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.
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