Ray Welling's Blog

OK, time for a pivot with this Substack. After a career filled with non-fiction writing - journalism, digital content and academic publishing - the release of Byline for the Dead, has meant moving into a new genre of writing.

Since I had focused this newsletter on the They Tried to Warn Us ‘dead thinkers interview’ podcast and book over the past few months, I weighed up whether or not to start a separate Substack to write about my novel and other fiction-related stuff.

As with most things, the advice I encountered by Googling which way to go was evenly divided. But looking at my newsletter stats, my subscriber numbers are so low I decided it wouldn’t hurt to combine all my thoughts and throw them out there and see what sticks. Besides, the interviews in They Tried to Warn Us could really be described as speculative fiction. So, armed with new artwork, here goes nothing!

Be prepared for a bit of experimentation as I write a bit about crime fiction, a bit about digital technology, maybe a bit about politics (hmmm, maybe not!). Id also like to trial a few ideas for the sequel to Byline for the Dead, which I’m currently working on. So far, the plot is that Gray Wheeler ends up getting a job on a newspaper in Chicago (which he was pining about in the first book) and he investigates the disappearance of a Jimmy Hoffa-esque labor boss. My first dilemma is whether to actually include Jimmy Hoffa as a character, or base it heavily upon him but make it a fictional person. Interested to hear your thoughts - click on the comment bubble below and let me know what you think - Hoffa or Hoffa-adjacent? Other suggestions for the plot?

Alan Turing was the kind of man who could invent modern computing before lunch and then wonder why nobody wanted to have dinner with him. Polite, awkward, devastatingly brilliant – and 70 years ahead of his time.

Most people remember Turing for cracking the Enigma machine and helping win World War II. But that’s like remembering Da Vinci for his paint mixing skills. Because what Turing really did was look at a pencil and paper and say, “I think this could become God.”

Who Was Alan Turing?

He was a mathematician. Cryptanalyst. Philosopher. Computer science's Adam – and maybe its Cassandra. He was born in England in 1912, ran marathons for fun, muttered to himself a lot, and casually laid the groundwork for artificial intelligence in his spare time. Because why not?

Turing didn’t just build machines; he imagined the very idea of computation. His “universal machine” wasn’t a device. It was a concept; the idea that anything computable could be computed by a single, logical, programmable machine.

What He Saw Coming

Turing’s 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” basically predicted your laptop, Siri, ChatGPT, and 21st century existential dread.

He posed the question: Can machines think? Then he cheekily reframed it: Can machines imitate thinking well enough to fool us?

Thus was born the Turing Test: If you can’t tell whether it’s a person or a machine in the chat box, does it matter?

(You passed the test by getting this far. Or maybe I passed. I’ll never tell!)

Why It Was a Warning

Turing didn’t just predict AI; he predicted our confusion about what thinking even is. He knew that once machines became good enough at simulating intelligence, we’d:

Anthropomorphize them.

Trust them.

Be seduced by their competence.

Use them to write birthday cards and then worry about the death of art.

Turing warned that intelligence and consciousness aren’t the same thing—but that humans aren’t great at telling the difference.

He anticipated that the real danger wasn’t robot rebellion, but robot assimilation. That we wouldn’t fight AI, we’d become dependent on it; gradually, then all at once.

What Would He Say About 2025?

“Whoah!” I think he’d say, “That escalated quickly.”

He’d marvel at the raw computational power of the devices in our pockets—and quietly note that most of it was being used for dating apps, monetised outrage and algorithmic doomscrolling.

He’d raise an eyebrow at AI-generated music, deepfake politics, and chatbot therapy, then ask: “Did anyone read the second half of my paper?”

And when we told him about prompt engineering, synthetic biology, recursive self-improvement, and how the military is training killer drones with machine learning…
He’d go silent.

Then say, “I only meant for it to play chess.”

Would Turing Approve of This Podcast?

Absolutely not. Not because of the technology – it’s miraculous. But because of the people using it.

He’d be disappointed by the lack of rigour. The sensationalism. The sound bites. The avatars. The hashtags.

He’d want to spend four hours explaining the math, then get upset when no one liked his post.

Still, I think he’d be secretly amused. He always loved a good puzzle. And we’ve made quite a mess of the one he started.

What He Tried to Warn Us About

He warned us that machines could mimic us long before they understood us; that we’d hand over judgment to algorithms because they seem neutral; that the line between human and artificial would blur, not because of machine sentience, but because of human laziness.

And that if we’re not careful, we’ll outsource meaning to machines – and forget how to make it ourselves.

In Episode 6 of They Tried to Warn Us, I resurrect Turing from the long corridor of history and ask him what the hell we’ve done with his ideas. He’s polite. British. And low-key horrified.

