Below is an active work log from my time as part of the Eastleigh FC media team. I started the job in July 2018 during my third year at University. The log below is structured as newest work at the top, followed by the latest tweets at the very bottom…
September 2018 - October 2018
From September I began attended games on a weekly basis, really getting to grips with the roles and expectations of the job, and above all enjoying it. My familiarity with the role also helped me to become more creative, something I mainly expressed through my use of Instagram stories ; a feature that wasn’t being used at the start of the season by the club and I suggested reintroducing.
A particular technique I liked to use for the Instagram stories was using the professional photos taken by our photographers to illustrate the game’s main events, as seen to the left.
This is a technique used by a lot of professional football clubs on Instagram, helping to give Eastleigh’s social media account that shame, professional feel.
My introduction of the ‘questions feature’ on the stories (a widget where fans following the page are able to send in answers) in order to get score predictions before the game, also began to take off the more I used it. Fans will like to see their predictions on the story before the game, and especially if they can get the score right!
During October I went on my first overnight/long distance trip with Eastleigh to Halifax. This was another great experience as I had full control of all the social media platforms for that entire weekend. I loved being able to get to know the players more and the manager Ben Strevens. Being more comfortable with the players allows me to get greater content as I don’t feel like I am getting in the way at all. An example of how I got greater content this way can be seen below through the two screenshots of have of striker Paul McCallum interacting with me as I filmed videos:
It’s always better when players interact with you as you film and make content as it makes you more comfortable and it makes the finished product much better too.
August 2018 - September 2018
Once I got back to university I was able to regularly attend Eastleigh games both home and away. My first game was at home to Wrexham, where I was running the twitter for the first time. I had experience of running a twitter account on a match day before with Solent Ladies however this was at a whole new level with a much larger audience.
During my first game I felt I did a good job overall, but did face two main issues. Firstly the graphics I was sent did not fit the images as they were saved as JPEGs not PNGs, meaning they did not post to the twitter feed as quickly as I would have liked.
Above are the graphics I used on that gameday. Although they were posted late they still looked professional which I was happy about.
Following Wrexham I attended games away at Dover and at home to Ebbsfleet. Going to Dover was an enriching experience as it was my first away game. Dover did not have the facilities that Eastleigh have, meaning I had to live tweet and post images using poor internet. Learning to do this will have helped me in a big way because it shows I can still do a good job despite poor facilities.
July 2018 - August 2018
In July of 2018 I became part of the media team at Vanarama National League side Eastleigh FC. My role was to oversee media proceedings alongside two other third year Solent students in a group made up also of six second-year students.
As third years, our responsibility was the give the second-years roles on a match day such as photography, Instagram stories and the data coverage. As third-years we also had the responsibility of going to away games, travelling the length of the country throughout the season.
The first month of the season was stop-start for me personally when it came to working as part of the Eastleigh media team due to commitments back in Kent over the end of Summer. However from the middle of September I began to firmly establish myself as a member of the team, with my roles including live tweets, Instagram stories and post/pre match interviews.
AdamHWhyte 