What They Didn’t Teach You In School (Karen Campbell – Radio 1 & 1Xtra)

Laura

on 06 Oct 2011

Hi, I’m Laura and these are my interviews with some of the best people working within digital and social media. I only finished school a few years ago and what I found out since leaving was the amount of opportunity within the digital communications world. I wrote a blog post addressing ‘how I wasn’t made aware of pursuing a career in digital and social media’, which is why I am on a mission to do these interviews. I want to make young people more knowledgeable about career options and hopefully these will leave them feeling inspired and excited by what can be achieved. Also, hopefully someone within the education sector will read these to help with career advice.

Name: Karen Campbell

Company: BBC

Job Title: Content Producer for Radio 1 and 1xtra

Follow Karen on Twitter: @newsychick1

What is a usual day for you?

First of all going through suggestions for what we can possibly put on the homepages online for both networks. This could be shortlisting the most important four from that list, then delegating jobs like which people are doing promotions for the website and then updating the homepages with the latest promos. Then I’ll have a look at what’s happened on both networks the night before to see if there are any highlight moments – such as any guest mixes or interviews. Then sometimes it’s a case of going through the shows and finding that piece of audio and clipping it to use on the website and using social media plugins to promote that – so a lot of Twitter and Facebook. Oh and a lot of emails!

How do you see social media expanding within Radio 1/1xtra?

I think the good thing that we have done with social media is use it to get a lot of instant reaction from our listeners. Social media feeds a lot of the on air content. Listeners may tweet us, message us on Facebook and feedback on tracks. It is just important for us to be in social space in order and to be able to expand to our listeners.

What social media tools do you use on a regular basis?

On a daily basis we mainly use Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. We are increasingly using QR codes.

How can I get a role like yours?

I think you need to have and be actively using the Internet. Blogging is good, so if you have a blog or at least know how to get one then that is a start. An understanding of HTML definitely for our job because we update a lot of the site in HTML – so to understand that side of things is good. You don’t have to be a whizz! It helps to have a good knowledge of Photoshop because we use it on a daily basis. Also making a lot of contacts so when it comes to interviews it’s useful to have background information on someone, so you might just check them out on LinkedIn. Connections help a lot when it comes to situations such as interviews for a job like that.

What’s been your biggest success in social media to date?

Two things. The first one is Chris Moyle’s record attempt. He broke the record for the longest radio show and time on air. It was literally a 24-hour operation in which we worked in rotas. It was worldwide on Twitter and that’s amazing for a radio DJ when people say that radio is dying. So that was really important and we did a lot on social media and had a lot of interaction and it as really useful for him to keep going.

On Radio 1 we did a thing called ‘U CTRL KATY’ with Katy Perry. We had Katy Perry in a room and by using just audience participation and social media sites they decided what she did, whether she painted a room or danced around with random props we had in the room. She was controlled entirely by listeners and that was a first for us and it worked really well. It was a really good way of using social media to power content.

To find out more about Karen Campbell you can reach her on her Linkedin page.

Last week I interviewed Aaron Sylvester from Lucid Online and he told me about:

How to get a job in the music industry
His role as Senior Digital Marketing Director
Insights into a new game that he thinks could be the next big thing in social media

Aaron’s Interview can be found here: ‘How to make it in the music industry.’