My first two weeks as Junior Account Executive at Honest Communications have flown by! I’m Hollie, a student at Nottingham Trent University studying Business Management and Marketing. I am currently on a placement year at Honest Communications. After completing my second year at university, I was on the hunt for a placement year to help provide me with the opportunities and skills to grow in the PR and Marketing world. I chose Honest because its culture and the sectors the company work in really interest me and align with my own values. The ‘close-knit’ team and friendly nature was something that instantly attracted me to pursuing my placement here, while also motivating me to make a positive contribution. I’m really excited to begin to work with the rest of the team and help them to carry out any research for clients and to collaborate on future press releases.
Within my first two weeks, I have already been able to implement some theories and skills that I have learned while studying my degree. I’ve already seen how the PR and marketing world interlink and how to ensure clients receive the best results possible. My first week started by meeting the friendly team and being shown around the lovely office. The team were all extremely welcoming on my first day, ensuring that I was settling in okay, and they all seemed excited to have me onboard to assist them for the year. Once I got settled in and adjusted to the office setting, I was introduced to some of our lovely clients and shown their product portfolios to help gain an understanding of the sectors they operate in, the products they sell and their main communications messages they are conveying to reach their target audiences and customers. I was shown various press releases to help me to better understand the ways in which they target various media outlets to promote their products. I was also assigned to various research tasks to help familiarise me with our client’s culture and objectives, which provided me with deeper knowledge and understanding of things and helped me clearly see the ways in which I will be contributing and making a difference throughout my placement.
During my second week, the focus of my learning shifted more to the world of social media – Facebook analytics to be precise. I was able to observe various social media campaigns that Honest has launched for our clients in recent months, to help drive traffic onto their websites to create greater awareness and purchases from customers. It was interesting to see this from a customer’s perspective and how their engagement with social media pages and clicking on website links can influence marketing decisions. I also found it interesting to see how important Facebook analytics are in decision making as they can hone in on the demographic of the most engaged customers, how often they click on the campaign, and how long they spend on the website – factors that are all paramount in gaining a better understanding of client’s customers and their needs.
Also, during my second week, I was able to be involved in an educational team talk lead by Hope to the rest of the team about social media trends, tips, and tricks. Hope highlighted the changing nature of Instagram and how their focus is turning to reels: an opportunity for us to create engaging content for our clients and to help them generate a greater social media presence. The importance of following social media trends was also discussed as user’s are beginning to be more influenced by brands who follow ‘on trend’ memes and audio clips that are popular on TikTok and Instagram. The talk was extremely useful to help better my knowledge on creating engaging social media content and ensuring that it aligns perfectly with our client’s brand images.
Throughout my first two weeks, I have also been reading through and logging coverage of our clients that has been found in both print and online media outlets. This has been useful in helping me to understand the type of media outlets that are interested in our clients’ products and how they contribute to the promotion of their products. It has also been useful to help assess the quality and scope of coverage – highting areas in the media where our clients could gain more coverage.
As a whole, my first two weeks at Honest have been highly exciting, engaging, and thrilling. It has been lovely to receive such a welcoming reception from all the team – I feel right at home here already. It has been highly beneficial and interesting to gain a greater insight into how Honest works and the great contribution we make towards our clients, something I highly look forward to contributing to. I believe Honest is the perfect place for me to grow not only professionally, but also as an individual too over the next year and I remain eager and optimistic to gain a deeper understanding of our clients and the way in which we help to make a positive difference for them.
