Digital Journalism Training
Over the last decade, I’ve trained countless journalists, PRs and marketers in the core skills of online content creation and strategy. I’ve worked with everybody from senior leadership teams of national newspapers, to students preparing for the beginnings of their career in journalism.
I offer a range of courses to help you do better journalism or publishing – and can create bespoke courses to suit your organisation’s needs.
Here’s a sample of what I offer:
Digital Content Strategy
The strategies, skills and formats of digital publishing are chaging all the time, and you have to learn to adapt. These baseline courses are designed to give you the core skills you need to work in the online environment, to customise what you do to your traget audience, and to learn to adapt as changes happen.
These are the essential skills that all online content producers should have.
Current Courses
Social Media & Audience Engagement for Editorial
I’ve been training journalists to use social media effectively since the days before it was called social media. I’m a visiting lecturer at City, University of London, when my specialism is working with students on social media, audience growth and content strategy.
The world is not short of people offering social media training. The difference I bring is 15 years of experience – and a deep understanding of the interplay between social media and content of all types. And, more importantly, we can explore how social media and other engagement techniques, like newsletters, work in the context of a wider content operation.
Current Courses
Available Courses
- Audience Engagement Strategies - a full day course, offering the chance to explore the range of potential strategies for building and maintaining relatsionships with audiences via community building techniques in a post-Facebook algorithym chance world. Will look at both social media and ndierct engagement forms liek newsletters and podcasts.
- Mastering Social Media — a half-day course, devoted to getting to grips with the right social media tools and platforms for your work and developing a plan to get you started.
- Creating Social Video - get the key skills to create highly shareable short videos that are designed to spread on social platforms.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
Search still drives around 35% of traffic across the editorial web – and has changed dramatically in the past few years. If you’re still relying on SEO advice or training from five years ago, you could be doing your site more harm than good.
My training is targeted squaring at the working journalist or content creator, giving them the skills they need to integrate SEO thinking into their work, making it more likely that their content will get read.
Current Courses
Available Courses
- SEO Essentials – a half day course, aimed at giving working writers and editors all the skills they need to boost the search presence of their work.
Analytics
Understanding and using analytics to inform and improve your work – without letting it dictate your work – is one of the key skills of creating content online. And it’s badly under- or mis-used in many places. This is one of my “passion” courses – a subject I passionately believe in, and believe can have – and has had – a huge impact in workplaces I’ve trained and consulted for.
My course are designed for working writers and editors to get the core skills they need to make analytics and experimentation an essential part of the way they work.
Current Courses
Available Courses
- Analytics Essentials – a half day course, giving working journalists, editors and other website owners the basic skills they need to understand their audience and set a strategy for developing it.
Bespoke and In-House Training
I’ve provided bespoke in-house training for organisations as diverse as:
- The Telegraph
- The Times
- The Financial Times
- Autotrader
- The Straits Times
- Nursing Standard
- Emap
- Amnesty International
- The Institute of Physics Publishing
If you want to discuss your particular in-house training needs, please feel free to drop me a line, and we can discuss further. I’m always happy to build bespoke courses for any other publishing need.