Do you want to improve public perception of your school?
Do you want to engage more effectively with parents and other stakeholders, as well as the wider community?
Do you want to be better prepared to deal with the sort of crisis situation that sooner or later every school will face?

If the answer to any of these questions is Yes, then we have the course for you. Ember Regis is teaming up with Hill Educational Consultants to provide an intensive one-day media training course for school leaders.

The course takes place in Sheffield on Friday 11th May 2012 and costs just £195 for one delegate – or £295 for two. Highly practical in content, it’s designed to give you the knowledge, skills and confidence required to negotiate the fast-changing media landscape.

You’ll be shown how to build an effective working relationship with the media – and how to interest journalists in running postive stories about your school, whether it’s improved exam results or extra-curricular achievements.

You’ll learn how to deal with negative publicity – perhaps criticism in the letters page of the local newspaper, or a whispering campaign on Facebook.

And you’ll also be shown how to handle the pressure of holding a press conference, or being interviewed live on the radio or television.

Whether you’re a headteacher, a chair of governors, or the designated school press officer, this is a chance to work with your peers and with highly experienced professionals from the worlds of journalism and education on improving and protecting your school’s reputation.

Click here for full details.

Could YOU be the person we’re looking for?

DESCRIPTION

We are looking for a Sales and Marketing Assistant to promote and sell media training courses. Our courses prepare individuals and organisations to deal with both the traditional and new media, whether it’s being interviewed live on the radio or television, generating publicity in the local press, handling journalists in a crisis situation, or tackling negative publicity on Twitter or Facebook.

The internship will entail:
- marketing our courses via the internet and social media
- identifying potential clients
- selling courses via email and telephone
- assisting with the organisation and running of courses

Inititally you will be paid commission and expenses only. The length of the internship is negotiable. You will be based at our office in Birmingham. Ideally this will be a full-time position, but there is a degree of flexibility.

QUALIFICATIONS

Most of all you will need to demonstrate that you are ambitious, determined and willing to work hard to achieve your goals. You will be a self-starter, independent and self-motivated, happy to work for long periods unsupervised.

You will have an entrepreneurial instinct and will be genuinely set on a career in sales and marketing. You will also have an informed interest in the media industry and in news and current affairs.

You will be intelligent and articulate and will have excellent written and verbal communication skills.

You will be fully conversant with social media, including Twitter and LinkedIn. It would help if you have formal training in sales and/ or markting/ public relations, although it is not essential. Skills in any of the following areas will be especially useful: graphic/ web design, coding, SEO.

You will be educated at least to degree level.

Contact: ROBIN POWELL 07836 557 696, RobinPowell@EmberRegis.co.uk

Are you looking for space? Mentoring? Opportunities to network and collaborate with like-minded peers?

Well, we can provide all of those things, because a desk has just become available in our stunning penthouse office suite in Digbeth. We already have 11 people in our working community, including TV and video producers, PR and marketing consultants, a freelance journalist and a graphic designer. Could you be the 12th and final member of the team?

The monthly facilities fee is £149 + VAT, which includes everything with the exception if electricity, which, based on current usage, is working out at around £9 per desk per month. If required, there’s also one parking space available, right outside the front door, for £75 per month; alternatively there are shower and bicycle storage facilities.

The ideal candidate is someone who will add to the mix of skills we already have – e.g. an illustrator, animator, SEO specialist, social media specialist, copywriter, a content strategist, advertiser, event promoter/ manager, or project manager specialising in the digital media sector.

Crucially, you’ll need to share our passion for excellence and creativity, as well as our very high standard of professionalism.

Please call Robin Powell on 07836 557 696 and/ or follow the link below for further information:

http://www.emberregis.co.uk/downloads/EmberRegis-freelances-office-sharing.pdf

But after his recent admission to being an occasional viewer of Ocean Finance TV, the prospect of the two of us overdosing on Jeff Stelling & Co. suddenly seems the least of my worries.

You only need to glance at Sky’s channel list to see that the advance of branded television channels is gathering pace even faster than long-standing web TV evangelists like me had imagined. Ocean Finance, was, in fact, one of the pioneers – it launched in 2008. Since then a whole host of brands have followed suit – and are starting to reap the dividends.

M&S, for instance, says one in 10 viewers of M&S TV click through to the product pages; they also spend longer on the site and view three times as many products as other customers.

Viewers of Debenhams TV spend 12% more on average than non-viewers. And Pink TV, run by the clothing chain Thomas Pink, is averaging around 1000 viewers a week, boosting dwell time on the company’s website by 40%.

With broadband speeds improving, Google TV due later this year, and the extraordinary rise of YouTube showing no sign of abating, we can expect to see an explosion of these kinds of channels in the years ahead.

So where does this leave the rest of us, who can’t afford the hundreds of hours of original content these dedicated channels require? Certainly few of our clients have that sort of budget.

Well, our advice is threefold. First, go for quality – however many videos you’re looking for. To stand out from the millions of other videos out there requires effort, skill and creativity, so letting an intern loose with a camcorder and Windows MovieMaker is probably a waste of time.

Secondly, whatever your budget, at least get started. Having just one video on your website has been shown to make a significant difference to your ranking with the search engines and the amount of time people spend on your site.

Thirdly, continue to invest sensibly in video marketing as and when you can afford it. Five or six videos, and you’re ready for your own YouTube Channel. And when, eventually, you do want your own web TV service, you’ll already have suitable content for it.

Who knows? It might be your TV channel I’ll be dragging my son away from in a couple of years’ time.

Robin Powell is Managing Editor of Regis Media