marketing – Najmah Writes

Hey hey! 🙂

Summer is finally here! But if the British weather is anything to go by, I’d enjoy it while it lasts!

I hope you’re all are fine and well! I am still alive and kicking and it’s nice to be back on the blogging scene. The reason I’ve been missing is that after writing a 10,000 word dissertation, I’ve lacked motivation to write anything at all and with uni ending I wanted to take a break which went on longer than I expected.

I had planned to write this post last week, however with me being on work experience at Rutland and Stamford Mercury newspaper it got delayed, anyway better late than never.

So now after four years of stressing out over exams and essays, I’ve completed uni and now I can finally say I’m a qualified journalist with Bachelor of Arts (Hons) with a 2:1 in Journalism.

Now that uni has end what’s next?

Rutland and Stamford Mercury Newspaper

In terms of work experience, as mentioned before I was at Rutland and Stamford Mercury newspaper last week where I had a great time, I remember arriving at the office feeling nervous and excited at the same time. However, the best thing was I wasn’t sitting there fiddling my thumbs for long – I was immediately given work, so in no time I was questioning people over the phone for quotes and comments. I even got a chance to interview people face-to-face regarding the National Care Home Open Day which was rather cool if I say so myself – I felt like a actual news reporter then. In the end, I was fortunate to write several articles even though only two made it into the actual newspaper – I believe it is the experience that counts.

While I was on work experience, I also received my result for my dissertation and it turned out I got 68%, which is a B. I admit I was a little disappointed at first because I was only two marks off a first and I had put so much hard work into it. This only lasted a few minutes because I was way too happy with finishing uni. YAY!!

The Job Hunt

To be honest, over the past few weeks I have been quite lost and alittle worried about the future, as the dreaded job search has begun and so has the process of staying up till 2AM to fill in endless applications, but I don’t mind it as I know it’ll be all worth it in end. While I have been job searching, some websites have been useful, some more than others – Twitter has been really useful for me and I totally recommend anyone on the job hunt to make use of it! Now my everyday routine includes looking for journalism jobs on the internet in either newspapers, magazines or online – I don’t want to be picky at the moment although I’m still trying to steer clear of some editorial assistant jobs as I have heard they’ll have you do all admin duties except writing. I’m still staying positive because it’s easy to give up when you get demotivated, say I can’t do it, I’ll never get a job in journalism – but you got to keep trying. That’s my motto anyway.

Crimestoppers

Moving on to a different note, I’m currently writing press releases for the charity Crimestoppers to raise awareness for specific crimes in the Cambridgeshire area which should help in getting people to report on crimes and in return catch more offenders. Apart from that, I’m going to be working on a Cycle Theft Campaign with them and other students – but that’s all I know at the moment, however I have a meeting on July 5 where everything should be explained. I think I’ll write another post about that.

Finally on a general note, I’m thinking about changing my blog title to make it more journalism orientated, currently it’s just faltering with History Starts Now so need a more permanent title. Any suggestions are welcome – so go on, leave a comment and I’ll meet you guys in my next post!

Najmah

‘Work Hard, Play Hard’ – Heidi Semple

Heidi Semple’s job demands that she spent a lot of her time on the phone or on her laptop typing away.

The 45-year-old Market Deeping resident is the Managing Director of Scene Marketing Ltd and founder of Scene Publications. She launched the Scene magazines in 2007 with just one Deeping-based magazine. Today she has added five successful titles to the Scene portfolio.

Heidi has accomplished quite a lot in a short amount of time. So for her, running a magazine is not difficult.

Her first job was working as a Pharmacist Assistant. She does not have a degree just the usual O-Levels.

Once she began her career in publishing, she became hooked,

“It just got into my blood really, because once you understand it; it is such a fast pace,” said Heidi. “Every day is different, you never know what you are going to be working on. It is being proactive, imaginative and I quite enjoy that.”

At Emap, she started at the bottom as a telesales person and came through the ranks. Over the years, she relished the changes. Heidi spoke about how frustrating it became working for a big company.

“It took ages for a decision to be made. We had a meeting about a meeting, back-to-back all day,” she said.

However with Emap being taken over by Bauer Media, she began looking at other options and working for herself sounded like a better idea.

She initially got the idea whilst working with a colleague who also embarked on doing something similar elsewhere.

“It was meeting and talking to people that I realised there was a huge need for community information,” she said. “Nobody knew what was going on in their community and I was able to deliver that kind of news with the Scene.”

So that is how the Scene magazine was born.

“Now I work harder than I did before that it doesn’t feel like work.”

Kimberley Evans, fellow colleague and Advertising Executive at Scene Publications agrees, “Heidi knows her stuff, she is very proactive and a very likeable person.”

With multi-media journalism coming in, Heidi said it hasn’t had much impact on the magazines they do.
“We have multi-media, we can view our magazines online, they are interactive and we have to go more and more down that route,” She said.

Her training from Emap comes into good use at Scene when dealing, managing people and deadlines.

Heidi said, “Emap were very good with their training and I took every opportunity I got. So in that sense I know how to deal with people and hopefully know how to get the best out of them.”

Heidi has a wide range of skills but would like to add more to her repertoire. She wants to experiment with having a magazine that would be placed on a newsstand and which is a paid for publication.

“I have worked on national magazines but only one element of it. So as much as I had editorial, marketing and even subscription experience to a degree, actual paid-for distribution I don’t have experience of,” she said.

Any advice?

“You got to be so imaginative and you have to be more creative as it is more accessible now.”

To read more on Scene, visit magazine website: http://thescenemagazine.co.uk/

Follow them on Twitter: @yourlocalscene

Like their Facebook page: City Scene Magazine

Tag: marketing

On completing uni and more…

Interview with ‘Head Honcho’ Heidi Semple