In the beginning of 2022, I relocated to Dubai, UAE, to gain experience of working abroad and to take on the role of Digital Marketing Manager of the luxury and global activewear brand, Lorna Jane Activewear (Middle East).In this role, I was given free-rein to create, edit and produce content for a wide range of social media channels, including Instagram and TikTok - allowing the brand to reach its target audience across the Middle East and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Through my role, I worked closely with influencers, creating key relationships in order to develop brand awareness to our customers and clients, as well as attending and organising key events in the Dubai social calendar, alongside the Marketing Manager and Sales & Events Manager.In line with this - I assisted in creating and facilitating social media strategies, whilst engaging with the Lorna Jane ME digital community, by replying and involving them within our social media platforms. Further to this, I provided digital and e-commerce support to projects and campaigns as we launched new collections each month.

As part of my MSc module, Digital Marketing, I pitched to work at Paisley Heritage as part of my placement, which quickly grew into becoming a Marketing Coordinator role.I implemented the brand online, helping to create and drive forward Paisley Heritage’s digital strategy, as well as continuing to build upon its nine-year reputation with external audiences around the globe. I provided digital support to projects and campaigns, and helped to develop engaging content for the group’s digital channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn, as well as its own community group on social media.I designed, created and launched Paisley Heritage’s new website, giving the brand a more desirable platform to reach its audience.

In this role, I covered a diverse and variety of subjects of local news, including hard news, breaking news, features, human interest, leisure and lifestyle stories from across my patch of East Renfrewshire. I delivered fast, agile and dynamic coverage that readers expected, especially whilst living through a pandemic - this included digital storytelling, and bringing new and innovative ways of telling those stories using a vast array of different skills, tools and platforms, such as photographs, videos and Facebook Live. A large part of my role as a journalist, saw me immersing myself in the newspapers social media channels, mainly Facebook, to help tell the stories, develop relationships in the area that I covered, whilst discovering what it is that gets the community talking.

With this role being the first of its kind at Include Me 2 Club, I played a crucial role in implementing the charity’s brand online, helping create and drive forward its digital strategy, as well as continuing to build upon its reputation with external audiences and funders, whilst raising awareness of the club. In my day-to-day tasks, I provided digital support to other projects and team members within the charity, and developed engaging, original content for our digital channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. I overseen and grew the digital channels, increasing engagement and driving traffic to the website, and taking responsibility for the development and creation of online member engagement, digital content, marketing, social media and website management. With this, it included developing, updating and writing content for our brands website, whilst ensuring tone, quality and SEO data is up to date and correct.As well as overseeing and growing our key social media channels, I created and edited engaging video content in-house for the online communities, created campaign-specific mail-outs and newsletters, managed the content plan for our blog through sourcing engaging material and drafting and editing unique content.I also carried out a teaching role within my job to our members, through our Media Makers programme, where I overseen the learning and development of 12 to 27 year olds, through numerous media platforms, including; journalism, podcast, radio, online, videography, and editing.