There is something about changing leaves, cold weather and warm clothes that makes me feel productive, maybe it's because I now have a legitimate reason to stay indoors with the immense amount of rain - thank you Scotland.
But, enough about my feelings, that’s not why you’re here. Let’s dive into what our extremely productive and dedicated 448 Studio team got up to over the past few months, and what we have coming up.
Company Update
The big news from the past few months is our expansion into Islamabad, Pakistan in September. The 448 Technology team has been going full tilt developing version two of our Forumm platform (due to launch in January) and revamping all our current websites. More about the expansion here.
We are set to take on additional development work in the coming months - so if you’re looking to create an app, website or platform, get in touch for a chat, or see what’s available on our 448 Tech services page.
With the addition of our technology team the 448 Studio staff roster is closing in on 20 people! We will be announcing our Finance Director along with a Head of Marketing in the coming weeks so keep your eyes peeled.
We have also been working on our outbound sales funnel (fascinating right?), so if you’ve received an email or two from Calum please be kind. All our work to date has come from inbound requests and referrals, which has been amazing, and allowed us to get to where we are now. However, we’ve identified that if we want to continue to grow we are going to need to put our neck out there a bit and start gently (VERY gently) reaching out to a few people for work. Eeek. On that note please let me know if we’re bothering you too much and we’ll cut back!
I’d also like to say 'thank you' to our volunteer board of advisors who took part in a six month trial and met with Eric and I once a month. The advice and guidance we received has helped massively and we’ll be looking to implement something more formal in the new year.
On to our 448 Studio objectives for the next three months, ready?
Bolster our live streaming, hybrid events and video editing capabilities
Launch V2 of Forumm with updated pricing and services - the idea is to make the platform automated and more cost effective
Continue to build our Tech team to enable us to take on additional development projects
Refresh our social and digital media training curriculum
Continue to refine our social media support programme for academics
Streamline our outbound sales workflow
Launch new websites and develop additional marketing campaigns
In other news: Samwise turned four in September and his birthday celebration video is hovering at 100K views and made the front page of Reddit.
Projects we’ve worked on over the past three months
This is turning into a pretty intense read so I’ll wiz through the projects we’ve worked on. However, if you want something more in-depth please reach out.
HEIST Awards
We teamed up with the brilliant people from Havas Education once again to host their annual awards ceremony on Forumm. The Heist awards recognises the innovative marketing work done by our peers in the education sector.
Royal Academy of Dance
Loved hosting the RAD conference on Forumm, especially when it involved interactive dance workshops in our breakout rooms.
National Phosphorus Stakeholder Workshop
It’s pretty mind boggling to host a workshop on our Forumm platform that has made actual changes to government policy. We worked alongside the University of Technology Sydney for this workshop; with workshop hosts based in Australia and attendees in the UK including representatives from UK government.
The London School of Economics
One of my favourite blogs for social media within academia is the LSE ‘Impact of Social Sciences’ blog. When LSE approached us to review their current suite of blogs and write a report with recommendations to future proof them we jumped at the chance. Next steps is to see where we can support them on a more granular level and help to implement the report recommendations.
UCAS
The 448 Studio relationship with UCAS is coming up on two years now, with workshops and collaborations - but this was something different. Our team jumped on board to help craft a social media content strategy leading up to clearing. We developed a campaign called ‘Just so you know’ and helped UCAS launch their TikTok account too. Read more about our approach here.
University of Leeds
This month we wrapped up our 6 month academic support programme with Leeds where we came alongside six specially identified research groups and helped them achieve their social media objectives. The programme included workshops, 1:1 monthly meetings and a community building event that saw over 50 academics attend! We’re working on a case study of the programme with an aim to see how to progress the programme forward in the future.
University of Glasgow
Back to our home university again! Hilary ran a virtual series of social media workshops for researchers in the School of Humanities. She is also in the middle of a series of video creation workshops for the School of Engineering’s PIADs programme which is a joint programme with Queen’s University Belfast. This was also our first workshop in person since lockdown - very exciting.
What’s in the Pipeline
In the coming months leading up to Christmas we are working on:
University of Strathclyde social media workshop series
Hosting Glasgow Clyde College Grad along with ContentEd and Think Student Conferences on Forumm
Returning to Lancaster University to host a two day social media workshop for businesses
And that’s the long winded all bells and whistles round-up. If you read all the way through... thanks!
I've been a bit slow promoting Coffee with Dan over the past few months because I've been up to my eyeballs in work. However, as we get closer to the holiday period I'm keen for a catch-up. So please book in over the next couple months.
On a personal note Francis turns 2 next week Monday - it just seems like yesterday that I was sending out an update when he was born. We went pumpkin picking over the weekend and snapped this pic - which then got me into the whole pumpkin spice mood (hence the title).
