Over the next 12 months I’ll be working at Advent as their intern during my placement year. I’m a marketing student at the University of the West of England, Bristol. This will be a weekly blog about my time at Advent. 

So, I’ve made it through the first month of being on placement and I’ve loved every second working here, so where do I even start? I’m kept busy by the variety of all the tasks to do, all sorts of press releases on difference topics, the control over clients’ social media and photoshoots. If my CV isn’t bursting with skills in 11 months’ time I will… well, probably just have to re-write my CV…

Here are a few things I‘ve learnt and (hopefully) picked up on pretty quickly:

Firstly, you read ALL the time. Newspapers, articles, news, tweets and other people’s press releases. I love being constantly in the loop about what makes the world go round. Thinking back to the role descriptions of the undergraduate placements I applied to 10 months ago now, I’m not sure any of them would involve the amount of reading and writing I have to do, which makes me happy that I made the right decision accepting the job here.

On a day to day basis, the work is never the same. There is always something new to write about, whether it be Midlands-based or relevant to the rest of the UK. The office is always very busy with a constant buzz.

There is an art to being a social media goddess; when exactly to tweet, high traffic times, what hashtags to use…the list goes on and on, and that’s just twitter. Facebook is harder, as a company we can only follow other companies, so the way to gain likes and engagement is to post articles, links, stories and tag or include our clients who are also on Facebook. A post about Engage! which I uploaded earlier in the week reached more than 400 people via Facebook. Magic I know. It’s also rewarding to be able to put things out onto social media that actually have a purpose, rather than being amongst the masses, uploading a picture of my lunch with a nice sepia-tone filter.

There is a definite art to getting those news stories spot on. Of course, I’m still learning every day and not every article I write is perfect but hopefully by the end of my placement year I’ll be an absolute writing guru with all the tricks of the trade, which I’m sure is achievable considering the supportive company I’m working at, along with my helpful and experienced colleagues.

Share, share, share…If you post something to your website and want to gain coverage fast, plaster it on all your social media platforms, then again I didn’t have to tell you that, that’s common sense! Luckily, nearly all of our clients have various platforms of social media so it’s very easy to get engagement. It’s like a domino effect, one share sparks off clicks and likes, which believe me, go a long way.

Now I know some of you might be excited for the Rugby World Cup getting started, but I’m going to end on the tournament it no doubt wants to emulate, The Jaguar Land Rover International Tag Rugby Youth Festival. Our client, Engage!, invited youngsters from around the world to compete in the youth tag rugby tournament and it was a great success. There is a small gallery of fantastic pictures uploaded onto our Facebook page, and lots of coverage on our twitter feed @adventpr. Go on, give us a follow or a like, you won’t regret it!

Olivia Wynne