Alan Turing interview on Apple Podcasts

Alan Turing interview on Spotify

They Tried to Warn Us: The Book – includes 15 more dead thinkers that we couldn’t fit in the podcast

Guy Debord didn’t live to see TikTok. But if he had, I reckon he would have thrown his glass of wine at it.

This is the man who declared in 1967 that we no longer live in reality, but in a representation of it; a world of images and surfaces that have replaced life itself. A man who thought advertising was violence, TV was sedation, and modern life was a low-grade hallucination sponsored by soft drinks.

Debord called it the spectacle. And whether you know it or not, you’re in it. Reading this? Spectacle. Sharing this? Spectacle. Ironically rolling your eyes at the spectacle? Still spectacle.

You can’t escape it. That’s the point.

Guy Debord was a Marxist theorist, filmmaker, professional agitator. He was a Frenchman so committed to living authentically that he barely lived at all.

He led the Situationist International, a loose confederation of artists, students, and revolutionaries in postwar Europe. Their goals?

Dismantle capitalism.

Destroy the image.

Reclaim daily life from boredom and commodification.

You know—just some light weekend errands.

Debord was not a utopian. He didn’t believe in techno-salvation.
He believed that modern life had become a performance, and we were all unpaid extras in someone else’s commercial.

The Spectacle, Explained

In The Society of the Spectacle, Debord argued that:

“In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles.” In other words, you no longer experience things, you experience representations of things. Life becomes mediated—filtered through screens, branding, metrics, PR.

We don’t go on vacation; we post about vacations. We don’t form identities; we curate them. Everything becomes aestheticised, commodified, and performed.

Even rebellion gets rebranded and monetised:

Rage Against the Machine becomes Rage Brought to You By Nike.

Anti-capitalist memes trend on a platform owned by billionaires.

A podcast about Debord is hosted by… me. On Apple and Spotify. Sorry, Guy.

What Would Debord Say About 2025?

I think he’d be livid. He’d look at Instagram Stories, unskippable ads, nostalgia-core fashion, and AI-generated influencers and say: “This is worse than I imagined.” He’d scream at your iPhone, then mutter a line from Hegel and vanish in a cloud of Gauloises smoke. He’d see how the spectacle has become total:

Politicians campaign through vibes.

Brands tweet like people.

People tweet like brands.

Billionaires cosplay as saviours while laying off half the workforce in a Slack message.

Even resistance becomes consumable. We buy T-shirts that say "Capitalism Sucks" and then post selfies in them on platforms owned by Meta. You are not watching the spectacle – you are the spectacle.

Would Debord Approve of This Podcast?

I doubt it. Debord didn’t even believe in authorship, let alone content strategy.

If he found out I resurrected him through an AI voice model and fed his ideas into a corporate media platform, he’d probably shoot me with a 16mm camera.

But that’s the thing: even that would go viral.

In the end, Debord’s curse is that he was right. Even our attempts to escape the spectacle just feed it more content.

What He Tried to Warn Us About

That we’d trade reality for representation.
That we’d confuse mediated connection for real community.
That even our despair would become marketable.

Debord wanted us to wake up (I’m imagining my muse Jim Morrison shouting this after he performs his “Is everybody in? The ceremony is about to begin” mantra in live concerts), to break the trance of mass media and reclaim the real. But the spectacle is too good at what it does; it flatters us, entertains us, enrages us just enough to keep us scrolling.

It makes critique feel like participation. It makes consumption feel like resistance. And it always wins.
Unless you throw your phone into the sea and start a Situationist collective in the Pyrenees. (Good luck. There’s probably a Netflix show about that already.)

Want to hear Guy Debord insult the Internet in French-accented contempt?

In Episode 5 of They Tried to Warn Us, I force Debord back into the media apparatus he loathed, where he proceeds to rip it apart one quote at a time. Come for the Marxist analysis. Stay for the disdain.

Guy Debord interview on Apple Podcasts

Guy Debord interview on Spotify

They Tried to Warn Us: the book – includes 15 more dead thinkers that we couldn’t fit in the podcast

Jacques Ellul isn’t a household name. He didn’t go viral. He didn’t brand himself. He didn’t even make his own Wikipedia page, which I imagine he’d consider an unforgivable act of self-spectacle (although he does have one, here).

But he’s the one who tried to tell us that technology is not neutral, that it evolves independently of our values, and that once a new tool exists, it will be used – ethics be damned.

If McLuhan saw the medium, and Postman saw the screen, Ellul saw the system – and he didn’t like what he saw.

Jacques Ellul was a French philosopher, sociologist and theologian. He was sort of a one-man anti-hype machine. If Silicon Valley is a techno-evangelical cult, Ellul is the grumpy monk in the corner whispering, “This ends badly.”

In his 1954 book The Technological Society, Ellul argued that modern civilization isn’t run by governments or markets or people. It’s run by technique; the relentless logic of efficiency and optimization that drives all technological development.

