Work Experience: Beth Grice

This last few weeks our office has been enhanced by the addition of Beth Grice, a journalism student from York St John University. It’s been a pleasure. Here’s Beth’s own take on her experience here with us at Social Bods.

Over to Beth…….

Being a young student in a big overwhelming media industry can seem quite daunting at times, so when I was told I needed to complete some work experience, it was safe to say I wasn’t quite jumping for joy. Despite my initial lack of enthusiasm, it was something that I would simply have to get over and most importantly get on with. On my first day of work experience, I wandered in feeling like a child on their first day of school, similarly with my packed-lunch in hand, a mixture of intrigued and nervous…

…But of course, I shouldn’t have worried as seconds into walking into the office I felt welcomed and like part of the team.

When I arrived at Social Bods I knew roughly what kind of thing I would be doing, but not any kind of specifics; I was given a list of possible tasks and for the most part I felt as though I could, at the very least, give them a try. Some of my first tasks included researching guest post opportunities, article curation and creating graphics for existing clients. Because of the nature of my course at Uni I felt as though I was well prepared for these tasks which was reassuring, as it made me realise that the skills I have been learning and developing for the past three years were actually very transferable and useful to me in a real working environment (so all that debt is worth it after all!).

Some of my other tasks have included writing blog posts such as my Twitter Hours and This Week in Social Media posts; I found writing these blogposts to be both enjoyable and challenging as typically at Uni we are given a lot of freedom in terms of what we want to write, so it was a pleasant challenge to have to write to a specific brief, especially when the topic was something I wasn’t particularly familiar with such as with Twitter Hours.

One of my favourite tasks that I have been doing during my time is creating graphics and infographics, as it has allowed me to see how I can benefit from my creative flair and keen eye for detail in a working environment. Because of the fact I had to create graphics for different clients who come under very different categories, it allowed me to learn how to tailor different content to different clients with very different audiences; this is an extremely important skill in marketing as it will be ineffective if it is not properly suited to the clients needs.

I also enjoyed creating these at it allowed me to learn how to use new software, Canva, which was something I had not previously worked with before but would be likely to use in the future. (you can see some of these graphics on Beth’s post about the Internet turning 30 years old – Joanne)

All in all, I would say that I have had a very positive experience here at Social Bods; I’ve learnt brand new things, built up old skills and had the opportunity to work with a lovely team who I hope to keep in contact with (aka I’ll stalk them all on LinkedIn).