Georgia’s work experience week at tgi MEDIA
In September 2015 at school we were told we were going to be doing work placements towards the end of June. I started to panic as I didn’t know where I should apply for. I applied to a couple of places, but it was very difficult to actually get a placement that was happy for 14-15 year olds working for them. That was the main problem for not just me, but for my whole year group.
I was familiar with tgi MEDIA as Tori is a family friend. I thought that this, out of all the places I had applied for so far, was definitely the best one I should apply for. When I leave Hummerskott Academy next year, I hope to extend my English and Media Studies further to become a journalist. So I thought this could definitely help me with my media skills.
When I contacted Tori, she said that is was absolutely fine for me to come to tgi MEDIA. I was extremely excited to start my work placement and I was not nervous at all, I just couldn’t wait until June!
Tori and David were very welcoming on my first day and they made me feel comfortable in the office. I felt as if I had fit in straight away. Tori gave me a small induction and I was content. Tori then began to tell me about the 26 clients that they have and how they manage their Twitter, Instagram and Facebook pages. It helped that I was already familiar with all these social media accounts because I had accounts on them on myself.
On my first day, I helped to manage a Twitter account for an estate agent. I followed people who were relevant to their interest, like following other estate agent Twitter accounts. Luckily, most of the people I followed on that Twitter account followed us back so we gained followers of the same interest which will help out the business massively. I also helped out with the North East hour on Twitter to gain followers for the North East based businesses.
The next day, I was eager to get back into the office to learn more about social media. When I got there, Tori told me that I would be cleansing Twitter accounts. This meant that I would be unfollowing people on the accounts that weren’t following us back or just hadn’t posted in a very long time. I really enjoyed cleansing the Twitter accounts because it gave me ideas of what I could do to my own Twitter account. 
It came to day 3, and again, I was very eager to get back. I was thoroughly looking forward to going to the meeting that Tori had planned for us. The meeting took place at Hardwick Hall with five others that I had never met before. I was able to talk to them all with confidence, that is something I probably wouldn’t have been able to do last week. The meeting was for helping to promote an event for the company Sunderland Live. I learnt lots to do with promotion and marketing and that’s great for me because I am very interested in that sort of thing. When we got back to the office, I did some content. I used news stories related to the business account with a photo attached onto it, I scheduled the tweets for a specific time using a site called HootSuite. I enjoyed doing this as I got to understand the use of a site that I had never understood before.
During day 4, I did the thing that I enjoyed the most. I wrote a newsletter for an emailing list for a Darlington restaurant. When Tori asked me if I could do this, I was really excited as this is one of the things I really enjoy doing. I sometimes write in the school newspaper so I was beyond happy I had been asked to create a newsletter. I happily made the newsletter. I added all the text in the text boxes and I also added photos onto the newsletter. This was probably my favourite thing I had done out of all of the activities I did this week. I also replied to both the many positive and the few negative reviews on Trip Advisor for a Darlington restaurant.
I enjoyed day 5 just as much as I enjoyed the rest of my days here. Tori gave me her list of clients and told me that I needed to reply to some people and retweet some tweets, just so that their followers know that they are active. I liked doing this because it gave me an idea of things I needed to retweet and reply to, for example if it was a car company I had to retweet things to do with cars and reply to any tweets to the car company.
Overall, I really enjoyed my week at tgi MEDIA because I got to see a different view of social media that I wouldn’t have seen before. I have gained lots of confidence from being at tgi MEDIA and that will help me out massively. Tori and David were very welcoming and accommodating towards me. It was an amazing experience for me and it was made very memorable, I won’t forget it!