He wrote that if something can be done more efficiently, it will be; if a tool can be created, it will be. He argued that whether or not it should be is irrelevant.

He said all of this long before the internet and social media.

The Age of Technique

Ellul’s most important idea was that: “Technique has become autonomous.” In other words, we’re not in charge anymore.

We like to think we are. We like our TED Talks and our “responsible AI initiatives” and our regulatory task forces. But Ellul would say: Nice try. The machine is already moving. You’re just rearranging gears on the engine block while it barrels toward the cliff.

To Ellul, every new invention was not a solution, but a chain reaction. Once a technology exists, it doesn’t just solve a problem—it creates new problems that demand more technology.

This is how we get:

Cars → Traffic → Highways → Suburbs → Climate change

Social media → Misinformation → Fact-checkers → AI fact-checkers → Deepfakes

Email → Inbox stress → Calendar apps → Mindfulness apps → Burnout retreats in Portugal

It’s all technique. And once you’re in it, you don’t get to ask, “Should we?”
You just keep asking, “How fast?”

What would Ellul think of 2025?

He would weep, probably. Or shrug.

The world he warned about is here: a system where human judgment has been outsourced to process, where speed outranks wisdom, where even dissent is optimized for engagement.

I don’t think he would marvel at ChatGPT: He’d call it the perfect expression of technical autonomy: a tool built for no moral purpose beyond acceleration, abstraction, and scale.

And he’d be probably be horrified to learn that its biggest users are students, marketers, and people trying to write wedding vows.

Would Ellul approve of The They Tried to Warn Us podcast?

Absolutely not. I brought him back from the dead using advanced audio synthesis, then distributed his ghostly voice through cloud-based, ad-monetized platforms designed to exploit human attention.

In Ellul’s framework, this podcast is not resistance. It’s yet another systematized format, serving the very logic it pretends to critique.

But what’s the alternative? Write an essay by candlelight and pass it around by hand? Even resistance, in Ellul’s world, becomes a technique.

What Ellul tried to warn us about

That we’d stop asking whether a tool makes us better humans. That we’d mistake capability for necessity. That we’d build a society where only what can be measured matters, and everything else becomes quaint or invisible. All of which has come to pass.

Ellul didn’t hate technology. He hated that we stopped asking why we build it.

And in a world where “disruption” is a compliment and “human-in-the-loop” is seen as a bug, not a feature, Ellul’s voice isn’t just needed, it’s almost unbearable. Because deep down, we know he’s right.

Ellul loses faith in humanity - again

In Episode 4 of They Tried to Warn Us, I drag Jacques Ellul into the digital realm to ask him what he thinks of the internet, the tech industry, and the word “innovation” being applied to caffeinated sparkling water.

Listen here

Buy the book

Rachel Carson wasn’t flashy. She didn’t go viral. She didn’t have a TED Talk or a “greenfluencer” brand deal.

She was a marine biologist. Nature writer. Reluctant revolutionary. Rachel Carson was the kind of person who could describe a tidepool with such reverence that you’d start feeling guilty about eating shrimp.

Without fanfare, she wrote Silent Spring, a book so alarming when it was published in 1962 that it launched the modern environmental movement and made pesticide manufacturers scream like they’d been personally defoliated.

And yet, if she could see the world today, she might think: “Wait... you saw the signs. You knew the science. And you still thought ‘eco-friendly NFTs’ were a good idea?”

So I brought Rachel Carson back for a chat on our podcast. Because she tried to warn us. And we’re still acting like Planet Earth has a loyalty program.

Rachel Carson was a scalpel-sharp critic of industrial recklessness. Silent Spring wasn’t just a book about birds and bugs. It was a quiet indictment of humanity’s belief that we could conquer nature using a spray can full of synthetic hubris.

She didn’t scream. She didn’t troll. She simply documented how DDT and other pesticides were poisoning ecosystems, thinning eggshells, and muting the morning song of birds across America.

And the public listened. For a while.

What she saw – and we forgot

Carson understood something fundamental:

Nature isn’t a backdrop. It’s the stage. And if you burn the stage, the show’s over.

She saw that ecosystems are fragile, interconnected, and absolutely indifferent to our quarterly earnings reports. She also saw that when science is filtered through profit motives, the result isn’t “innovation”: it’s ecological Russian roulette.

Which brings us to today, where microplastics are found in Arctic snow, frogs are changing sex in suburbia, and the best-case scenario for climate change is now “less apocalyptic.”

We didn’t just ignore her warnings. We slapped a green logo on the gas pump and called it a revolution.

What would Carson think of today?

I think she’d be horrified.

Not just by the scale of destruction, but by the aestheticization of it. By the fact that climate collapse is now a genre on Netflix. By the influencer who sells recycled bamboo cutlery while flying to Bali for an “eco-retreat.” By the AI-generated ad that promises carbon neutrality through blockchain credits and artisanal goat yoga.

