Welcome to my internship analysis! This is where I'll be going more in-depth about my experience as a marketing intern for ODU's Student Engagement and Traditions Office.
As a marketing intern, I was primarily responsible for creating content for SET's Instagram account as well as supporting the FSL Instagram account. My supervisor and I agreed our goal was to make the SET Instagram more personable with less flyer-style posts. To see some of the content I created, visit my LeADERS tab and select Internship!
As part of my internship credit requirements, I must complete an internship analysis and post it within my ePortfolio. The following are the required questions:
Analysis of what the internship did well
I loved the amount of freedom I was given with content creation. Being allowed to freely create, I learned more about what did and did not resonate with my audience. This helped me connect what I am learning in the classroom to my strategic choices for SET's Instagram content.
I also really enjoyed having my own space and accessibility to SET accounts. With this, I was able to start my own analysis of SET's Instagram account prior to starting my own content creation. This gave me ideas of what the ODU student demographic was already interested in and what topics I could amplify further. Direct access to branding materials, event calendars and more also helped me effectively produce content.
What would you do differently in a future work experience?
In a future work experience, I'd love to have more interaction with members of my target audience. Unfortunately, I reached out student organization and members of the campus community to film, share their organization, etc. but didn't receive many responses. This made it difficult to complete some of my SMART goals.
What SMART goals were met, which weren't? Why or why not?
I fully met two of my SMART goals. These were to gain a total of 250 likes across all types of posts on Instagram made by myself during the course of the internship and design engaging content, including in-feed posts, stories and highlights, following the design constraints per ODU branding guidelines. I'm currently sitting at over 800+ total likes on my content and have had direct access to ODU branding tools throughout my internship.
I partially completed my SMART goal to strengthen my outreach skills by implementing surveys to reach student organizations via email, completing interviews and making introductory posts for at least six student organizations. I'd consider this partially complete because I did reach out to various student organizations however, I did not get enough responses to begin a weekly feature.
I did not meet my goals of creating a social media calendar with three weekly in-feed and story posts. Unfortunately, due to my struggle of communication with student organizations and the lack of events mid-semester, I was unable to keep a consistent calendar. However, I did create a weekly post for Mondays of either a Monarch Groups how-to in-feed post or a student organization event reel. From there, I typically was able to post an additional event or reminder post during the week! I also did not have the opportunity to attend five events to produce live event coverage due to my class and extracurricular schedule.
What's next for you professionally?
I've accepted a marketing/communications intern position at Chartway Credit Union this summer. I'm excited to take some of the skills I've learned from this internship and utilize them further in a new one. My summer internship has a broader scope of duties I can assist with which will allow me to sharpen some skills I'm hoping to strengthen.
How will you prepare/take action based on what you've learned during this internship?
This internship has truly taught me the value of knowing your audience. Having the opportunity to create content to satisfy a diverse group of students like ODU within a set of guidelines has transformed my view on social media marketing. From this, I know I will spend more time getting to know my audience, building a relationship with them and continually strengthening that relationship in future endeavors.
Overall Experience
Overall, this was an enriching first internship experience. I was grateful for the opportunity to work in a supportive environment that allowed me the freedom to utilize the skills and expertise I have grown to positively share their message and purpose with the ODU campus community.
I'd recommend all students to participate in an internship. Having the opportunity to work with professionals in fully functioning organizations is invaluable to your college experience and will help you gain new skills while enhancing old ones.
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