Learning lots despite distraction!

Here is a recap of my experiences as an intern at Nology Media for the week of June 8-15.

I must confess I was a bit distracted this week. Many things were going on in my life that had nothing to do with my internship:

*My boyfriend flew across the country on his birthday, June 8th to come spend a week with me. I made a huge Italian dinner, baked a cake. We had streamers, the whole nine yards.

*I got my first ever speeding ticket. Killed my 5 year streak of perfection, and cost me almost $150. Fail.

*Ironically, the next day, my father bought me a car. (2009 Chevy Cobalt, yeaaaah!)

*I spent gratuitous amounts of time on the phone to sort out the payment of my electric bill for my apartment back east.

And so on, and so forth.

But that didn't stop me from learning valuable lessons!!

I met one of my new best friends-- a site that allows people to search for Twitter users by the information they provide in their 160 character Bio as well as their location. This is really helpful! For instance, sometimes it is my job to follow new people for a client. One client is a nonprofit for bereavement and grief of children, led by a professional athlete. While we already knew to get in contact with the sports crowd, this service helped us find people that, though they may not be attracted by the starlight of the athlete, care about the cause.

I helped find material for posts for some of the communities that the other girls manage. This is probably one of my favorite tasks. I like putting myself in the shoes of the client's audience. I like thinking about what I would be interested if I was in this audience. And then, I love finding interesting and relevant content to post for this client. The best part is when you were dead on, and you get likes and comments on that content.

On June 10th, the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce hosted a Business Showcase at the Hilton in Bellevue, and the Nology team attended. I had never been to such an event before! It was like a college fair or career fair, except a lot better because everyone has businesses, money, and they want you to be a new client. A ton of freebees were given out. Among my favorites were free cookies (I have a sweet tooth that is never satisfied) and a free massage (Need to schedule that SOON!)

We had their own booth at the showcase, and we were explaining/passing out a new device called a Poken. Pokens are the business cards of the future. With a simple "poke" of your Poken, you can instantly exchange all the information you could ever want to give a business contact... Name, address, number, twitter handle, Facebook page, even stuff like your XBOX 360 account, if you're into that sort of thing.

Anyway, this was the coolest thing. I loved explaining how a product worked to the rest of the attendees of the showcase. "LOOK AT OUR AWESOME SHINY PRODUCT! HERE I WILL TELL YOU HOW IT WORKS! I WILL EXPLAIN TO YOU WHY IT IS BENEFICIAL!" That is what I like to do. I felt useful. I felt well liked (the Pokens were a hit)!

Our booth also consisted of a giant projector screen that displayed Nology's Twitter Wall. I didn't understand Twitter walls at first, but they are really cool. If you click that link, it allows you to type in whatever you want in the top right corner. Then, tweets containing the words you typed will begin to pop up on the screen. It's cool because you can find out what people are saying (in real time) about the topic of your choice. In our case, that night the word that was typed in was #BCOCShowcase. People liked the thought that their tweets about the event were being shown off to everyone at the event in real time! Pretty awesome.

I remember that one day I did a search for healthy summer eating for a client in the medical industry. This was probably my favorite task to date. All morning I looked at delicious food (Don't think I didn't bookmark some of those recipes!) and found ones that would be appealing for men... after all, Father's Day was fast approaching! I do love that on any given day I may be asked to research something that I totally did not expect to check out. I hope I am asked to do something food related again. Mmm.

I also began my involvement with an elder care facility that prides itself on having the care system of the futre. I began to grow their Twitter follower base. I took a shot at creating some Facebook advertisements for them.

At first, finding people to follow for an assisted living facility was kind of tricky.

*First of all, there aren't a ton of old people on Twitter. Especially not the elders that need to move into an assisted living facility.

*Second, if I WERE to stumble across an elderly tweeter, it would probably really freak them out or offend them if nursing homes began to follow them. (On MY Twitter account, I am being followed by @VampireMob..... not so sure how I feel about that either... )

*Third, I didn't want to follow other nursing homes because they are potential competitors.

Luckily, though, I found many caregiving resources, as well as users that provide information on diseases that affect the elderly. Additionally, I found many people who reach Baby Boomers--- Those who are stuck in the "sandwich generation" (Caring for young adult children financially, and caring for elderly parents physically.) The number of followers of the account have multiplied by 8 since I began working with it (About 3 weeks ago). *Pats self on back.*

It has to do with the way you talk to people. You can't just send out one cookie cutter message to each follower. Learn about your followers. Go Erin Brockovich on their ass. People don't want to talk to a company. They want to talk to a PERSON from the company. With what I do, they will very likely never know they are talking to Rachel Nieman, intern at Nology Media and student at West Virginia University...... but they know they are being paid attention to. Listened to. That's what people want. That's why people use Twitter.

June 1-8: Acclimation Complete

Here we are at the end of June! How time flies!!! I have been living in Sammamish, WA for seven weeks and one day now. This month has been absolutely packed with new experiences, adventures, and ideas! Here part 1 of 4 of the past four weeks (since my last post). I take an awful lot of notes.

June 1-8

The first week of June was a busy one around the office! I was a bit disheartened to learn that a client I had been doing a lot of work for decided to end their services with us. It was probably for the best, as they were not a good fit for what we do at Nology. But as quickly as they left, we acquired some brand new clients! Now, I had to become a mini expert on some new topics like baseball, the high-end car market, and the elder care industry. Three things I knew squat about.