She’d be dismayed that we treat environmental awareness like a vibe, something to filter, hashtag, and monetise.

Rachel Carson wrote about silent springs. but we gave her meaningless corporate social responsibility.

Would Carson approve of being brought back for the They Tried to Warn Us podcast? Probably not.

She believed in precision. In careful language. In letting facts speak. This podcast uses ghost satire to interrogate techno-modernity, but maybe that’s exactly the kind of absurdity we need to break the trance.

Because Carson’s real genius wasn’t just in describing nature’s beauty. It was in making ecological collapse personal: something you could feel in your backyard, in your lungs, in the sudden silence where birdsong used to be.

So maybe she'd understand. Maybe she'd sigh. And then calmly explain why your oat milk still contains pesticide residue.

The message we still need

Carson’s legacy isn’t just about stopping DDT. It’s about interdependence.

She warned that we don’t live above the natural world. We live within it. That every chemical, every act of consumption, every technological marvel has consequences—most of them unintended, many of them irreversible.

She didn’t believe in nature as something to save. She believed in nature as something to rejoin. And that makes her message more urgent than ever.

A quiet voice in a loud world

Rachel Carson didn’t want fame. She wanted birdsong. Clean rivers. Children not being born with mercury in their veins.

And yet here we are, in 2025, with a front-row seat to environmental collapse, arguing over whether or not we should terraform Mars before we have figured out how to stop setting this planet on fire.

Rachel Carson wasn’t dramatic. But maybe we should be.

Listen to Rachel Carson react to climate memes

Check out Episode 3 of They Tried to Warn Us, where the resurrected Carson responding to eco-branding, climate denialism, and the weirdly persistent belief that Earth is optional.

Listen on Spotify . Listen on Apple Podcasts .

And you can buy They Tried to Warn Us, the book: More info on each podcast interview subject, along with 15 more interviews.

Neil Postman didn’t predict TikTok. He didn’t have to.

He saw us coming.

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Back in 1985, when mullets roamed the Earth and TV was the dominant time-suck, Postman dropped Amusing Ourselves to Death. It was, basically, a break-up letter to intelligent public discourse. His thesis? That our civilization was sliding into a smiling, shallow, self-inflicted coma. That instead of Orwell’s jackbooted dystopia, we were waltzing into a soft, giggly one – Aldous Huxley’s world—where the truth wouldn’t be censored, just drowned in trivia and jingles.

Sound familiar?

Today, we don’t just amuse ourselves to death; we algorithm ourselves to oblivion.

And Neil Postman, smug ghost that he surely is, would be the first to say: “I told you so.”

Who was Neil Postman, anyway?

Media theorist. Educator. Cultural curmudgeon. A man so suspicious of television he once suggested we go back to oral storytelling.

He wasn’t just worried about content. He was worried about form. About what happens when complex ideas are forced into bite-sized, entertainment-shaped formats. He thought television was turning politics into theatre, news into performance, and education into game shows.

This was years before YouTube, before clickbait, before a sitting US president live-tweeted nuclear diplomacy between commercials for The Apprentice.

Postman didn’t live to see Twitter. But if he had, he might’ve used one word: “Q.E.D.”

The age of ‘Now...this’

One of his most haunting concepts was what he called the "Now...this" transition. That jarring shift in tone used by news anchors:

“In today’s top story, a brutal civil war has left 3,000 dead. Now...this: a squirrel on waterskis.”

By smashing tragedy and fluff together in the same emotional register, Postman argued, we trained ourselves to care about nothing. Everything became content. Everything became equal.

Today, that’s not a punchline. It’s a business model. It’s the ‘feed’.

Why Postman would probably loathe the ‘They Tried to Warn Us’ podcast

Postman believed we were losing our ability to engage in serious thought.
So I brought him back to talk. On a podcast. With music. And jokes. Ironic? Sure. But I’d argue Postman himself used entertainment to smuggle truth. He was witty. He was sharp. He understood that ridicule could be more powerful than rage. In some ways, They Tried to Warn Us is exactly the kind of thing he’d endorse—if only because it sneaks critical thinking in through the back door of satire.

Or maybe he'd just call me a media clown. Who knows.

The warning still matters

Postman’s biggest concern wasn’t entertainment. It was the collapse of context.

He believed serious public discourse required a medium that encouraged coherence, continuity, and depth. Print had done that. TV had not. And the internet? Well, the jury’s in—and they’re watching Instagram Reels.

In Postman’s world, ideas mattered. Nuance mattered.
In ours, if a thought can’t fit in a caption, it probably doesn’t get thought.

Ghosts don’t gloat, but if they did...

