Review about my 4 week Erasmus traineeship in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
I’m Lapo Passarini, I’m 18 and I’m from Florence. I have just completed a 4 week Erasmus placement in Belfast working for Watson & Co Chartered Marketing with Trainer Christine Watson.
During the first 2 weeks I learnt about a lot of things:
Design using the Canva.com Tool:
I had never used canva before so this traineeship gave me the opportunity to learn it and to use it multiple times for various different things. Canva has the objective to let you create design, presentation, instagram stories, videos…
Using it is quite simple, they show you everything in the tutorial that they show you when you open the website for the first time. If you want some additional features you can buy the Pro subscription. With that you have for example more elements and more function.
Learning resources that I used to help me develop my Canva skills:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4ShMA_djfk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw3zU1DA6TU
Developing Photography and Videography Skills with the Today at Apple courses:
Apple has some courses to understand all the functions of their product to use them in the best way possible. They have courses about Mac, Ipad, VR, and IPhones. I’ve taken part in photography and videography and they explained to me all the different functions to use my camera in the best way.
https://www.apple.com/uk/today/event/workshop-photography-on-iphone/7240337669895860224/?sn=R329
https://www.apple.com/today/event/workshop-video-on-iphone/
Content Creation using new tech: a Dji action camera:
I’ve practiced with this camera like everyday during the first 2 weeks on placement to understand how to use it correctly. The latest action camera like the one that I have tried, Dji pocket 2, has a lot of different ways you can use it. You need to understand all the options you have to take the best video because it can help you with all your work. My upskilling was to be of a level that I was required to show others how to use it too!
Learning How to Blog for the first time:
After Christine explained to me How to write a blog, I wrote the Learning plan. Writing it helped me to understand every part of it. Creating this final learning log blog was good to reinforce my learning and I had Trainer Christine on hand when I needed to clarify some elements as it was brand new to me.
Content Creation and Publishing – Adding Content to Websites using WordPress:
WordPress is the platform that TrainingMatchmaker.com is built upon. In order to add my blogs – my learning plan and this learning log I needed to understand how to use it. There are a lot of functions that you can use to help others reading your blog. An example is “alt text”, this function helps people who can’t see the image by describing the image to them in words by audio. Basically, “WordPress is the simplest and most popular tool for creating your website or blog. In fact, WordPress powers over 43.5% of all websites on the Internet. Yes, more than one in four sites is probably created with WordPress.”
Source: https://kinsta.com/knowledgebase/what-is-wordpress/
Learning achievements during weeks 3 and 4:
I took part in some webinars that Christine delivered during these 2 weeks. The first one I participated in was “Facebook for business”. In this webinar she explained how to use Facebook in the best way, how to make it more likely for your posts to be seen. These Go Succeed webinars run frequently, to find out about the fully funded free to attend online workshops visit: https://go-succeed.com/events/
Teaching Christine and Sophie how to use dji:
In the first 2 weeks I understood how the action camera works and during these 2 weeks I explained how to use it to Christine and Sophie because when I go back to Italy they need to know how to use it well.
Digital Content Curation: Becoming a Google local guide:
Not everyone knows that you can post photos on google maps in relation to the places that you visit. If you post photos of places you can help others see things before they get there. When you post it you get some points, the person with the most points in each country gets invited to the Google meeting in San Francisco. I started with 0 points but within my month in Northern Ireland I have reached level 2 with 30 points. Places I added included Clonard Monastry, Cavehill and Giant’s Causeway.
Giphy/GIFs and stickers:
Fellow marketing trainee Sophie explained to me how to create a Giphy channel and Giphy/GIFs and stickers. After that I created a Giphy channel for training matchmaker and created some basic GIFs with canva that I will send to approval.
Facebook audit:
Christine asked me to apply the learning from the Finessing Facebook webinar that I attended. I compared her Facebook for business page with some benchmarks and created a presentation, using Canva, to demonstrate and highlight to her improvements that could be made on her Facebook page.
Website audit:
After attending the Go Succeed in developing powerful marketing strategies webinar by Christine for Go Succeed I learned about a free website auditing tool called SEOptimer. I used this to audit a website by simply uploading the URL and it highlighted improvements that could be made and prioritised these also.
Instagram reels:
I created some Instagram reels for Watson & Co Chartered Marketing using Canva for “Instagram reels” and used some templates. I was conscious of the brand look and feel and used tools such as ginifab to choose the exact correct colours when designing graphics.
Video marketing:
I have created some videos on Canva to promote the company that I work for. I used some templates that they had on Canva. Christine is delivering a course soon to let others know that these templates exist and are useful to help individuals create their own reels.
Scribe:
I used scribe while I was using Canva and I registered all the steps that I have done to create the Instagram reel for Watson & Co Chartered Marketing, so others can follow my steps to create their reels.
Visual merchandising/ Interior design:
There was a part in the office that was empty because the company using the space found a new location, so I rearranged the tables and chairs to improve the look and feel and add practical functionality to the empty space.
This is the before:
This is the after:
