DIGITAL AMBASSADOR

Working with the University to create digital content to help with their promotion.

I thought I would include this on a separate page to have more consistency and showcase some work I have created for the University more clearly. Outside of my creative "hustles" this year, I have been an Event Ambassador for the University of Chester since October 2021. It has been an excellent way to earn a little more cash. Still, it has enabled me to gain more experience working on my communication skills, being more confident when public speaking and teamwork in setting up and clearing away the events.

Even though I enjoy working these shifts, I haven't done as many as I hoped due to my coursework deadlines or unavailability from being at home. However, it wasn't until early February there was a job opportunity to be a Digital Ambassador. We can answer future students' questions on an app called Unibuddy and create digital creations, whether blogposts or video/image content for social media.

I decided to bite the bullet as I could learn a lot more interpersonal skills with this job role. I saw it as an opportunity to be more creative and apply the skills that I have learnt throughout University and my own knowledge of the medium to gain more work experience. This job has only been in motion for just over a month now because we needed to wait for everyone to be trained up, so I have only been able to answer some questions on Unibuddy. However, so far I have been able to create one Instagram reel/Tik Tok quite recently about being an Events Ambassador.

Throughout the process of making this video, it was really fun. It was a new way to create content as I usually involve my work at the forefront rather than myself, so it was a change of pace especially hearing my own voice and seeing my face in the video. However, I included some of my animation skills within the video as I animated the first few seconds of the video just to make it different and avoid using stickers like other creators do online. I was able to find out the importance of copyright-free music as, more often than not, it's best to create content that has safe to use tracks to avoid being "sued" because I used someone else's work. This being said, I will definitely keep this in mind in the future, especially when creating video content.

Despite being towards the end of being a University of Chester student, I still plan to create content until I'm no longer classed as a student. I want to be able to make as much content as I can as it is an exciting way to gain more experience that will be to my benefit in the long run. It allows me to be more flexible on my creative skills whilst getting first-hand experience in marketing. I say this because I've always focused on the creative output for social media content and not on the process of what attracts the highest analytics online and the more business and academic side of marketing. This will be valuable for me in future, as I could use the methods, I have learnt in my own online presence to promote myself more to gain more client work.

I also wanted to use this job opportunity to promote the creative arts within education more. I often feel like this stigma about creative arts not being versatile or valuable in creating a substantial career. When I was going to be a university student, I could hardly find anything specialising for creative students on the University of Chester’s social media. Therefore, during this time working on this job role digital, I would like to create as much work as possible surrounding the idea of being a creative student at this university. This can allow more promotion for the university whilst helping other creative students have more clarity and understanding of what it is like being a creative (especially arts) student at the University of Chester. 

​

Lastly, working this way has also been interesting as I've never really seen myself create this type of work before. Using this job opportunity as a Digital Ambassador could be a catalyst in the creative industry, allowing me to achieve my aspirations sooner in my career journey.