If Postman could see us now, doomscrolling under the glow of ten thousand ring lights, he might say:

“I didn’t mean for you to take it this far.”

He didn’t want to be a prophet. He wanted to be wrong.

But he wasn’t.

He tried to warn us.

And here we are.

Want to hear Neil Postman’s voice come back from the grave?

Check out Episode 1 of They Tried to Warn Us, where I ask him about TikTok, the end of attention spans, and whether irony is the only thing that survives the algorithm.

Links:

Neil Postman - From Television to TikTok: How We Really Are Amusing Ourselves to Death (Apple) (Spotify) (YouTube)

They Tried to Warn Us book

Next up: Marshall McLuhan’s messages about the media

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Subscribe now

It started with a voice in my head. Not a divine one. Not a crazy one, either—at least, I hope not. Just the nagging suspicion that someone had already tried to warn us. And we hadn’t listened.

I was listening to an episode of the Centre for Humane Technology’s podcast Your Undivided Attention earlier this year – an exploration of the ideas of media theorist Neil Postman. Although his seminal work, Amusing Ourselves to Death, written 40 years ago, focused on the effects of TV on our brains, culture and politics, this podcast highlighted how Postman’s warning applied equally – in fact, even more aptly – to today’s digital age.

I remembered reading Postman’s book as part of my master’s research not long after the book came out and, listening to the podcast, I had an epiphany: What if we could hear what Postman would have to say about iPhones, TikTok, Instagram Reels, Amazon Prime, even Trump? So I decided to find out.

I’d been looking for an idea to revive the Clear as Mud podcast, which has been in hiatus for a while, and this sounded like a great option. I researched Postman’s work and with the help of new tools, I managed to bring him back from the dead – sort of.

While I’m fascinated by Postman’s varied body of work – including Technopoly, The Disappearance of Childhood and Teaching as a Subversive Activity, I was struggling to turn the podcast into a whole season of episodes that would interest anyone other than a hard-core Postman fan like me, so I expanded the net to look at what other thinkers have predicted about technology, culture, media and politics. The only criteria was that they had to be dead, so I could get their take on today’s technology-obsessed culture.

The result was They Tried to Warn Us, a series of interviews with 10 different theorists, writers and philosophers. There were so many people to choose from, it was hard to narrow the field to 10, so I kept going with the interviews and turned it into a book containing 25 different interviews, reflections and reading lists.

In this Substack, I’ll be sharing thoughts that don’t quite fit into the podcast or the book. Reflections on thinkers I haven’t interviewed (yet). Threads I couldn’t fit in. Weird connections, broken predictions, maybe even the occasional love letter to a dead futurist who got it terribly wrong. And yes—I’ll let you know when a new episode drops. But mostly, I’m here to keep the conversation going. With them. With you. With the ghosts of futures past. Welcome to They Tried to Warn Us. Now let’s see if we’re ready to listen. P.S. The first episodes is live now, featuring Neil Postman, with future episodes including interviews with thinkers such as Marshall McLuhan, George Orwell and Mary Shelley. Please subscribe to this Substack for future posts, check out the podcast and, hey, why not buy the book to get the full picture (and help me recover my costs on this project)!

Links:

They Tried to Warn Us podcast (Apple) (Spotify) (YouTube)

They Tried to Warn Us book

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As part of our “Spotlight On” series, this week we interviewed Nick Kavo, a current MQ Bachelor of Marketing and Media student. Nick began studying at Macquarie in 2014 and is set to graduate at the end of 2018.

During his time at Macquarie Nick has acquired marketing and media experience both inside and outside classroom. Nick started his Instagram account in the early days of the platform cultivating a following of 26,000. He has become a bona fide influencer connecting on average with 2,500 followers per post and has engagement of 10%.

When we talked Nick about his journey to becoming an influencer, the soon to be MQ graduate told us;

“It started out as going on family holidays and going away with friends, I had a good camera at the time and I was able to create content and bring it out to an audience.

It was at a time when Instagram was a lot more organic, it was easier to reach more people as opposed to now when there is so many people on the platform”

Throughout his time at Macquarie, Nick gained marketing and media experience and applied the theory he learned in the classroom to the real world. We asked Nick how his degree helped him become an influencer.

“You can use lot of the skills you learn in marketing and media and apply it to being an influencer. You’re essentially marketing a product which is yourself, so its the positioning, promotion, targeting etc. Find your niche, stick to your niche and consistently deliver that message.”

With his substantial experience in social media, we asked Nick what advice he has for other students looking to become an influencer.

“Never take your audience for granted.  Always network with them, build rapport because they’re the reason your there. Make sure you never post for the sake of it, post to give value to people. If you’re not doing that then people won’t want to follow you in the long term.”

You can find/follow Nick at https://www.instagram.com/nicklovin69/.

