An end to a terrific few months

Today I completed my final day of work experience at City of Joondalup and the time has really flown by, I can’t believe it has already come to an end. It feels like the time I’ve spent here has been so brief yet so valuable in teaching me about the industry I’m about to enter in the following year.

I have left City of Joondalup with a sound knowledge of how to write goals and strategies for a public relations plan, a social media strategy, media releases and columns for City publications.

The highlights of my placement were;

-       Researching potential names for one of the City of Joondalup staff meeting rooms and having one of my own suggestions be submitted to the Mayor for consideration.

-       Researching how other local governments and businesses celebrate NAIDOC Week and making suggestions for what the City can do to increase attendance and get the Joondalup community more involved in next years events.

-       Putting years of writing media releases and advertising material into practise by writing to promote Joondalup events and the city itself for City of Joondalup publications and paid newspaper advertisements

-       Learning about the City’s social media strategies and what they are doing to develop their online presence and become more interactive.

-       Performing competitor analysis’s for the City to see how other governments brand themselves and how effective this is, to determine whether any improvements could be made to Joondalups branding to better communicate key messages to the public.

I learnt a great deal over the past months and what I learnt in the workplace I will take with me when I get my first job in public relations. This experience has given me the confidence I could never get from the classroom.

Not only did I learn a lot when I was working on my own, I also learnt that there are many days in the world of PR where things do not go according to plan! On my last day the City’s Rates Draw was being held that night, where the City gives out prizes to residents that have paid their rates ahead of time as a way to reward ratepayers and encourage people to make their payments early. This saw many of us in the office come together in a rush to ensure everything was ready for the night, right down to decorations for the venue and nametags!

It’s been a great experience and I’m a little sad to leave, but now I’m more excited than ever to begin my own journey in the world of PR! Thanks for reading everybody.

First weeks at the City of Joondalup

Hello everyone, 

This is my first blog post written after completing four days at my placement within the Marketing Department at the City of Joondalup. So far I have been going in every Monday, however will be beginning to go in several times a week as the semester progresses and as we get closer to some of the events they hold.

At City of Joondalup public relations is incorporated into their relatively small marketing department, specifically focused on by the media advisor. As a result of this I was exposed to different activities some more marketing orientated and some more public relations based. The variety kept things interesting and I have definitely learnt a lot.

So far I have had a great experience here with everybody being extremely friendly and more than happy to help me on things I am unsure about as well as having me sit and work with them to get a better understanding of each of their roles within the department and the jobs they carry out on a day to day basis.

Being a local government, the City of Joondalup hosts a lot of corporate events, but it also hosts plenty of community based events where they are currently really focused on getting more awareness and increasing attendance.

Because of this I have been assisting with a lot of the work developing advertisements, fliers, booklets and signs to be distributed to the public before events including the Joondalup Festival, Joondalup Esteddford, Little Feet Festival and more.

I have been asked to do a competitor analysis for some of these events. Looking at the websites run by other local governments and seeing how events are run and what type of advertising is used. I am then asked to make any suggestions for things that City of Joondalup could do for upcoming events or events they have next year.

I did a lot of this for NAIDOC Week, the National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee. This is celebrated by many local governments and companies around Australia every year and City of Joondalup always holds an opening ceremony and several community activities. I was asked to research and come up with ways that the City can increase attendance and encourage more of the public to attend. In the past they have found that the activities are mainly attended by City employees which the marketing department wants to change by increasing awareness.

So far I have had a great time in my placement and look forward to what I’ll be learning in the weeks to come!