A self referential blog post

As the logo says I'm VERY 'proud
to be shortlisted!'

I launch into my second post of the year with some great news as this very blog has been shortlisted for a National Blog Award! This is as an organisation blog in the Education category. I'm particularly excited about this one as I'd put it forward a few months before Christmas and had forgotten I'd done so.

Whilst casually looking at the blog stats I then noticed I had some referral traffic from the Blog Awards website. A bit of further investigation showed that I'd made it through to the public vote - with just three days left before it closed! I sprang straight into action on a social media campaign to rally some votes which was enough to get me to the final shortlist and the judging stage.

Therefore, I'd like to say a BIG THANK YOU to all the readers who voted for me! Although it's a lot of work to keep this updated, whilst doing the day job, it's also very therapeutic. It's all too easy to think about what I don't manage to achieve at work that this is a great document of the projects which do get completed (and I like to think of myself as a 'glass half full' person!) It also is a great tool for getting some valuable internal buy in.

The awards ceremony is on Friday 25th April in London so hopefully I'll be there, in my cheap dinner suit, with a glass of champagne in my hand to do some networking (and nail biting!) I'd also like to give a quick shout out to Pure360 (our email marketing solution) for being shortlisted as an organisation blog in the Digital & Technology category. Now down to business...

Last week was a busy one as the entire team were working on the launch of the new Partnership and Community section. This has consisted on literally making something from nothing as it is all new content! Obviously, it's still a work in progress but it's great to have the skeleton now there laying a great groundwork for expanding this area. It's also been a good learning curve for the team to see how all of our skills compliment each other - I've developed the project plan and homepage visual, Graeme's built the homepage, Elisabeth and Angela have got the site structure up and running and approved the content and Lauren has designed the graphics and the right column. Some great team work!

It was great to see our students
presenting their digital marketing ideas
so eloquently

It's also been a good few weeks for gaining new knowledge. I have now seen through to completion a project I started a few months ago by grading the projects of our MSc Business Web Analytics and Management students. They came up with some great ideas to better market their course, presented them very well and I really enjoyed the opportunity to get involved in the curriculum again. Needless to say they all passed with flying colours. and I may well be using some of their ideas...

Finally, Lauren and Angela attended an internally run SEO course which was in equal parts interesting and reassuring (as these courses often are!)

To close this post I'd like to say thank you again to everyone who reads and voted for this blog and I'll try my best to ensure that I add some unique and interesting insights into what the team has been up to in the future. Above all I hope to show that work CAN be fun!