As well as Nick we’ve had stories on the AIIMM group about other BMktgMedia influencers, such as Rochelle De Sousa (class of 2018), James Vodicka (class of 2017) and Adriana Jennings (class of 2014). Does anyone know about any other influencers in our group? Could be a more in-depth story coming…

The post Spotlight on Nick appeared first on Advanced Issues in Marketing & Media.

As graduating students’ thoughts turn to finding that first post-uni role, AIIMM manager and final-year student Anna Cavanagh takes a look at what’s important to hirers and how you can get prepared.

Job hunting, we all have to do it at different points in our careers and whether you are like me and are soon to graduate or maybe someone who is thinking of shifting gears and heading to a new place of work, you may find yourself preparing to endure the search. Of course scrolling through jobs can be daunting, especially for those who, again like me, are new to this whole ‘adulting’ life. After all, how do you know you have what it takes to land an interview, let alone a job?

Luckily a Bachelor of Marketing and Media will enable you to pursue a range of careers, and of course each career is going to need a different set of skills. So to make a coherent list (and stick to a decent word limit) I decided to focus on the main types of jobs being offered. After searching, clicking, reading and scrolling through over fifty job applications on four different job search engines, surprise, surprise, the most common positions that I found had one of the following words included in the title, ‘digital’, ‘content’ or ‘social media’.

Focusing on jobs within the digital and social media domain, I took note of the skills and experience which employers wanted applicants to have. Finishing a quick analysis of my data, I have, what I consider, the top 10 skills for which employers are currently looking for. So without further ado, here are my top 10 skills needed for digital and social media marketing roles:

There are no surprises here, especially for positions that involve ‘social media’ in the title, employers are looking for applicants who are familiar with, and regularly use, social media platforms. Of course the types of social media platforms do range depending on the organisation’s target audience, but some of the most common were Facebook, Instagram (including IG story and IG TV), Youtube and Twitter.

How to get better: Go open your account and get familiar with all social media platforms, from the common (Instagram) to the not so common (Twitch). After all, it gives you an excuse to scroll through your newsfeed.

So I am guessing by now you have heard of WordPress, if not… You are currently on it. WordPress is an open source publishing platform which allows you to do a range of activities from creating a blog to building a website at ease.

How to get better: WordPress offers an entry level plan for free. It doesn’t include all the bells and whistles, but it will give you an idea of how to navigate and use the platform.

Although there are platforms which take out the technical need to code (see WordPress), having the ability to web program (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Jquery) is a great little trick to have up your sleeve. Not only do some employers prefer you to have experience with it, but having this skill is a great way to impress those who don’t.

How to get better:  If you are still a Macquarie student with a few 200/300 level units to go, the good news is that there are a range of classes to build your skills (I would recommend undertaking MAS240, MAS241 and MAS340). However, don’t fret if these classes aren’t an option for you, there are great online sites such as Codecademy or W3Schools which can walk you through the basics.

So this is no surprise, but many of the job applications I found consistently asked for someone who is knowledgeable in the latest digital and social media trends.

How to get better: Not only do we publish great content to keep you in the loop, but it’s also a good idea to broaden your sources of reading. Try sites such as SocialMediaToday, Digital Trends and Forbes. These are great sites for staying in the know about all things digital or social media related.

Okay, this is a big one I need to work on. It has been a constant request I’ve seen pop up even before doing research for this post. Of course, the level of expertise does range from basic to proficient, but the majority of positions are looking for applicants with experience using Adobe Creative Suite products, (Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign in particular).

How to get better: Sadly there is no way to access these applications for free, but if you are a student and do decide to go ahead and get a subscription, the good news is you can get a discounted rate. Another great way to learn is by checking out online tutorials on Lynda.com or Youtube. Otherwise an offline option is to attend a short photoshop course.

Many positions do prefer applicants who have some experience using social media advertising and management tools. The most common tools employers wanted applicants to have experience using included, Facebook and Instagram ads, along with such platforms as Hootsuite, Google Ads Manager and Google Adwords.

How to get better: It is a little harder to build up experience in these areas on your own. One option is to gain experience using these tools and platforms through appropriate internships. Another option is to check out the eLearning courses on Facebook blueprint. Once you master these courses you can sit two exams to become Facebook Blueprint certified which is a bonus to put on your resume. In terms of Google AdWords and Google Ads manager, you can make a free account which will allow you to familiarise yourself with the navigation of the platforms.

Another common request by employers was for applicants to have some form of experience using and/or knowledge on analytic tools such as Google Analytics.

How to get better: The good news is there are many online courses that you can complete to get a little better at using Google Analytics or at least gain some knowledge on how it works. A free and easy to follow course is by Google Analytics Academy. I recommend checking out their Beginners course.

Okay, so I consistently found copywriting skills under the subheading, ‘employee must have’. For those of you who are a little confused on what copywriting is, it’s the craft of writing messages which are able to persuade and prompt the reader to take a particular action.

How to get better: So I’m starting to sound like a broken record here, but the best way to better your copywriting skills is to check out some of the online courses and to also practice!

SEO or search engine optimisation was another very common skill employers where asking applicants to have. Of course there are different techniques, but I would recommend steering clear of black hat SEO and sticking to white hat techniques.

How to get better:  You may be familiar with SEO from some units offered at Macquarie. Another way to better your understanding is by checking out online courses including those offered by Lynda.com.

The number one most common skill I stumbled across during my ‘analysis’ was content creation. I have to admit that, even in interviews, I have been asked about my experience in creating content. So having any experience in this area is a must. It should be noted that many applications which I viewed also looked positively on those who had extra skills in video editing and photography, but by even having experience in creating blog posts (like this one) is a step in the right direction.

How to get better: PRACTICE! Practice, practice, practice. Create a personal blog. Record a video and practice editing it!

Now, although they may seem a little obvious, these transferable skills are still highly sort after and are, therefore, always worth including in your resume. A good tip is to prepare examples of times you have used/displayed these skills and mention them to potential employers during the interview.

Having spent time completing a university degree at one point or another, I am sure we are all familiar with participating in group work. If you are like me, group tasks rarely feel like a team effort and more like individual work quadrupled in size. But in the real world, employers are looking for individuals who can contribute equally while working efficiently with their existing staff. Therefore, it is important to show potential employers that you not only have the right skills, but also have the right personality and attitude to work effectively in a team setting. After all, for the employer, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Good communication skills are vital for any job, let alone one within the digital marketing/social media sphere.  After all, it is an area which requires employees to be able to effectively connect and communicate particular messages to various displaced audiences. Therefore, it’s not only important to be able to clearly verbally communicate to colleges and clients, but you must also have excellent written communication skills which can be utilized to appropriately address and connect with specific audiences.

It isn’t surprising that employers are looking for individuals who have ‘great attention to detail’.  Having the ability to thoroughly and accurately accomplish tasks equates to an effective worker, someone who all employers want. Therefore, when completing any task, it is always a great idea to keep an eye out for any small changes which you can make that will show off your attention to detail. Why not start with your resume!

Having the ability to think outside the box is a great skill to have under your belt. Employers are looking for individuals who are able to bring something fresh to the table. Of course you don’t always have to have drastically inventive ideas, being able to provide a simple twist on a concept is more than enough and can make you very appealing to any employer.

So now that you know what you need to stand out, build up those skills and start applying!

The post The top 10 skills employers want you to have appeared first on Advanced Issues in Marketing & Media.

Job hunting, we all have to do it at different points in our careers and whether you are like me and are soon to graduate or maybe someone who is thinking of shifting gears and heading to a new place of work, you may find yourself preparing to endure the search. Of course scrolling through jobs can be daunting, especially for those who, again like me, are new to this whole ‘adulting’ life. After all, how do you know you have what it takes to land an interview, let alone a job?

Luckily a Bachelor of Marketing and Media will enable you to pursue a range of careers, and of course each career is going to need a different set of skills. So to make a coherent list (and stick to a decent word limit) I decided to focus on the main types of jobs being offered. After searching, clicking, reading and scrolling through over fifty job applications on four different job search engines, surprise, surprise, the most common positions that I found had one of the following words included in the title, ‘digital’, ‘content’ or ‘social media’.

Focusing on jobs within the digital and social media domain, I took note of the skills and experience which employers wanted applicants to have. Finishing a quick analysis of my data, I have, what I consider, the top 10 skills for which employers are currently looking for. So without further ado, here are my top 10 skills needed for digital and social media marketing roles:

There are no surprises here, especially for positions that involve ‘social media’ in the title, employers are looking for applicants who are familiar with, and regularly use, social media platforms. Of course the types of social media platforms do range depending on the organisation’s target audience, but some of the most common were Facebook, Instagram (including IG story and IG TV), Youtube and Twitter.

How to get better: Go open your account and get familiar with all social media platforms, from the common (Instagram) to the not so common (Twitch). After all, it gives you an excuse to scroll through your newsfeed.

So I am guessing by now you have heard of WordPress, if not… You are currently on it. WordPress is an open source publishing platform which allows you to do a range of activities from creating a blog to building a website at ease.

How to get better: WordPress offers an entry level plan for free. It doesn’t include all the bells and whistles, but it will give you an idea of how to navigate and use the platform.

Although there are platforms which take out the technical need to code (see WordPress), having the ability to web program (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Jquery) is a great little trick to have up your sleeve. Not only do some employers prefer you to have experience with it, but having this skill is a great way to impress those who don’t.

