My Digital Journey: The Start of My Career at The Media Network

After a gap year mostly stuck in lockdown, I decided to apply for the Kick-Start Scheme in early February of this year and I was fortunate enough to find a job advert for the role of a Social Media Assistant at The Media Network on LinkedIn. To start off, my background has no correlations to Digital Marketing as I studied BA Geography in University. However, during University, I did participate in a society where I was their Social Media Secretary and I was in charge of their organic posts on Facebook and Instagram as well as promoting their monthly events. During my gap year, I did plenty of photoshoots with my friends to practise my photography skills, as this is a big hobby of mine! This led to even more of an interest in Adobe software such as Photoshop and Illustrator and sparked my excitement in designing and managing social media accounts. This ultimately gave me the courage to apply for the job role at TMN and luckily I was accepted! The Kick-Start scheme was only for 6 months, here’s how it went (spoiler alert: I’m still here)!?

First 3 months…

On my first day, I was very nervous but everyone was so welcoming and we had a few team hangouts which made it easier to get to know everyone. We even went Axe throwing to celebrate my first week, and somehow I won! I started off getting familiarised with Digital Media terms by learning how to update client’s weekly reports and learning from Facebook Blueprint courses. With those reports, I learnt to use Facebook Ads Manager and Facebook Ads Library. I got an opportunity to learn how campaigns are created and how to collect data to complete weekly reports. As for Facebook Ads Library, it was fascinating to be able to see different campaigns that were live from different brands and this was a great way to collect data for competitor research for our clients.

TMN deals with a broad range of advertising and the Digital and AV teams kindly shared with me what they work on on a daily basis such as Paid Social, Paid Search and Audio Visual (AV) and how their teams work together. I was very blessed to get a wide scope of marketing knowledge and it was captivating to grasp how wide and complex marketing can be! Other than that, I also help out our Graphic Designer and design some of the organic posts for our client’s Instagram and Facebook accounts. It was great to use the skills that I’ve previously learned before work; making me feel like my gap year was actually quite productive.

Last 3 months…

In the last remaining months, I've gotten used to my weekly routine and what I needed to do each day. In addition to this, I’ve had the chance to join weekly client meetings and help take notes and contribute to these myself as my confidence grew. I have also been introduced to Paid Search in more detail. The Digital team decided to expand my knowledge and experiences to different roles in digital marketing other than just social media, as my initial role suggested. With this, I had the opportunity to explore more knowledge about Google Ads and Microsoft Bing Ads and was able to update paid search reports for our clients. It was definitely challenging but overtime, I managed to make sense of it. I’ve also started designing creative ads for our clients! Moreover, the digital team has given me an opportunity to write up our TMN Digital Round Up that we launch every month on LinkedIn (if you haven't read any of them yet, you should!)

Six months later…

Now that my Kick-start Scheme has come to an end, I would like to say that I have definitely learnt a lot of new skills. They were skills that I never thought I would get the privilege to learn because of having a different educational background. However, I’m very grateful to the team members at The Media Network for giving me a chance to challenge myself in learning the complexity of marketing and understanding the different platforms. To end my journey as a Social Media Assistant, TMN has offered me a new full time position as Digital Media Assistant (woohoo!) to assist the whole team and expand my knowledge even further.?

I am very excited to see how my career progresses at TMN, that’s all for now!