(Written by Alice Finney)
After what felt like a manic two weeks filled with running up to London, meeting clients and going to the Excel centre, I finally had a week based in the Brighton office getting to grips with some of the more nitty gritty side of things. Each morning on my way to work, I picked up a copy of one of the daily newspapers, ready to scour it for any pieces pertaining to the workplace, productivity and business management. After sifting through the myriad of Brexit headlines and articles on England getting kicked out of the European Union, I managed to come across some really useful articles. Creating a quick summary, forwarding that on to my team and then hunting down the journalists contact details formed part of my early morning routine every day. Working as part of a PR team has taught me that you need to constantly know what’s going on in the news agenda. You also have to continuously think about how to reach out to new journalists that may want to hear what your clients have to say.
In between many ‘Would anyone like a coffee?’s and ‘Does anyone want anything from the shop?’s, I cracked on with finding forward features for five of our clients. Having never done any PR work before, this was all totally new to me. Prior to working at Magenta, one of the things which eluded me was how you manage to stay one step ahead of the press. Answer: delve between the folds of every relevant magazine/ newspaper for their features list and highlight any which could apply to your clients. Following this, you would work on how to pitch your ideas to said mags and papers et voila, you’re half way there.
Another of my little tasks was to create tweets for Magenta’s series of PR guides. Social media is predominantly handled up in our Lancaster office by Tom, however as he was mega busy, this task was allocated to me! Reading through the guides proved to be highly informative (and I’m not just saying this as promo) as they went through, in detail, tips for successful business relationships and ways to advance your career. Whilst being given free reign over the Magenta Twitter account, it dawned on me that Magenta currently do not have an Instagram account (OMG, shock horror, how are we to see Kim K breaking the internet or Cara Delevingne posting #nomakeup selfies?! Something is horribly rotten in the state of Denmark!). I found it interesting to note that, being of generation Y, or a “millennial” as older people like to call us, Instagram is the most popular form of social media, above LinkedIn (obvs) and Twitter. Surely then, as the company grows and progresses, catering to the future gens via such sites will become increasingly important.
To round off the week, I worked hard to find any online cuttings involving our clients and added them to our monthly folder. Finally, as it was the last Friday of the month, I helped the finance team prepare invoices. This was rewarded with a cute work lunch out in one of the pubs down the road from our office.
P.S. Here are my top tips for any 20 something just starting out in an office:
- Even though Drake’s ‘Nothing was the Same’ album of 2013 is a landmark in 21st C music, it’s not always the best choice for the office speakers.
- Beginning an email to your manager with ‘Wagwarn’ will result in questions like “what does this even mean??”
- Just because you’re young don’t assume that going ham at a festival on the weekend won’t come round to bite you on the backside the following week.
