The thrill isn't in the winning, it's in the doing

Sarah De Guzman, Marketing Manager



Hot off the press

Friday cheer!

There was already a celebratory mood over in Marketing HQ today, as we finalised the proofing of our mini guide and prospectus, and began rejoicing in getting all of our final amends over on time - the last stage of production before we approve for print. And if that wasn't enough of a cause for us to celebrate, our day just got so much better!

We were delighted to see that we've been short-listed in the UK Blog Awards 2016, in the Education category.

Congratulations to our marketing team for being shortlisted @UKBlogAwards Education category #UKBA16 #fingerscrossed https://t.co/pUFcJQTUI7

— uniofbeds (@uniofbeds) January 29, 2016

Although we entered on a bit of a whim, and didn't expect it go to anywhere, we were ecstatic to see that we made it to the short-list after a big rally of support from our colleagues and fellow blog readers - Thank you! It looks as though we're up against a few other universities such as Salford Business School, and Southampton Solent University to name a few, and will wait with baited breath to see how we do in the next round of judging; with the results announced in April.

We've spent a lot of time building up this blog over the years, and gradually recruited new blog contributors to widen the pool of insight shared and to expand on the marketing transparency, knowledge and discussions each week, so it's great to see the blog being recognised in this way, and is a big coup for the team.

A great way to kick off awards season, and a great end to the week!

Back to work

Having spent last week exploring Berlin and carving pumpkins to celebrate hallowe'en, I’ve arrived back in the office feeling energised and ready to work, which is just as well really because there is so much to do!

The East Side Gallery, Berlin

A day off and a pumpkin later...

Now I’m back I’ll be turning my attention to the 2016 undergraduate prospectus. Kylie has been working hard on the flat plan - the working document that we’ll be able to refer to throughout the production process. Once that’s complete I, along with the rest of the team, will get involved in copywriting for the general sections of the prospectus. Writing is always a highlight as it's a chance to get creative.   

This week I’ll also be spending some time writing a selection of short news articles for our subject newsletters. With the help of academics who have shared some interesting stories with me, I’ve been able to pull together some of the highlights of the past year. Now it’s a case of writing them up into striking news items to help with our conversion efforts.

Over the next week or so I will be having meetings with potential new student bloggers. Our student bloggers come recommended by their lecturers, and will be blogging on a weekly basis about their time at the University of Bedfordshire. It's a great (and paid!) experience for them, and it means we gain lots of valuable content that allows us to showcase the student experience here to our future students. Hopefully we'll have the blogs up and running in the next few weeks.

This week marks the end of my first year at the University. It's hard to believe really but, when I look back on all the things I've learned so far, all the deadlines I've reached, and all the work I've helped to produce, I feel quite proud of what I've achieved. And, now that I've done it all once, finger crossed the second time round will be even better!

Clare

9 Weeks & 4 Days (but who's counting)

Sophia Meola, Marketing Administrator

Hello there everyone!

It has been a whole 9 weeks and 4 days (but who’s counting) since I started my position here at the MARC department and it is still as great as ever. If you read my first post then you would have got a little background about me, what I like and what my aspirations are. I am happy to be back and writing a second post for this blog and no doubts I will ramble on again like last time. Since we spoke last I have had quite a lot going on in terms of work around the MARC department. I am attending regular team and departmental meetings, working hard on my tasks, getting involved in new campaigns and just generally settling more into the department.

What am I currently working on? Well, in my last post I mentioned I was given the opportunity to work on a numerous of different tasks. One of which is still updating a handful of subject guides for the new academic year and students arriving end of September beginning of October (not long now). These are still being worked on, altered and re-designed; however, they should be completed considerably soon. The road has been a little bumpy with some specific subject guides but who doesn’t like a bit of a challenge right?! I can almost see the finish line and the official DEADLINE for that matter so I really need to push to get these completed. I am on leave from Wednesday 24th and return Monday 29th so ideally I need to get them completed before my leave…fingers crossed!

The photo library! I have been working on the online photo library for a few weeks now and it is slowly but surely coming together nicely. This task has involved me scrolling though all images available on the internal server and updating captions, tags and deleting duplicates. This has been a great task to work on and jump in to between everything else I am working on at the moment. I consider myself quite an organised individual so I have really enjoyed re-organising it all (I am such a dork).

