My Experience
Before becoming a freelancer, these are the things I did. ☟
Broadcast TV Social Media.
In the six years I worked for Endemol Shine we rode the wave of a new social era in TV. Among many things, it was my job to make sure that the content on the MasterChef Australia Facebook Page, the biggest entertainment Facebook page in the country at the time, was great. I also launched entire TV show communities from scratch including Gogglebox Australia, which was reaching more than 5 million people a week by the time I left. At any time I was running multiple strategies for different shows that had different needs depending on who had the rights, what the network wanted and what the budget was.
Broadcast TV Digital Production
The first production I worked on was The Voice Australia. It was a monster of a show and a baptism of fire. I was in charge of the website. I had to make sure all the content was well written, the videos of those tear-jerking Blind Auditions played and that the whole thing looked good. I did this for three seasons, including The Voice Kids. At some point we merged with Channel 9’s network platform and my job was to take our stand-alone website with all its requirements and somehow squish it into the network’s CMS, but we got there. I also had to get very well acquainted with the technical pipes so that video content from live shows went into our app as soon as possible to get those views 👀. There were other bits and pieces, likes sending out the newsletter each week to more than 1 million people (the fear of typos was real) and keeping clients happy. I had a team because I’m not an octopus and my job was to hire and manage them too.
Commercial Radio Digital Strategy
I started out at DMG radio as the Digital Content Director. I was the direct manager of 12 content producers around the country who would weasel their way into the booths of FM radio teams to film content. I worked hard to make us feel like a team (it was 2011, working remotely wasn’t an everyday thing yet) and strategised ways to make the best content we could with all the celebrities coming through the door. I was then promoted to Digital Director, expanding my team to 25, taking on the ad operations and design teams. We launched the entire digital side of SmoothFM, merged years of content to a new website for NOVA, we built apps, filmed the first of the Red Room series and I learnt that the hours of breakfast radio are definitely not for me.
Before my adventures with Fitzy and Wippa I was the Digital Radio Digital Content Producer ( DRDCP for short 🙃) at Radar Radio for Southern Cross Austereo. A lot of my job was explaining to relatives at BBQs what digital radio was, but the rest of the time I would film interviews with musicians and our station anchor Reegan. I also managed all the website and newsletter content. On my first day I found out we were building a whole new website, and that ended up being a huge part of my time there, but I loved it.
The Original Social Network
In 2008 a job came up as a Content Manager at MySpace Australia and I was determined to get it. I set up a new profile - myspace.com/claireforcontentmanager - and I asked anyone I knew with an account to leave a comment on why I should get the job. Sort of like a precursor to LinkedIn except in a world where you think it’s totally reasonable to get people you meet at indie DJ nights to leave endorsements on why you should work for a Fox Media corporation. I worked here for a bit over two years editorially programming the official film, fashion and music profiles with local talent, working with reps from film distributors and record labels, and searching for the best viral videos, usually featuring cats.
The Beginning
Once upon a time (2005) I was studying politics and philosophy at uni while working part-time doing data entry at a content syndication company called HWW. We were a magical oracle of every gig happening at every venue in the country. We created the most comprehensive gig guide going around and sold it to Triple J, CitySearch and SMH. Around the time I graduated we were bought by NineMSN and expanded to a full editorial site called yourGigs.com.au, with reviews, interviews and music news. I was offered a fulltime job, proceeded to never use my degree (yet) and met some lifelong friends. After an intensive two years learning to be a copywriter and writing more music bios than you can poke a stick at, I took over as Editor of the sister website yourBars.com.au. I got a taste of wrangling contributing writers, I became someone’s manager for the first time, I got sent a bottle of apple-flavoured vodka in the mail, life was good.
