At the beginning of my time with Altuity, it was the abbreviations that eluded me. “FM”, “SBM”, “IAQ”, “CAFM” — it all seemed deeply technological and confusing. Soon, thanks to the guidance of Altuity founder Steve Voller, I was discussing pertinent facilities management issues with the best of them.
Getting started
My first task was a daunting one, involving all of the acronyms: to create a white paper on the importance of Indoor Air Quality (IAQ — there’s one!) monitoring in schools. Luckily, Steve pointed me in the right direction to research the topic and I rapidly sought to dig up the interesting stats. While I had never previously worked in any role adjacent to facilities management, I was shocked at how topical the subject of my research was, given the recent transformative effect of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Once my copy was ready, I got to work assembling it with images and making it look polished in Canva. A key point of learning during this internship was the backbone that Canva provides to digital marketers across all sectors. With Altuity, I not only created multiple whitepapers and graphic assets for the site and social media, but videos with audio using the software.
CRM software
Another major feature of my role as digital marketing intern was getting to grips with Customer Relations Management (CRM) systems. Altuity uses Active Campaign to coordinate user and potential customer contacts and to run email campaigns effectively. In advance of our Document Management Webinar, I used Active Campaign to create a landing page advertising the features that would be discussed and that included a form that signed up interested visitors. Then came perhaps the most technical point in my role, in the creation of an email automation flow. A firm grasp on conditionality and IF/OR statements was required here, so I used all of my brainpower to reflect on what I could remember from GCSE maths. Ultimately, with much scribbling on scraps of paper, it was up and running and worked properly. The webinar went ahead without a hitch!
Other aspects of my role included the composition of various news and blog items and the subsequent promotion of them on Twitter and LinkedIn. With the blog posts we experimented with the use of AI software to generate prompts for the body of the text.
Encountering facilities management
During my time with Altuity, what I’ve found to be the most interesting is the illumination in detail of a sector that I had otherwise only vaguely aware of. I had previously observed at school and university that assets were first broken and later fixed, with little idea of how that came to be. Since learning of the role of facilities management, I have a much greater appreciation for those that have done the work in the institutions I’ve attended.
SME internship scheme
Prior to completing an SME internship with Altuity, I had no specific experience in digital marketing. Sure, I’d come across WordPress before and had an understanding of social media scheduling software, but over the past 3 months, my technical skills have grown significantly. I feel much more confident in my knowledge of what such a role entails. I would like to thank both Steve Voller and the careers team at the University of Bristol for facilitating this internship.
– Flora Pick, SME digital marketing intern, Jan-April 2022