On the theme of pictures I was actually asked to contribute and take part in the new 2014 winter campaign. This involved me attending a nifty photoshoot and answering a few questions in a video. I am extremely excited to see the final results and everything should be going live Monday 22nd of this month so keep your eyes peeled. I have refused to watch my video takes back as yet as I don’t know what to expect…did I say the right thing? Did I miss anything out? Does my hair and makeup look decent? – Such a girly thing for me to say haha. The thing is I want to start making videos to progress my personal blog and start the whole Youtube vlogging thing so ideally I really need to get it down to a T. I mean, otherwise it might be a tad tricky editing a video and uploading them. Ohh nothing is ever easy with me.

Now for a task that I have completed! A few weeks ago I was told to copy over the 2015 Undergraduate and 2015 Postgraduate prospectuses into single file documents onto the W drive. Just like the above suggests I went through a copied and pasted each page throughout the prospectus into word documents and then re-formatted the layout ready for when we start work on the new 2016 ones! I found it very therapeutic and also very interesting as I got to obtain a full understanding of all of the subjects we offer here at the university.

A few weeks ago now I completed my Business Student blogging internship with the university. It was such a great experience to get involved in and I love how it developed into an online diary format documenting my final year at the university. It is something I can always look back on in the future and reminisce. This was actually the first year introducing the student blogs and I think there is talk in the works that they will be carrying on…yay! During a team meeting on Monday I was told that the team wanted me to help recruit and train the new student bloggers. This really excited me because blogging is a huge part of my life and being able to incorporate that into a job role seems like perfection to me. Blogging has become a huge part of my life and it is such a glorious tool that can be used throughout so many different marketing platforms…the possibilities are endless.

On the theme of Monday’s team meeting, I was told that the MARC department wanted to elongate my contract a keep me on board a little longer than initially planned. For a Business management graduate who only graduated two months ago this is a great opportunity for me. Hopefully I will be able to stay the duration the team want me, however, I did make a few plans and commitments prior to finding out about the new contract as I obviously thought my last day would be 3rd October…fingers crossed we can work everything out.

What would be a Sophia blog post without something a little personal?! In my last post I mentioned that my blog was nominated under two categories in the 2014 Cosmopolitan Blog Awards. Since writing that post the voting has now closed and we find out results during an awards ceremony on 7th October in London. I am extremely excited to head down, meet up with some blogging friends and also meet a whole load of new bloggers. I am a little nervous and anxious about it all but just to be going to the awards for me is an achievement in itself so we will see what else the night might bring. I am planning on bringing my nifty Canon 700D with me so I may or may not write a little post about it all to update you guys on here or on my student blog…eeeep! P.S my blog has had it's little makeover now so if you fancy a little peek you can do so by clicking here. 

Overall, it has been a great 9 weeks and I am looking forward to starting work on some new projects...one of which will be the new 2016 prospectuses! Rightio, I think that is everything that is going on at the moment. I hope you enjoyed reading my rambles once again. If you have made is this far then well done, you deserve a gold star!

Speak to you all soon!

Hello...I'm New Here

Sophia Meola, Marketing Administrator

Hello Everyone,

I am Sophia, a newly graduated BA (Hons) Business Management student from the University of Bedfordshire itself (Bedford Campus) and newbie member of the MARC department. I graduated a few weeks ago (15th July) with a 2.1 and I couldn’t be happier. To be honest it still feels so surreal to be able to say I am a graduate and I am still in the process of deciding which routes to take after university life, whether going for a master’s degree or finding my dream job. In a nutshell I am your typical girly girl with an entrepreneurial edge. I have an obsession with rose gold and I can’t get enough of red velvet cake (yum)!

I always knew I had a passion for business and here I am today trying to pursue it. I decided to study a Business Management degree because it offered me everything I was interested in learning more about. My Dad has always been in business and has worked his way up to owning his own advertising and marketing company called ‘Big Marketing Ltd’. I guess you could say I am following in my Dad’s footsteps and I would definitely agree with you there. Growing up watching my Dad gave me my own desire to work hard and succeed in everything that I do. Amongst everything else, I also work for my Dad’s company as a ‘Digital Media Assistant’ and have worked on some incredible campaigns recently with Rolls Royce and Lotus Cars. I am such a busy bee these days haha! I bet you are all wondering why I am not working with my Dad’s company full time right?! Well, here’s the thing…as much as I would love to work with my Dad full time I think I would get too comfortable and eventually lose sight of all of the other opportunities that are out there for me. My Dad worked his way up from the bottom and I intend to do so also. 

