My Digital Mums Story (part 2) — Time to Fly the Nest
My training is finished. My final report has been submitted. The campaign has gone really well, I’m happy, my client is happy.
This means that it is now time to fly the Digital Mums nest and face the world as a freelance social media manager. I am an actual social media manager, with an actual client. My first time as a freelancer, yes I’m a bit unsure of exactly what the future holds, but I’m really looking forward to it.
My client for the training has been the lovely Rosie Forsyth of Wilkins & Co (http://wilkinsco.co.uk), I’m delighted to be able to continue working for her now my training is complete. I’ll also be looking for another client as well, but I have the skills to do this now.
So, how has the second half of the course been?
By week 15 the social media campaign is in full swing. I’m really pleased with how it has started. Twitter is going great guns, surprisingly enjoyable chatting with complete strangers. Facebook is more of a slow burn.
I really got my teeth into all the stats. This was one part of the course that I wasn’t worried about, I can do numbers. (Apart from a bit of a blooper in the early weeks when I got some fairly basic maths completely wrong, never a good idea when your client is an accountant.) I really enjoyed being able to see the fruits of my labour. So satisfying to see the results and be able to track what is working well.
Every day has new challenges, (finding informative yet interesting and light hearted articles on tax policy is a pretty tough challenge). I previously had no idea that random Twitter trolls would hijack an accountant’s tweets with links to a rather dodgy looking dating website, the first clue was in the dubious profile picture (let’s just say that the person’s head was not included).
Week 16 was busy, busy, busy. Time to start advertising, launch a competition and think about what I would be doing after the course was finished.
I ran adverts on Twitter and Facebook. Setting up the adverts was fairly straightforward, working out exactly what to advertise, when and to whom, less so. I was able to analyse the results to check what to do more (or less) of. The adverts can be trialed at very low cost.
After much thinking and planning the competition was launched, I’d thought carefully about how to keep track the entries. After the first few days, I had a grand total of 8 entries! So not too difficult to keep track of!
My thoughts also turned toward the future at this point. Included with fantasies about getting more (any) sleep were my hopes that my client would want to carry on working with me after the course had finished. I was over the moon when she said she did!
Weeks 17–19 were about keeping up the momentum for the campaign, I didn’t have anything new to learn at this point, it was all about putting my knowledge into practice.
Week 20 and my final report was complete. Time for the final hangout with my peer group, it was our longest hangout of the whole course. I don’t think anyone wanted to say goodbye. We’ve been through a lot together and supported each other over the last 6 months, everyone has put so much into the course. Now it’s time for a new chapter in all of our lives. Michelle Chen, Mette Ellison, Francine Barsam and Catherine Horsfield I’ve spent more time with you over the last 6 months than I have with most of my friends, you’ve been amazing and I wish you all well.
