no impact on my ability to carry out my job role, it did carry doubt in mind as to whether I was the right person to fulfil the commitments of the role.
4. Analysis – make sense of the situation
As already expressed, public-speaking has always been a weakness of mine – from when I had to speak in front of classmates at school to join interviews – I have never been comfortable projecting and vocalising my ideas and opinions. Contrastingly, I believe I am a confident writer and also I have grown in confidence communicating over the phone but face-to-face interaction is difficult. This may be because a large part of presenting is to speak without a script so that the dialogue is naturally and engaging. There may also be an element of social awkwardness, not knowing where to look or how to stand and also reading other people’s body language can be off-putting . I believe a mixture of these factors played a role.
Upon further research, I discovered lots of resources catered for people who have a fear of public speaking including form the Mayo Clinic; featuring courses I could enrol on, free articles and videos giving tips and advice to improve presentation techniques etc. My line manager recommended I partake in their course for my own personal development which I am going to explore.
5. Conclusion – what have you learnt?
Overall, I have learnt to communicate to my management team about any issues I have as this could lead to new opportunities to develop skills I am lacking in. In hindsight I should have made senior leaders aware as this could have resulted in the meeting being pushed back or led by another team member, allowing me time to improve. Also, I have learnt that I shouldn’t overly worry about public speaking as it isn’t a large portion of my responsibilities. By not putting too much pressure on myself, this might improve my confidence and overall delivery of presentations going forward.
6. Action Plan – what are you going to do differently?
There will be more opportunities for me to demonstrate my improved public-speaking skills, not only at TVMS but also in my future career. As I have plans to become a manager who lead teams and devise marketing strategies, it was essential I worked on this weakness. Online resources and practice are key to growing my confidence and attending more social occasions will have a positive impact on my personal development. If I am in a similar situation next time, I would ask the audience to bare with me a few moments while I compose myself, take a deep breath and start where I left off.
A big part of my development is the experiences I have while studying at university. Having almost reached the end of Year 2, there are many examples of self-reflection that I have undertaken in order to improve as a student. One of the models I found useful was Kolb’s (1984) Learning Cycle and is referred to as “experiential learning” which signals that we learn best through our own experiences.
This model was of particular relevance to me when I evaluated my assignment feedback from previous modules. As someone who always strives for high standards in my academic work, it is necessary for me to act one the feedback I have been given, whether that be continuing my approach if the feedback is positive or making big changes if the feedback is critical.
Figure 1: Kolb’s Reflective Cycle (1984)
Following Kolb’s cycle, I can evaluated a previous assignment:
Concrete experience
This means you experience a situation which makes realise that you need to reflect in order to improve or learn something new. One assignment that received a fair amount of negative feedback made me feel somewhat deflated as I had put in lots of time and effort to develop my answers and provide a well-rounded support. Aside from obvious disappointment, I was curious as to why I hadn’t achieved as well as what I thought I would and therefore began to examine the critique a bit closer. At this stage of the reflective cycle, I would just describe how I felt about the situation.
Reflective observation
For the second part of the cycle, I would examine what worked in the assignment and what didn’t – all based on the feedback I received. The main failure of the report was that it ultimately contained information that was unnecessary and irrelevant to the assignment’s objectives. Where I thought I was adding detail and supporting my arguments I was actually padding out my answers with vague information that failed to answer the question of the report. Consequently, this affected the word count as I surpassed the 2000 word count, which also impacted my grade. With this said, one positive aspect of the feedback was that I had included relevant references and had backed up my arguments with a quality and varied set of references which I was happy to hear as this research took a considerable amount of time.
Abstract conceptualisation
This stage asks the questions of what could I have done differently and how can I improve? One of the suggestions my lecturer provided was to look over the university’s resources on report writing as he believed I could rectify my elongated descriptions by studying how to structure and formulate a report. In order to improve the overall quality of my academic work, I have since read literature on how to succeed at academic writing so I am confident this independent study will benefit me as I head into the final year of university.
Active experimentation
The final stage of Kolb’s model is using the newly acquired knowledge from stage three and applying them to my actual work. Some of the ideas I have found will work, others won’t but the aim is to make these changes and further reflect on their success. I have taken the opportunity with this E-Portfolio to apply some of this new knowledge in the hope it will be a success. Some of the new knowledge acquired included expanding my vocabulary and including more academic models from accredited scholars to show that my reading has expanded. I believe these changes will positively impact my third and final year of study.
Hello! Welcome to my blog where I will be documenting my experiences working with Tees Valley Music Service as part of my ‘Professional Placements’ module.
Who are Tees Valley Music Service (TVMS)?
TVMS have served the Tees Valley region for over 50 years, providing instrumental and vocal tuition as well as hosting community events throughout the year. They are a relatively small operation but within their limited means they are able to provide memorable and life-changing opportunities to the young people on Teesside, regardless of their socio-economic background.
Partly funded by Arts Council England,
How did I join TVMS?
I started working with TVMS in October 2014, aged 16 as an apprentice. From my initial 12 month contract I completed a Level 3 NVQ in Creative and Digital Media whilst working day-to-day in the office. Towards the end of the apprenticeship I was offered a contract extension of 18 months to not only remain employed with the organisation but also to enrol and complete a Level 3 NVQ in Digital Marketing. Following the successful completion of both qualifications I was offered a permanent contract with TVMS in mid-2017 to become their full-time Marketing Assistant.
