Tag Archives: Marketing

MSc in Digital and Social Media Marketing

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Thinking about a career in Digital Marketing? Looking to make the move into Marketing but don’t know where to start? Then Lancaster University’s new MSc Digital and Social Media Marketing is for you!

What makes it different?

Our MSc in Digital and Social Media Marketing has been designed with industry in mind. Your teaching team will include real-world industry practitioners, alongside academic experts with published research on many of the topics covered in this course. From content management and SEO to social media engagement and influencers, this course will equip you with the skills you need to thrive in any digital-related role.

What will I study?

In the first term, you will study alongside our MSc Marketing students, learning the fundamentals of Marketing at postgraduate level, including topics such as consumer behaviour and research methods. In the second term, you will study modules exclusively focused on digital marketing, including an expanded module on digital marketing and social media in practice, and a dedicated module on influencer marketing.

These brand-new modules have been designed exclusively for this course, with case studies and examples based on the module leaders’ real world industry experience. While working on your studies, you will also create a digital portfolio, which will form part of your assessment, and will also serve as a useful tool to make you more employable and give you that edge in a competitive jobs market.

Who can study this degree?

This degree is suitable for anyone with a good 2:1 undergraduate degree. So whether you are from the arts and humanities, or perhaps you studied computer science or even engineering, you are welcome to enrol on this course.

The only proviso to this is that if you have already done Marketing at undergraduate level (or indeed, if you have already completed several Marketing modules at undergraduate level), we recommend you apply for the MSc Advanced Marketing Management. Be reassured, there is plenty of digital content on the Advanced Marketing Management degree as well. I know because I teach it!

Where can I find out more?

You can find more information about the course in our online postgraduate prospectus.

As programme director, I am more than happy to set up an online meeting with anyone who think they might be interested in taking this course.

If you have any questions, you can also send me an email: m.ryder@lancaster.ac.uk, or message me on LinkedIn.

About me

Dr Mike Ryder is lecturer in Marketing and Programme Director of the MSc Digital and Social Media Marketing. Prior to his life in academia, Mike spent 10+ years working in a range of content and digital roles in video games, healthcare and higher education. His website is www.mjryder.net.

Dr Mike Ryder

Can Chat-GPT coach the business leaders of tomorrow?

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Business coaching: two women having a meeting, sat at a large wooden desk.

AI-powered content creation is the new ‘big thing’ in the world of business and marketing. Many readers will be familiar with Chat-GPT – a large language model that uses advanced algorithms to generate ‘natural’ language responses to questions.

But while the answers may often appear intelligent, Chat-GPT isn’t ‘thinking’ about the questions we ask it in the way that a trained researcher might. Rather, it produces answers based on what it thinks a good answer should look like.

This is a subtle yet important difference.

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Self-publishing and the challenge of ‘marketing yourself’

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One of the hardest things about writing is that it inevitably leads you to bare some small part of your soul to the world. This is particularly true of fiction as the world you create is wholly your own. If someone doesn’t like your characters, then they don’t like the characters you created. Similarly, if they have a problem with the politics, or the themes of your work, then again, they have a problem with your politics, and your themes. This is quite different from other types of writing where more often than not you will be working to a set of guidelines that may constrain your work, for in this case, the work you produce is all down to you, and there is simply no place to hide.

This challenge becomes even more difficult when it comes to self-publishing. Unlike regular publishing, where you might have an editor and production team working with you to oversee the process, when it comes to self-publishing, the power is wholly in your hands. This can be a remarkably liberating step, and certainly has a number of advantages; however, it can also pose great challenges when it comes to marketing and self-promotion. On the one hand, naturally, you want to sell your work, and put it out there, but at the same time, there is a sense that absolutely everything to do rests on your shoulders, and if someone doesn’t like it, then it’s completely down to you.

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MJRyder.net – 10 years on

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It’s my birthday today, and to celebrate, I thought I’d post a blog about this very website, MJRyder.net, which turned 10 earlier this year. I can’t believe that a whole decade has passed since I started the project, and it’s certainly had its highs and lows, however, I’m glad to say it’s going as strong as ever, and I’m really happy with the way it’s been taking shape. Here’s to another 10 years!

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