How to get better:  If you are still a Macquarie student with a few 200/300 level units to go, the good news is that there are a range of classes to build your skills (I would recommend undertaking MAS240, MAS241 and MAS340). However, don’t fret if these classes aren’t an option for you, there are great online sites such as Codecademy or W3Schools which can walk you through the basics.

So this is no surprise, but many of the job applications I found consistently asked for someone who is knowledgeable in the latest digital and social media trends.

How to get better: Not only do we publish great content to keep you in the loop, but it’s also a good idea to broaden your sources of reading. Try sites such as SocialMediaToday, Digital Trends and Forbes. These are great sites for staying in the know about all things digital or social media related.

Okay, this is a big one I need to work on. It has been a constant request I’ve seen pop up even before doing research for this post. Of course, the level of expertise does range from basic to proficient, but the majority of positions are looking for applicants with experience using Adobe Creative Suite products, (Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign in particular).

How to get better: Sadly there is no way to access these applications for free, but if you are a student and do decide to go ahead and get a subscription, the good news is you can get a discounted rate. Another great way to learn is by checking out online tutorials on Lynda.com or Youtube. Otherwise an offline option is to attend a short photoshop course.

Many positions do prefer applicants who have some experience using social media advertising and management tools. The most common tools employers wanted applicants to have experience using included, Facebook and Instagram ads, along with such platforms as Hootsuite, Google Ads Manager and Google Adwords.

How to get better: It is a little harder to build up experience in these areas on your own. One option is to gain experience using these tools and platforms through appropriate internships. Another option is to check out the eLearning courses on Facebook blueprint. Once you master these courses you can sit two exams to become Facebook Blueprint certified which is a bonus to put on your resume. In terms of Google AdWords and Google Ads manager, you can make a free account which will allow you to familiarise yourself with the navigation of the platforms.

Another common request by employers was for applicants to have some form of experience using and/or knowledge on analytic tools such as Google Analytics.

How to get better: The good news is there are many online courses that you can complete to get a little better at using Google Analytics or at least gain some knowledge on how it works. A free and easy to follow course is by Google Analytics Academy. I recommend checking out their Beginners course.

Okay, so I consistently found copywriting skills under the subheading, ‘employee must have’. For those of you who are a little confused on what copywriting is, it’s the craft of writing messages which are able to persuade and prompt the reader to take a particular action.

How to get better: So I’m starting to sound like a broken record here, but the best way to better your copywriting skills is to check out some of the online courses and to also practice!

SEO or search engine optimisation was another very common skill employers where asking applicants to have. Of course there are different techniques, but I would recommend steering clear of black hat SEO and sticking to white hat techniques.

How to get better:  You may be familiar with SEO from some units offered at Macquarie. Another way to better your understanding is by checking out online courses including those offered by Lynda.com.

The number one most common skill I stumbled across during my ‘analysis’ was content creation. I have to admit that, even in interviews, I have been asked about my experience in creating content. So having any experience in this area is a must. It should be noted that many applications which I viewed also looked positively on those who had extra skills in video editing and photography, but by even having experience in creating blog posts (like this one) is a step in the right direction.

How to get better: PRACTICE! Practice, practice, practice. Create a personal blog. Record a video and practice editing it!

Now, although they may seem a little obvious, these transferable skills are still highly sort after and are, therefore, always worth including in your resume. A good tip is to prepare examples of times you have used/displayed these skills and mention them to potential employers during the interview.

Having spent time completing a university degree at one point or another, I am sure we are all familiar with participating in group work. If you are like me, group tasks rarely feel like a team effort and more like individual work quadrupled in size. But in the real world, employers are looking for individuals who can contribute equally while working efficiently with their existing staff. Therefore, it is important to show potential employers that you not only have the right skills, but also have the right personality and attitude to work effectively in a team setting. After all, for the employer, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Good communication skills are vital for any job, let alone one within the digital marketing/social media sphere.  After all, it is an area which requires employees to be able to effectively connect and communicate particular messages to various displaced audiences. Therefore, it’s not only important to be able to clearly verbally communicate to colleges and clients, but you must also have excellent written communication skills which can be utilized to appropriately address and connect with specific audiences.

It isn’t surprising that employers are looking for individuals who have ‘great attention to detail’.  Having the ability to thoroughly and accurately accomplish tasks equates to an effective worker, someone who all employers want. Therefore, when completing any task, it is always a great idea to keep an eye out for any small changes which you can make that will show off your attention to detail. Why not start with your resume!

Having the ability to think outside the box is a great skill to have under your belt. Employers are looking for individuals who are able to bring something fresh to the table. Of course you don’t always have to have drastically inventive ideas, being able to provide a simple twist on a concept is more than enough and can make you very appealing to any employer.

So now that you know what you need to stand out, build up those skills and start applying!

The post THE TOP TEN SKILLS EMPLOYERS WANT YOU TO HAVE appeared first on Advanced Issues in Marketing & Media.