This is my portfolio highlighting some of the works I created during my WORK300 placement with UNE Life Marketing and Branding from the period of June 29 2021 until August 8 2021.
My work was published across the Facebook, Instagram, and websites for UNE Life, SportUNE, Advocacy & Welfare, and The Shop.
UNE Life is dedicated to providing an outstanding experience for students, staff, and community members at the University of New England.
They look after a handful of the services and amenities offered at UNE, and it was an honour to work within their Marketing and Branding department.
I have researched, written, and edited the following blogs. Any collaboration involved includes my supervisor Alahna finalising the blog on WordPress and scheduling the images and copy I supply to her on Facebook and Instagram. Other collaborations have been included below.
The following content includes links to blog posts and social media posts created during my placement. The blogs range in style and context.
UNE Life
Blog title: Acknowledging your commitments, and knowing when to say no.
The purpose of this blog is to discuss the implications of saying ‘yes’ to certain responsibilities and then feeling overwhelmed. This is something I have been overcoming personally and wanted to use the UNE Life platform as a to present this view, alongside the experience of other students to further the theme which replaced traditional research. UNE Life audiences range in age and life experience, and so I wanted to make sure I used inclusive land first person language in the introduction so the blog read more like a conversation with a friend.
One constraint on the blog was that I had to wait for some of the participants to send me their responses which required following them up via email.
Please find the link to the social copy I used for the post on Facebook and Instagram below.
Advocacy & Welfare
Blog title: Putting consent into practice: Without killing the vibe
This blog discusses consent as part of the Be a Better Human campaign at UNE. Be a Better Human is a campaign which has been adopted by several universities in Australia. Part of the UNE Life content is to educate our readers on the topics and themes that the campaign covers, and sexual consent is one of those. To tackle this topic, I structured the blog into three sections. The first part defined consent, the second part discussed how to put consent into practice, and the final part listed the various support services students can access at UNE and across Australia. Much of the research I used was sourced from Government health websites and a previous blog UNE Life had written about consent. It was important that I used a conversational yet formal tone because of the sensitive nature of the topic and I wanted to treat it with respect. Good communication must include a variety of considerations, including sincerity which I use in almost every blog I write. In addition, I included a trigger warning “TW” at the beginning of the blog so that readers knew that the following blog mentioned sexual assault. Content warnings are something I have observed from my own social media use and as a writer, I think it’s important to include trigger or content warnings on more serious blogs so that readers aren’t unwillingly reading something that could uproot past trauma.
SportUNE
Blog title: Stretches to get your body and mind in check
This blog is focused around well-being which is part of the SportUNE brand. I chose to structure this blog as a “how to” style of blog. As an active person I often enjoy writing fitness and wellbeing content for the audiences at SportUNE. I include hyperlinks embedded in the copy which often link back to a source of information from my research so readers can click on them and read more about “stretching,” as an example.
I chose to include images next to the description of the poses so people so readers can visually see the pose. This is something I learnt from COM102 Media and Convergence on the importance of representation and the power of images. These images transformed the blog into a more engaging and easy to digest read which I think is important when it comes to “how-to” style blogs.
UNELife
Blog title: Interview with Tune!FM’s Nick Troon
This blog has been structured to read like an interview with one of the staff members at Tune!FM. Due to majority of UNE staff members working from home I was not able to interview Nick in person, but instead wrote up the interview questions and sent them via email for Nick to complete in his own time. Doing interviews via email have been convenient and effective, especially because readers get a real sense of the interviewee’s sense of character. I generally try not to change too much of what they have written when I edit the final interview.
This could be considered a collaboration with Nick. In which I have contributed 70%, and Nick has contributed 30% to this blog.
Advocacy & Welfare
Blog title: Studiosity: the tool every student needs to be using!
This is an informational style of blog which is targeted for students at UNE. The blog discusses the study tool “Studiosity” and explains what it is, how students can use it, and where to access it. When I first began university many unit coordinators would mention the various academic support services that I could access, but it wasn’t until a peer mentioned this service that I really took notice. When I wrote the social media copy for this post I wanted to touch on the pain points of the target audience and so I made sure I was succinct in highlighting how the blog could provide a solution to students who are looking for ways they can improve their assessment skills.
SportUNE
Blog title: Elite athlete, Blake Howle
This blog I wrote before lockdown and so I was able to interview Blake in person. This blog differs in structure from the interview with Tune!FM as I decided to not keep it in an interview format, but rather use quotes and lead in sentences to organise the content. I wrote in a chronological order starting with the background of Blake’s sporting career before discussing his degree and experiences at UNE, and then onto his aspirations after graduation. I wanted to make sure that I was honest and portrayed Blake in a positive way. Before I published the blog I sent the final draft to Blake for him to review, as well as SportUNE’s Performance Manager Matt Pine to make sure I hadn’t misinterpreted anything Blake said in the interview. I found it fascinating that in-person interviews often have a lot more inaccuracies than interviews completed via email. Mainly because I would record the interview and transcribe it afterward and so human and technical error can be at fault, hence why I always check before I publish to avoid any potential defamation.
Advocacy & Welfare
Blog title: Coping with Uncertainty in Life
This blog was written during the regional New South Wales lockdown and was created based off my own personal experience and conversations I had with friends about the difficulty living with uncertainty. I had hoped that this blog could provide comfort to students and staff in knowing that they are not alone in feeling anxious about the future. At the bottom of the blog I made sure to include a strong call to action which linked all the support services for students at UNE and across Australia.
UNE Life
Blog title: Life as a Working Mum: Dr Lili Pâquet gets Real with Students
This blog was a joy to write and publish! Lili has been a unit coordinator of mine in the past and so I valued the insight she gave into her personal life as a working mother. This blog is the first in a series that focuses on working/studying parents. This was an interview which was orchestrated via email communication and Lili was timely in responding to me. It has since been shared amongst other UNE channels.
SportUNE
Blog title: One Weight Wonder: Kettlebell Workouts to Try From Home
SportUNE cater to all ages and physical abilities. When it came to writing a blog that features examples of exercises for people to try at home I wanted to ensure the positions I included can be done by all abilities and skill levels. We asked the team at SportUNE to check this blog before we published it to make sure the content was accurate.
The following images are examples of the interactive stories I did for UNE Life which encouraged students to engage with the posts. Following those images are two examples of social media posts that I created for The Shop on Instagram.
Sara Perry 