During my summer I spent a lot of time working at your typical country club, but most of it was spent completing an internship online! When I first started looking up internships during the fall and spring semesters of last year, I did not imagine that I would have ended up doing a virtual one, and to be completely honest, I really did not understand what that meant entirely.
Still, I decided to go ahead and apply to a few places and after a series of interviews and weighing all my options, I accepted an internship with Campus Socialite Media. While Campus Socialite does have in-house internship opportunities, the better fit for me this summer was the online option.
At the beginning of my internship, I was still very doubtful that it could actually work for an entire summer; I still did not understand how I would communicate with them, how I would get my assignments, and I still thought the idea of working for people I would probably never meet was strange!
To my surprise, everything ran very smoothly. The goal of my internship was to help assist in the creation of strategic marketing campaigns for clients and to increase interaction between the corporation and the college student audience. To sum that up nicely, I was the social media-marketing intern and I used social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to communicate with fans and clients of Campus Socialite and helped facilitate discussions between the two.
I used applications like Foursquare to check-in to various events around Rochester and left tips for followers of Campus Socialite to check out. I also helped to promote articles written by other interns and staff writers through Facebook and Twitter, research different methods to increase followers on both platforms, and generate a wider readership.
Most of the communication between the office and myself happened through email or telephone, but we also used software like Manymoon to upload documents and to screen share, or allow the other person to access your computer over the Internet. It almost felt like it was an advanced version of Google docs, but made extremely easier to access different information and share project ideas. I talked to people in the office on a weekly basis for the most part. They explained my task and gave me a deadline for it. I liked working independently but if I needed help, the office was only a phone call away!
In addition to using social media to bring more awareness to Campus Socialite and its events and articles, I was able to assist in campaigns for some of their clients, such as Par-City, an up-and-coming rap group from the Bronx. Some parts of the Par-City campaign included bringing awareness to new music they had released through services like YouTube.
We posted links to our individual social media accounts as well as the Campus Socialite main accounts. We also helped with a T-shirt contest, where fans were able to submit designs for a new Par-City band t-shirt to Campus Socialite and the person selected as the winner received a pair of ‘Beats by Dre’ headphones! Since Campus Socialite has a similar target audience as Her Campus, it was nice to be able to transfer some of what I had already learned from the social media and publicity teams to another company.
Overall, my experience working as a virtual intern was extremely positive and it exceeded my expectations. Sometimes I wish that I could have been in-house so I could experience the daily office environment, but I am very happy with the outcome and how helpful and accommodating everyone was. I would definitely recommend at least considering a virtual internship because of the different experience it provides. You have to be a self-starter and you have to be able to work independently because you are not in the office environment. At times it was challenging, but in the end, it was well worth it and I would do it again in a heartbeat!