I Love Limerick is the name of a voluntary media company in Limerick, Ireland that was set up to combat the negative public reputation of Limerick by promoting its businesses, people and events.

I Love Limerick consists primarily of a website where all stories are published. Every story is then shared to a wider audience across Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. The company also provides help to Limerick businesses who need help running their media accounts or receiving media coverage at events.
I started my journey with I Love Limerick in September of 2019 and remained there until January 2020. My role varied from day to day but, naturally, was always in the realm of media.

My role included:

• Engaging with the press via email/ phone and deciding upon which stories/ events to pursue

• Attending and reporting on events

• Writing articles/ stories on events

• Optimising articles for the story

• Promoting & distributing stories on social media

• Managing the social media of clients

• Creating content for social media

AN AVERAGE DAY:

STORY WRITING:

I started off everyday by opening up my work email to see what was in store for me. This included mostly streams of press releases, perhaps the launch of a new Limerick business, so to tackle this I would take what I could from the press release, other information I could find on Google, a couple of images and muster it all together to make a story for the I Love Limerick website. In writing stories, I would follow the key journalistic principles of story-writing such as the 4 W’s and so on.

OPTIMISATION:

When writing for websites or digital media, it is crucial to ensure all content posted and the website itself are optimised in order for it to appear in search engines and reach a wide audience. There are a number of key optimisation steps that need to be carried out per post including attaching outbound and inbound links, SEO titles, key words, alt texts and so on. These were steps I took with every story posted on the I Love Limerick website.

ART

Limerick student sets up creative agency for youths entitled ‘858’ 

EDUCATION

Glin Castle in Co. Limerick, home of the late knight, appears to be more than just a beautiful landmark as sources reveal it is said to be haunted

CHRISTMAS

Glin welcomes the festive season with their annual Christmas Fair, Saturday December 7  

ENTERTAINMENT

Fresh Film’s ‘Hothouse’ at RTE with guest director, Jim Sheridan gives young filmmakers a chance to shine

ENVIRONMENT

Cow-nt beef out, green in as Adare farmer transforms farm into vegan haven 

ENTERTAINMENT

Glin locals including ‘The Wire’ star, Dominic West reenacted the tragic story of ‘The Colleen Bawn’ to mark the 200th anniversary of her death

ENVIRONMENT

Sustainable fashion activist, Keelin Moncrieff hosted a charity shop crawl and pop up shop in Limerick city in conjunction with 858

SHARING & PROMOTION:

On publishing the story on the I Love Limerick website, I would then proceed to share the story across all I Love Limerick social media platforms. The standard format we used was: use the first paragraph as the caption, tag any relevant parties and use the hashtags #ilovelimerick #lovelimerick #lovinlimerick. There were slight differences for each platform ie. for Instagram, as well as sharing in a post, also share it on the Instagram story feature with a swipe up link and for Facebook, we would reschedule the post for 3 different dates in the future to bring the story back into light.

EVENT REPORTING:

I Love Limerick’s office has an events board where upcoming events are scheduled and a number of members from the team are booked to attend them and report on them. There are 3 main roles needed for event reporting:

• Social Media Reporter: This person reports on the event via Instagram and Twitter in live time ie. by posting short snipper videos or images of the event to give a feel for what it is to viewers. They also manage the Twitter and aim to get a “live quote” or soundbite from a key figure of the event to post on Twitter.

• Live Stream Reporter: This person Livestreams the event on I Love Limerick’s Facebook.

• Photographer: This person photographs the event.

EVENT AFTERMATH:

The photographer would usually go and edit all the images on Adobe Lightroom to attach the relevant captions. Whoever was deemed the “writer” for that event would then go and begin writing the story on the event, usually there would be a press release sent over to aid this.

Thankfully, I Love Limerick values itself as a place of content creation so aside from reiterating the stories handed to us, we were also encouraged to source our own story opportunities and make something of them. This involved sourcing our own story content, interviewees, photography- the whole she-bang. 

I Love Limerick have a keen awareness that the demand for news is moving away from heavy print content and more towards light, easy digested media content. Because of this, it is important to I Love Limerick to provide their news to people in a way that can be easily understood and received. This is why, at the many events I Love Limerick attends, less attention is being put to being pen-paper journalists and more attention is being given to social media reporting. 

For example, the I Love Limerick team and I attended a Rachel Allen Cooking Demo in aid of Leon’s Lifeline- a fundraiser to raise money to send, 22-year-old, Leon to Russia to receive specialised treatment for MS. My role at this event was to manage the I Love Limerick Instagram. This meant I had to record as much of the night as possible via Instagram story videos and pictures in order to tell the “story” of the event for viewers at home who were unable to make it. At this same event there were I Love Limerick staff assigned to Facebook and Twitter management and 2 photographers to capture images for the newspaper and social images. Our roles reverse for each event to ensure we learn all areas of media management. 

I Love Limerick was a tremendously enlightening experience in terms of my progress in the journalism and new media industry. It taught me a great deal of media skills ranging from the basics of story writing and interviewing to optimisation skills and operating softwares and technologies such as gimbles and tripods.