I tend to ramble a bit so let’s move swiftly on. So, last week I started my new role at the University of Bedfordshire’s MARC department as ‘Marketing Administrator’. Some of you may know that I write the Business Students blog and I found out about the role because of my internship (yay!). Everything happened quite quickly, so here I am today being part of the MARC team until October. My role consists of assisting all areas of the MARC department from the marketing, admissions, recruitment and communications teams. I feel so proud knowing I was given this opportunity so close to graduating university and I think this is a great prospect for someone like me who has an obsession with all things marketing.

As I mentioned above I am currently writing the Business Students blog for the university, if you would like to read my most recent post you can do so my clicking here. Blogging is something that has become a huge part of my life and I couldn’t see myself not doing. I have actually been writing my own personal blog for over 2 years now and I have enjoyed every second of it. I officially started my blog during the first year at university as a creative outlet for myself, so I feel it has been something that has been with me throughout my student life journey. It is your typical girly girl blog which features beauty, fashion and lifestyle posts about everything else I love in life. If you would like to take a peek at that you can do so by clicking here...I am currently going through a blog re-design so please excuse the mess :). Last year I was extremely fortunate and lucky to have been shortlisted in the Cosmopolitan Magazine Blog Awards. It I still something I cannot believe actually happened and since being nominated last year I have been working alongside a London based PR agency and have had the opportunity to collaborate with well-known brands and attend some fabulous events that are mainly based in London. Recently I found out some even more amazing news, I was actually driving home from my MARC interview when I started receiving all of these tweets saying congratulations…I was so confused! I had forgotten that the Cosmopolitan Blog Awards 2014 shortlist was being released that day so I couldn’t think what it could have been. Eventually, after some investigating I found out I was shortlisted again this year! I never thought in my right mind that I would be here a year later talking about being nominated for a second year in a row and let alone for two awards! To be nominated with a magazine I read regularly feels like a complete dream. To be shortlisted and going to the awards is an achievement in itself; however, if I actually won it would just be the cherry on top...I don’t know what I would do! So here is where I lay out the cheesy ‘pretty please vote more me’ line! I am nominated under ‘Best Established Beauty Blog’ and ‘Best Use of Social Media’ so if you have a spare moment I would really appreciate a little vote. Thank you in advance :)

Now more of the personals are out of the way, let’s get back into talking about my new job role. At the moment I have been given the opportunity to work on numerous different tasks. The first being to update subject guides for the ‘Business, Finance and Tourism’, ‘Law’, ‘English Language and Communication’ and ‘Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations’ courses. It has been great to dive in and find all the information to give the guides a pick me up. Alongside this I have also been given the task of collating prospectus requests from potential students and issuing them prospectuses based on their specific requests. Being an alumnus it has been great to see how everything works behind the scenes. I remember when I received my prospectuses! My most recent task has been to update the photo library, this has involved me scrolling through all images available on the internal server and updating captions, tags and deleting duplicates. This is a great task to jump between everything else…especially if you get a creative mental block. Also, it helps that I am quite an organised person and love to re-organise things!

Amongst all of the above I have also had the opportunity to help out other parts of the department. I attended two graduations last week where I helped distribute leaflets about the Jubilee Scholarship and film students for some video projects. Being in my second week of my new role I think I am slowly but surely settling in more. I attended my first team meeting this week and it was great to hear about all of the projects that are going on at the moment and what is being planned for the future. So far I have really enjoyed working with the team and on the projects I have been assigned. Going straight from a university course into a full time job has been a leap but I feel I have used so many skills that I learnt across my university journey studying my degree. Being on the other side of the table it has really opened my eyes at how much works goes into every little thing…especially the prospectuses and subject guides! I am actually off away on vacation Saturday so I am really looking forward to escaping to some sunshine. Upon my return I will be working on some of the same tasks as above, also volunteering some time at a University of Bedfordshire clearing stand with some of the MARC team and helping with clearing! August is looking pretty good!

Speak to you all soon!