8 Week Internship Recap

8 weeks later and I have arrived at the final few days of my internship. I have had an amazing opportunity to meet new people, make new contacts, and learn material that I had only a general knowledge base about prior to the summer. Over the next two days I will be finalizing the layout and content of my final presentation for my clients. This is where I will showcase the social media matrix, influencer identification glossary, and social media strategy I have been diligently working on for the past two months. I will be walking away from this internship with not only a potential career path in mind, but also new friends and colleagues that have been a pleasure to learn from and work with.

Social Media Strategy

After doing some comparative research on available social media management tools I have come to the conclusion that HootSuite will definitely be of use. The free account is available for up to five social media profiles-- a perfect amount for the stage that my clients are currently at. I have also looked into Google Alerts as a content generation tool. The goal of this strategy is to take into account that there may not be a social media specialist on my clients' team to generate content and manage social media. With that being said, I have been looking for alternative ways for my clients to effectively manage their own social media presence. Google Alerts seems to be an simple and time effective way to locate potential leads for content.

Recap of Final Projects

I wrapped up my second to last project, influencer identification and sequential analysis, a few days ago and began my homestretch project: the social media strategy. I had planned ahead and looked into an editorial calendar to pitch to my clients, but after more communication I realized that idea wasn't completely logical at this point in time for their company. Since then, I have been looking into social media management tools like HootSuite and Buffer in hopes of rounding out a more useful, cost effective and time efficient strategy.

Crisis Management in the Digital Age

To better understand the landscape of a social media strategy, I have been reading "Social Media: How to Enrage, Share, and Connect" by Regina Luttrell. One of the topics discussed in the book is on crisis management. Coming from a cyber security background, the importance of mitigating risk and risk prevention are ingrained in a student from the start. I would have thought that crisis management for digital media would be a completely different realm compared to cyber security-- but it's actually quite similar. Prepare in advance, isolate the origin, evaluate the impact, mitigate the crisis, and (in my opinion the most important part) learn from the crisis.

Project Expansion

As many people working with start-up businesses can say, flexibility and adaptability become necessary skills to successfully move forward on progress. I have certainly grown more as an individual harnessing these two skills during my internship than I thought I would. With that being said, it has been extremely important to be flexible with not only my outlook on each project I work on, but flexible with my own schedule outside of work. The clients I work with were pleased by my reports and efforts so much so for a particular project, that they have asked me to continue that work and broad my search. The influencer identification has thus been extended for more focus. This has required me to plan ahead on scheduling and fit in more hours into a tightly packed list of responsibilities.

Passed the Google Analytics Certification Exam

About 20 minutes ago, I passed the Google Analytics Certification exam on my second try. The score for passing sits at a manageable 80% and I was fortunate to have scored an 85%. After studying for a few weeks, I am pleased to say that this portion of my internship requirements is complete. My certification is valid for the next 18 months before I need to be recertified.

Week 5 Recap

Searching for influencers can be a daunting task especially with the vastness of blogs, open forums, and twitter hashtags. Though my first search was successful, I have decided to broaden my outlook and move focus to professional publications. Having a knowledge base of what the employees of potential clients for this product are saying and where they are talking is important-- but so is knowing where the CEOs and corporation owners are looking. All of these factors determine who sees my client's product and, ultimately, how effectively the information comes across to them.