'Reflection'

The word reflection can have several connotations, in this instance; reflection is between the process of learning and the representation of learning. The reasoning behind reflection is to consider an action (in this case the creation of a blog) in greater detail. Mullins (2010) reinforces this by arguing that the reflective process places the individual at ‘centre stage’, which supports the notion of learning. To aid in this reflection the Gibbs’ Reflective cycle (1988) will be used to give theoretical structure. Gibbs’ model (1988) highlights six stages of reflection, which are as follows: Description, Feeling, Evaluation, Analysis, Conclusion, and Action Plan.

Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle (1988)

Description

As part of my MSC Marketing, we study the module digital marketing. This module has three assessment criteria, one of these being the creation of a blog. For this we had the freedom to choose the blog topics, the location of the content, and then the promotion of the blog. I decided to choose a topic around my passion of football, this was analysing football statistics.

Feeling

Before starting this task, being someone that has dyslexia, I can sometimes be reluctant to share work for others to see. Although to put this to one side, the overriding feeling was that of excitement in being able to have full control of the assessment and its outcomes. After receiving a number of positive feedbacks, even from current football writers, this gave me confidence both in the content I was producing and in my own ability.

Evaluation

The experience was highly positive; a plan for both the blog posts and the social media post was made at the start of the assessment, this proved to be highly effective in provided a framework for the blog. The only part that caused an issue was getting significant traffic through the blog site.

Analysis

As mentioned the success of the blog posts were primarily down to quality planning and then execution of this plan. In addition to this significant research went into to each blog post. It was not the case of only presenting statistics, but analysing them to find meaning. Furthermore, having a similar design to the posts enabled me to balance being able to adequately analyse the statistics, and not providing too much text that people disengage with the content.

The social media promotion was the part of the assessment that did not go to my expectations. Not in the content produced, or the reach or engagement with the posts. But in the website clicks, I believe this to be the type of content that I was producing through the Instagram posts, although it was quality content, it gave users there ‘fix’ in small easy to read posts. Additionally, being a low followed and new account the website clicks are likely to take some time. Having researched other football based blogs beforehand; they often have a large loyal community.

Conclusion

I will take two key takeaways from this assessment. Firstly about my own writing ability, being able to challenge this has opened my eyes to what is possible. I will now look to keep the blog running in my spare time. Secondly, with social media, not to become distracted by vanity metrics. Although they are good for the ego, they have little meaning to the overall goal, which in this case is to get as many people to engage with the blog.

Action Plan

For the most part I wouldn’t change how I executed this assessment. The only aspect that would need to be enhanced would be the promotion; part of this was restricted by the time. But the key restricting factors was both the plan and type of content produced.

The Use of Gibbs’ Model

Despite the success in previous studies (Ashby, 2006; Walmsley and Brikbeck, 2006; Quinton and Smallbone, 2010), Gibbs’ reflective model does present some issues when implementing on a learning situation. This comes from having the six stages, as it is difficult to identify what information is needed where. The stages that Gibbs (1988) highlighted overlap mainly being the feeling, analysis and evaluation. When comparing this to Kolb’s reflective cycle, these stages were merged into one stage of reflective observation. Therefore Kolb’s four stages of reflection would present a simpler method of reflection, due to this key factor.

Social media plan

Achievement of aims and objectives

To create thought provoking blog content that will challenge football fans thinking

This is an aim that provided difficulties in measuring, however comments received on both Instagram and the blog suggests that this aim was achieved. For example the comment on the first blog post of “This statistic that you’ve discovered is quite astonishing”.

Use Instagram to drive a 50% increase in traffic to the blog website, which can be analysed through analytics through Instagram and the wix site

Just over 38% of all traffic came from Instagram, although I did not achieve the increase of 50% with only a 32% increase in traffic. However this can still be positive as the Instagram content drove over a third of all traffic.

Increase Instagram engagement by over 100% this will be a combination of likes and comments

This was more than achieved; with my first post gain likes and two comments. Comparing this to a later post that gained 34 likes and 4 comments.