My manager, Megan, took some vacation around this time to visit Germany. This meant I had to bother someone else every five minutes. This wonderful woman was another Community Manager named Abby. Approachable, friendly, and highly skilled in listening platforms, Abby taught me much in this week. She explained to me how our process for Facebook and Twitter analytics reporting worked, as well as provided guidance for what makes a good post. I was happy to become more comfortable with people in the office, and enjoyed feeling brave enough to ask anybody for help when I needed it. I sure do ask a lot of questions.

I spent a good portion of the week wrapped up in Excel Spreadsheets and Pages documents. As tedious as it sounds, I can honestly say it's a task I enjoy. I like being able to explain how a client's outreach has grown over the course of a week. I like to observe the trends. Do we get more followers by posting video? Or do we get more responses when we ask a question? Stuff like that. Different clients' audiences respond better to different things. One of our clients, a nonprofit organization headed up by a professional baseball player, gets a lot of feed back when given the chance to ask a question to the baseball star. Another client, a car dealership, gets a lot of fan response when we post information in our Miss Washington Wednesday series. Some clients have phenomenal Facebook response. Others do better on Twitter. Different people are moved by different things.

I got to test my skills --- and my patience --- by updating a logo for one of our clients' Facebook pictures. I learned about Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign last semester, but it was a very basic overview and I still struggle a bit with them. However, after a bit of playing, I changed the logo and it was made public on their Facebook page. Very cool, to look at a page and think "I had a hand in that." But here in this first week of June, things were just starting for me, as I would come to know that I would have a hand in a lot of the content that went public for our clients.

I also learned about a new tool that exists to help brands create engaging Facebook fan pages. It allows you to manage multiple social media accounts on one page, much like CoTweet does for Twitter. Today, I am not sure if this platform is all it was cracked up to be, but I was very impressed when I first saw the demonstration. I think they are in the beginning stages of something great, but I don't know if Nology can benefit from what they currently offer.

The ideal package would be something that allows the management of multiple accounts on multiple social media platforms, completes high quality searching (like some other deep search programs that already exist but hopefully much more user friendly), gives a plethora of options on how to organize the results of those deep searches, automatically tracks feedback information so analytics would be nothing more than a simple click of an "export" button, allows for the scheduling of posts, and gives the user control over the media that is attached with that post.

Is there anything out there like that? If so, Nology could really benefit from that, so please get in touch with me.

Overall, this week was about really getting settled in and building up my confidence. Two really, really important things.

Three Deep

I'm three weeks into the adventure of my summer internship. I am learning so much. So much about aspects of my future career, about life, and about what I really want.

I'll focus first on my internship. First and foremost, I have learned how to use the tools I often take for granted and actually put them to good use. For instance, while I typically use Facebook, Twitter, and the Internet as a whole just for fun and recreation, much more can be done with the information that is flowing around. I have learned to use two programs, Radian6 and Vocus, that can probe the Internet for the information you need in just a matter of seconds. I have learned the practical uses of sites and programs such as TweepSearch, Facebook Insights, and NetNewsWire. I've become familiar with SocialCast and DropBox, WordPress and CoTweet.

I have learned to glean for the most important information with minimal searching. I have come to be familiar with key words for several of our clients, and the more I learn about the topics, the easier it becomes. Just through the nature of my business, I have learned a great deal about property taxes and the great lengths one must go through to appeal them, about entrepreneurship (including how to spell it correctly), about car dealerships, and about the elder care industry.

I have also learned a few things about how to handle myself in a business-like setting.

1.) I have always thought the way to peoples' hearts was just to be real with them. This is not always the case. Unless you are completely professional, do not be completely real with them.

2.) Do NOT bring up anything you do that may be considered unprofessional. Even if it's funny.

3.) Lay off the jokes until people understand you.

4.) When you're the newbie, take a moment to consider what you are about to say or ask so you don't say or ask something stupid, irrelevant, or that has already been explained to you.

5.) "The Office" is in no way similar to how a real office works. Huge let down, but probably beneficial for the economy.

I say all this, not because people have been unwelcoming, but because I have truly had a handful of foot-in-mouth moments since my arrival. I chalk it up to inexperience, my small town mindset, and my rather immature sense of humor. Nothing has been catastrophic. But I'm glad I'm learning all this now.

Now, on to what else I'm learning. You know, about life and stuff. I have learned two important things thus far.

1.) Living with another family is really, really, fun. If you ever have the chance to do so, take that chance. I have been having a wonderful time with Rod, Cindy, Abby and Amelia! Abby and Amelia are like the younger sisters I've never had, and watching them interact (as well as my own interaction with them) leads me to believe that every girl deserves a sister. Being with a family that isn't your own allows you to behave as a family member that doesn't have any negative past. No bad memories of getting in trouble or anything like that. It makes for very peaceful living.

2.) I'm learning that I'm more relationship-oriented than career-oriented. Now, I don't think I'll be taking the Mommy Track any time soon, but I travelled 3000 miles to do a summer job and yet my heart is elsewhere. Don't get me wrong. I want to learn as much as I can while I'm out here, do a good job, and gain a rich and valuable experience. But maybe I'm not as grown up as I thought. My mind is very much still yearning for a carefree, sunny summer with good times and the best of friends. I may have been mistaken when I assumed I was above having another responsibility free summer. My brain is proud of myself for going the route I have gone, but my heart is a little bummed.

These past three weeks have been a blast. I've learned a ton about the Social Media Marketing industry, I've learned to make three new dishes (Squash Casserole, Apple Pie, and my mother's WORLD FAMOUS Zucchini Pie), I have been more diligent about exercise (my room has an elliptical in it, it sits there and stares at me until I use it), and I have been fortunate enough to visit the beautiful Lake Chelan, my favorite place in the world. Things are going absolutely peachy. :-)