During the first few weeks of the year and season, myself, and my fellow course mate, who is also part of the Cardiff City Ladies media team, were called into a board meeting with the club secretary and club chair.
Despite the good work we had produced over the year we had been there, they felt more could be done from us to help increase the club’s status. They explained the output we were currently producing was not enough and this was limiting the potential of sponsors, revenue, and fan engagement. Initially, we tried to defend ourselves by explaining we were full-time students meaning that focusing on the club was difficult particularly when trying to balance the workload of final year university. Having said this, we soon realised that we could still do a lot more and following the board meeting, we grouped together and came up with a brand-new social media plan to try and help the club reach new heights.
An area we struggled on before the board meeting was rolling out fresh content over the week in between each match days, so this is where we started with the rebrand. We evenly distributed roles out to each other as well as to our other course mate who jumped on board the media team. I personally, was in charge of graphics, video, and everything technical at the club as I had the best skill set in that department.
As we mentioned in the board meeting, finding time to dedicate to the club was difficult especially with the stresses of university, however as the work was now distributed evenly and the quality of the work was at a high standard, this no longer became a serious problem. I felt this was a great learning curve as if we make it into the industry once we graduate, this is the level we will have to work at on a daily basis.
Overall, the board meeting we had was hugely beneficial for us as well as the club. Despite it being a suck punch blow at the start, the feedback was needed, and I feel we have progressed as sports journalists. As stated on the BBC Academy Podcast (2015), Julie-Pia Aberdein says a good journalist should always be coming up with good ideas and producing different material. With the fresh strategy we have created and with the roles evenly distributed, new ideas for content is coming to us more frequently and the club is receiving the benefits. There certainly can be improvements from us all, but I feel we have made more progress in the past few months than we have in the first year since taking up the role as media assistants.
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