At the beginning of February 2021 I started my CMI Level 5 Certificate in Management and Leadership course at South Eastern Regional College, and to complete this course each student has to undertake a 6 week placement. On the same day I was contacted by Chartered Marketer Christine Watson about doing my placement with her companies TrainingMatchmaker.com and Watson and Co Chartered Marketing. After a conversation over Google Meet that same week I was happy to confirm that Watson and Co Chartered Marketing and TrainingMatchmaker.com would facilitate my placement as a marketing trainee, and that’s when the exciting work began.
I want to enhance my knowledge and skills surrounding the marketing and digital marketing industries and I hope that the courses that I outline below might enable me to do so.
I have basically grown up with social media from a personal view point, but in terms of a business view I don’t have that much experience so I have a set of goals I would like to complete found on TrainingMatchmaker.com:
Using TrainingMatchmaker.com I hope to tap in to my creative side and learn how to use digital platforms through courses and experience to gain knowledge that will be vital to my future employability.
You can follow along with me on my social handles:
Instagram – Beth Brews
Twitter – @bethgodfrey23
LinkedIn – Beth Godfrey
Learning goals
Christine tasked me and my fellow students on placement with creating our first learning log blog on Trainingmatchmaker.com, where today I will start with a list of things I aim to achieve or learn by the end of my 6 weeks.Social Media
- Twitter’s Flight School
- Learn Instagram with Instagram to gain knowledge on insights and how to optimise my page
- Hootsuite: Introduction to Social Media Marketing
- Learning LinkedIn Basics
- Google Digital Garage: through The Digital Garage there is a variety of courses that interest me and my first goal is to complete the Fundamentals of digital marketing course. I am also interested in gaining more knowledge about Google insights and analytics.
WordPress
I have some knowledge of WordPress and how it works thanks to my time as a reporter and co-editor of The Tab, an online student newspaper. However, since I graduated 3 years ago this year (scary) I would like to refresh my skills to be able to create and maintain a blog or website. I would like to gain more knowledge surrounding Yoast, it is a search engine optimisation (SEO) plugin that you can add to your website pages or posts within WordPress. Yoast is one of the most valuable tools you can have within your website pages as it allows you to track how often people are using your website and how long they are spending on it and also what web pages they are looking at the most. During this placement I also have personal goals such as:- learning and adapting to new writing styles, for example blog writing, press releases and social media posts
- experience with different industries: press and media, small businesses, government, tourism
- networking and creating long-lasting relationships and contacts
About me
I am Beth Godfrey, I live in Saintfield, a small town in Northern Ireland and I am currently on a CMI Level 5 Certificate in Management and Leadership course at South Eastern Regional College after graduating in 2018 with a 2:1 in Geography and International Relations from the University of Aberdeen. During my time at school I was part of a Young Enterprise Northern Ireland project, where my class got to set up our own company and product. We developed the product and then sold it at school, through social media and at a Young Enterprise trade fair. I am excited to be part of Young Enterprise alumni collaborative project during my placement. After being a reporter and co-editor for online student newspaper The Tab during my time at university I developed an interest in digital marketing and social media. This interest was then sparked again when I set up my own Instagram blog, Beth Brews, dedicated to coffee. I know it sounds weird I know but the speciality coffee industry is really popular in Ireland and the UK.
About TrainingMatchmaker.com
Training Matchmaker is a website community that aggregates free online learning tools and signposts people to educational opportunities to help them reach their full potential. It also enables them to build or gain new digital skills with special help from trainers across Northern Ireland. Anyone can find courses, or even add your own. You can also find specific trainers and training opportunities whilst meeting likeminded people.About Make It Click
Make It Click is a collection of free online learning resources, tools and templates, with face-to-face or online support in communities across the UK. Helping people to learn new skills, gain confidence and take positive steps in their career. Make It Click has a collection more than 100 online resources ranging from guides, videos to certified courses, and if you have an account you can ‘bookmark’ your favourites by creating a playlist and come back to them later. You too can sign up to makeitclick.com for free using Centre Number 8003411 – TrainingMatchmaker.com when registering. For example, on my playlist I have:- a tool to help with creating a blog on WordPress (that I am using today)
- a guide on how to have a successful video job interview
- a course on speaking in public by Google Digital Garage
- photo tool editors like canva and trace
About SERC
South Eastern Regional College as a Further Education College, is a primary delivery arm for government to ensure that the Northern Ireland workforce has the skills to build a successful economy. SERC offers each student a career enhancing experience through enterprise driven curriculum where students will work on live projects, solving problems for real businesses. My course at SERC is the Level 5 Certificate in Management and Leadership aimed at graduates who have been furloughed, made redundant or are facing possible redundancy or have had their employment opportunities affected by COVID-19. The course is funded by the Department for Economy NI and each student is given a £150 training allowance each week for the duration of the 8-week course. Edits:- 17/2/21 – information on Young Enterprise NI
- 17/2/21 – added the TrainingMatchmaker.com centre number to use when registering for Make It Click
- 17/2/21 – information on South Eastern Regional College (SERC)
- 4/3/21 – edited TrainingMatchmaker.com information
- 4/3/21 – edited MakeItClick.com information
