Becoming a Human at Taught By Humans
An insight into the first month of my role with Taught By Humans as their Communications and Community Intern
Since taking on the intern role with Taught By Humans last month, I have been busy running several aspects of the business, meeting some amazing new people and learning so many new skills. So, I have written this blog post to celebrate the amazing opportunities that Taught By Humans has given me and remind myself of the things I have achieved.
Meeting New and Friendly Faces
The first couple of weeks in my role involved getting to know the company, through talking to its founder Laura, reading through the many blog posts and newspaper articles about Taught By Humans, its origins, inspiration and purpose, and even experiencing the Taught By Humans learning experience first-hand! I spent an hour learning about IF Statements in Google Sheets, as well as how to use data across different sheets and workbooks. Much of this process was supported by the work of Cath and Yas of IPSA consulting. They were immensely helpful in Taught By Humans’ quest to better define its brand, and they supported us in making a plan for a number of quick win campaigns which will take place over the course of this summer. I learned much from them about marketing, especially in branding and using social media for business. It is important to continue to maintain a sophisticated and professional appearance online, but it is also important to maintain the strong personality that Laura has developed in the company and stick closely to Taught By Humans’ key values: approachability, accessibility and utility.
Getting Creative on Social Media
Cath and Yas also provided me with some useful insight into design and copywriting for social media. I used their advice along with some of my own market research to build my vision for the Taught By Humans image on social media. Since then, I have been creating designs in Canva that are each informative and interesting, and collectively well themed and connected.
Research is an incredibly useful and a necessary skill in digital marketing, and I have used it not only in growing a strong brand and cohesive image for Taught By Humans, but also in supporting the growth of the company. Following advice from Cath and Yas, I have been researching popular and trending hashtags, especially in the EdTech business. I created myself a bank of hashtags using this research — sorted into the different offerings and interests of Taught By Humans — which I could then take from when writing copy for future posts. My research skills also came in useful to explore the competitors of Taught By Humans, not only for their commonly used hashtags, but also for their design ideas, branding, audience, and their business offerings. There are so many incredible companies with a similar vision to Taught By Humans to take inspiration from after all!
Talking to Some Techie Professionals
After my first couple of weeks were spent getting acquainted with the Taught By Humans brand and beginning to create and post content on social media platforms, I began to reach further within my role in communications. I started the process of planning a blog series, with the help of Laura, surrounding professionals and their experiences with data, tech and spreadsheets. This was inspired with the intention of bridging the gap between those new and unsure of using technology and those who work more closely with it, thus showing our audience that technology is accessible and giving them advice as to how to go about learning to be comfortable with it.
This process began with the writing of interview questions, which I did through reading similarly styled blogs and articles online, as well as taking on advice given to me by Laura. I then began engaging with professionals in who work with data and tech in order to schedule interviews and ensure that Taught By Humans had consent to film and record the meetings. To create a transcript of the interview, I put the final film footage through Otter.ai. This is the process that Taught By Humans uses to create captions for all of our videos!
I have been enjoying the ‘An Interview With…’ blog series hugely, as it connects deeply with the ‘human’ aspect of the Taught By Humans brand. As someone who does use data and technology but is far from fluent, I have found the interviewees of the blog incredibly exciting to talk to, as they give deeply honest and useful advice in using data and technology, as well as how to approach them with the right mindset. So far, I have spoken with James Jackson — or JJ — of APEXX Global and Kelsey Botne of Atom Learning, who were amazing interviewees with such valuable insights.
Writing Blogs Like These
Blog writing has to be one of my favourite parts of the job with Taught By Humans. I spent a fair amount of my time in this process reading and researching different blogs, including those written by Laura, in order to establish the right tone for the two series I am running. This was also a useful process in helping me to figure out a layout and select the right content to use in the final piece.
As I mentioned above, I have really enjoyed the ‘An Interview With…’ blog series for the experience of meeting and speaking with some amazing people. Equally, however, being able to reflect on all the accomplishments and lessons I have made during my time as an Intern at Taught By Humans has been incredibly valuable. To look back and see what all my time and work has achieved makes me immensely proud. It also pushes me to work hard to grow the community around Taught By Humans and spread their message, especially after all the incredible opportunities that Laura and the company have given me.
Reflections
Throughout my time so far as an intern for Taught By Humans, it is clear that I have learnt a lot. The experience has allowed me to build new hard skills, such as using Canva and Medium, and using social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for business purposes. I have also grown more comfortable in using Google for meetings, emails, documents and even spreadsheets themselves! More broadly, though, I have become more knowledgeable of the process of creating a strong brand and developing a marketing strategy, and even with the interruptions put in place by the COVID-19 crisis, I have become more comfortable in a professional setting, whether it be for communicating, networking, writing or designing.
Overall, working at Taught By Humans has helped me immensely in building on my strengths and learning new skills both professionally and personally, and I am truly grateful to have the opportunity to work for them. I hope that I can continue to grow and to take on all the new amazing opportunities that the company and its amazing founder Laura will throw at me.
Let us remember, though, the most important lesson that Taught By Humans has to offer: that spreadsheets really aren’t scary!
