FE News Content Creator Academy Released!

This is a year of celebration, but also innovation. FE News is now 20 years old, meaning we have been established longer than Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok and Instagram! So, welcoming an another new innovation of ours… introducing the FE News Content Creator Academy!

The FE and Skills sector is all about making life changing differences… for literally thousands of people. But many of our contributors don’t know how to start to share their story, or vision and strategies the future of FE and skills, and how to make impactful and positive change.

We have even noticed that some PR and Comms people are still new to Digital content creation techniques and strategies!

The power of FE News is that our content is written by experts from the World of FE and Skills. Not a journalist or through a filter, or through an editorial stance… We have contributors from across all of the FE and Skills eco-system. So we thought, how can we help our contributors have some more tools and tips on how to create content and share their vision and story? The Content Creator Academy is the result!

We know that many of our contributors and thought leaders are not communications professionals, but experts in their field of Further Education, skills and employability. This is our strength: the content, the visions and dreams for the future of the sector comes from the expert in their respective field. It is awesome and it is powerful!

As a leader, we understand that your expertise may be in Apprenticeships, EdTech, AI in Education or Neurodiversity. Your focus is therefore on your respective field, not how to communicate your expertise in digital form or written word. This includes not only your articles, but also your podcasts, livestreams, images and more!

So we decided to create the FE News Digital Content Creator’s academy. To help you bring your story, or your learner’s story, to life and to share your ideas and solutions to improve the sector.

We also realise that FE News has been around for 20 years, as we have been doing this for a long time, some areas of content creation seem super easy to us… So we want to share some tips, hints and cool tutorials from our Digital Content Creation Project Managers.

Our content creators have come up with some really short, bite-sized tutorials on how to get started on creating content and sharing your story… through to some advanced SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) tips on how to ensure your content is found online (what is the point of writing something super epic and no one reads it or watches it).

You have probably heard of the term ‘Content is King’… so the FE News Content Creator Academy is our little way of sharing some of the cool things we have seen to help you become Content Royalty.

We hope you find it helpful. We are experimenting at the moment and are planning on growing this into something pretty cool and sharing more tips and advice on how to create more and more engaging and exciting content.

We hope this help you bring your stories to life, your content into a reality and help you make impactful change.

Gavin O’Meara, CEO and Founder of FE News explains the idea behind the Content Creator Academy:

“I am really excited that the FE News Content Creator Academy is now live. The power of FE News is in the content being written and created by experts in Further Education and Skills. Back in 2003, we launched a bit of a disruptive model, FE News doesn’t have any journalists, but project managers to work with our contributors and thought leaders to help amplify their vision and dreams for the future of skills and Further Education.

“This is great, but we have noticed a bit of a digital skills gap in content creation. It is not surprising, what makes the content on FE News so good, is that it is written by experts for experts. For the team at FE News. Content Creation is what we do everyday, so we decided to share some insights from our Digital Project Management team. This is launched as a ‘beta’ or test product and we have big plans to build upon this and help the sector grow and communicate.

“Thought leadership is a massive development area for leaders and also how to share and communicate their ideas. We have many a time hit publish on an article and within an hour had an email or response from a senior Government Official. This is brilliant. The senior stakeholders are interested in what our contributors have to say on FE News. So my view was, how can we help our thought leaders and influencers create even more powerful content and make it easier to share their vision and dreams for the future?

“I am so proud of the team at FE News for putting this together. What is interesting, is that the Content Creator Academy was created by Apprentices to help leaders communicate how to improve the FE sector. Talk about the circle of life! Finley in particular took the project from concept to completion and has done amazing. Many of our contributors work with Finley on a daily basis, and I know they will really appreciate some of the insights from the Content Creator Academy.

“I had the privilege of attending the Global Lifelong Learning Summit in Singapore at the end of 2022. This was an ILO, OECD and Singapore Government led event. Micro-credentials were seen to be key to help mid-career, busy professionals to upskill and reskill. So you know FE News, we don’t just talk about it, we live it. So I want to quickly roll out a micro-credential facility on the Academy for our Content Creators, as our thought leaders and contributors are busy people. We want to help them invest in their CPD and enhance their digital content creation expertise. We have big plans for the Content Creator Academy, and in the near future we want to welcome other Digital content specialist to have a module ‘takeover’ on the academy and share their expertise to help grow and develop our thought leaders and contributors expertise.”

“It’s exciting, I have said all along that 2023, is a year of innovation and celebration at FE News. Another new innovation is the Academy from the FE News team, and the celebration is to help our contributors and thought leaders share their views, thoughts, visions and dreams in more powerful ways. I am so excited for how this could grow and develop”.

Finley Vile, Senior Digital Project Manager and Founder of the Content Creator Academy, further comments on the release of the Creator Academy:

“The idea and inspiration behind the Content Creator Academy was to help plug the digital skills gap within the sector. It’s amazing to see it come to life!

“We have tested the Academy on a few of our contributors to ensure the courses are beneficial. We hope the Academy helps give the sector more confidence to upload their content to FE News- we know it can seem a bit daunting and technological!

“For now, we only have a few courses to help you upload your content. But in the future, we are looking to continue expanding and grow the academy to include more topics and vital skills. So keep an eye out for future courses we will be releasing soon!”

A sneak peak at some of our courses…

• Publishing on FE News

This course explains membership, different elements of uploading content and so much more! We have kept it as short as possible while giving you all of the important information to optimise your FE News experience.

• Headers

A bite-sized course on how to put headers in your article!

• Embedding Media

A bite-sized course on how to embed media in your articles! Ranging from images to YouTube video’s!

• Tags

How to put tags on your article… and why should you?

• SEO Overview

A quick guide and introduction to SEO: What is it? Why is it important?