7 Reasons Why You Should Give Me a Job – Number 4 is Amazing!

It can be difficult to get people’s attention. There is so much noise out there, making being heard or seen a challenge if you’re lacking a megaphone and platform boots.

My time at The Leith Agency is coming to an end and I am ready for my next big adventure. I have been contacting other agencies, hoping to chat with digital strategists and social media execs and planners and copywriters to gain a better understanding of how different agencies — and indeed, different people — approach advertising and marketing in innovative, loud, noticeable ways.

The problem was that I wasn’t being noticed myself. Countless emails and requests and LinkedIn stalking sessions later, I was scunnered. It was time for a new, bolder approach.

The following is a modified version of the very real clickbait efforts I sent out to people and agencies I wanted to get to learn from and get to know better. What better way to convince them that I’m a fun, motivated, interesting person they’d like to have a chat with than to capture them with intrigue and the human inability to ignore the big neon sign (or in this case clickbaity title)?


Amy King. Linguistics graduate, Digital intern, lover of pretty stationery. She’s ready for her next adventure in the working world of social media management and digital strategy. Want to know why not employing her would be a HUGE mistake? Read on to find out…

1. I’m a millennial (setting aside the controversy of the term for now). I’ve downloaded Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Whatsapp, BuzzFeed, Pinterest, Tumblr, Giphy, LinkedIn, WeHeartIt, YouTube and Reddit. Not to mention supporting apps like Boomerang, VSCO, Layout… I use Hootsuite for my personal accounts as well as clients’ social media profiles. I’m committed to the cause.

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2. I’m the keenest of keen beans when it comes to learning. I often find myself on a QI binge. Fun fact: Not every language can deal with metaphors. One of these is Navajo. The Navajo word for The Elephant’s Feet (mountain pillars on Navajo land) translates into English as “two rocks standing vertically parallel in a reciprocal relationship to each other”.  This makes me a pretty great pub quiz teammate. Or researcher. Whichever you think is more important.

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3. My Linguistics degree set me up for big research projects, quantitative data analysis and understanding communication. Advertising is all about understanding communication. We’re a good fit, really.

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4. I prefer a GIF to an emoji. Emojis have their place, but GIFs really tell a story. Some people have Snapchat streaks, my boyfriend and I have baby animal GIF-offs. You tell me which is better.

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5. Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Twitter insights— I’ve dealt with them all. Community management and content marketing make up the bulk of my working week, but other projects I’ve completed include researching internal social media engagement strategies, writing Best Practice guides for social media platforms, learning about the psychology of clickbait and keeping up to date with the latest technologies and advancements in the digital sphere. #Trendy

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6. My life revolves around lists: To Do lists, shopping lists, Do Not Forget These Important Things lists, ‘please talk to me about your industry’ lists – the list goes on. They help my productivity, are cathartic to write and work through and are a productive form of procrastination. What’s not to like?

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7. My Digital Strategist internship with The Leith Agency was originally 10 weeks. When my contract ends in February, I will have been with Leith for 41 weeks (that’s just over 10 months). I must be doing something right, right?

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So, there you have it: 7 reasons why you should want me on your team (albeit not an exhaustive list, but I have to keep some things up my sleeve for the interview!)

Amazingly, this method has proved successful. People tend to notice a headline screaming at them in their inbox when the rest rarely make use of an exclamation mark, never mind block capitals.

It’s funny how keen people are to share their pearls of wisdom with you, yet how difficult it can be to get their attention. Advertising, especially, requires a certain outside-the-box approach to show you’re suited to the industry (not to mention a wee showcasing of my copywriting abilities — added bonus).

Clickbait (aka ‘fake news’ aka ‘alternative facts’) often comes under fire for misadvertising the contents of an article — a prime example being this less than gracious article Piers Morgan published after being stood up by Ewan McGregor (I’m staying away from the politics this time).

However, I’d like to think this article stands up somewhat for the little guy in this particular scenario. Sometimes a catchy title for an article or an introductory email, despite its same-old-clickbait appearance, really is as great as it seems.

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Smells Like Teen Angst

Communicating my thoughts and feelings through writing has not always been my strongest skill, but it has been a cathartic release for me from a young age.

While packing up my bedroom at my parents’ house over the Christmas break, I came across an old notebook I’ve owned for years.

It’s a pretty little hand-stitched number from Paperchase that I bought many, many moons ago.

As teenagedom hit with the subtlety of a sledgehammer and the emotions began running amock, I took solace in the pages of this notebook.

I always fancied myself as a poet or novelist, and unfortunately I was less than talented in the poetry department.

For today’s Throwback Thursday, I thought I’d share some of the greater works (and by greater I mean those that induced the most stomach-churning cringe) of my adolescence.

Fact and Fiction

Sometime I feel like a character from a book
with no choice of path.

It seems to me that
we are all characters from God’s latest novel.

It seems to me
that we are all characters from God’s new best-seller

Apparently I was struggling with religion…

Act I Scene III

You’re the Lady Macbeth
of today.
Your tongue is your dagger
You seek revenge, need to
satiate your thirst.
Your anatomic sword pierces
hearts; spilling tears and
killing dreams.
Bloodlust courses through your veins
and yet you lie
ever silent, ever dreaming,
until the day the dagger
plunges.

It would also appear I was both ridiculously pissed off with someone and had a flare for (what I considered at the time to be) dramatic structure. Thank God there are no rhyming couplets or I’d be at this page with a rubber and a lot of elbow grease…

And, God Almighty, I seemed to think I could write humour into my ‘poetry’:

Optimism

My glass is half full
of an exciting new drink
that colours my day.

Optimism is
the new pessimism but
more optimistic

Give me strength.

One of the final entries in this notebook is also a short one, but it has a lot more meaning to me. And yes, this one rhymes:

Roses are red
violets are blue
I cannot fathom
this world without you.

Yellow’s for daisies
purple’s for heather
I’ll love you and miss you
forever and ever

I wrote that in 2012. It was the first Valentine’s Day after one of my dearest friends died in a car crash. It was such a devastating time for me. Probably fuelled a lot more angst, but fortunately I stopped writing so much poetry and focused my energy on journals and fiction. I can assure you they were better.

So, there you have it. I was an angsty wee thing, but God loves a trier.

There are still empty pages in this notebook, as time and other distractions left it sitting on the bookshelf for years. I am going to attempt to fill them all. No doubt there will be some angst still there – gotta get it out somehow – but I’m determined to finish this book on a happier note (and maybe without so much terrible, painful poetry).

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