I started off this internship right in the middle of a global pandemic and had to work remotely.  As you can imagine, this was quite the challenge.  This was my first time doing anything marketing-related and I didn’t have the KKPR team close by to quickly ask for help if I needed it.  But we managed to make it work.  The team members explained how to use different software programs, showed me new ways to create social media content, taught me how to best utilize client brand sheets for reference, and how to take my blog writing to a new level.  Best of all, they were always available to answer any questions via call, text, or email.

You might be wondering what exactly I’ve been doing/learning this whole time.  Well, most of what I’ve been doing is based in social media.  For corporate communication majors, like myself, social media makes up a lot of what we learn.  We are taught how to create quality content, how to improve branding, and how to interact with the public as representatives of professional businesses.  So, for my internship, the goal was to expand on some of those concepts and learn how to apply them in an actual business setting.

I started off creating social media content for a couple of clients.  I worked on making posts that were engaging and in line with their individual brands.  I also created highlights to showcase some of the brands’ core parts and their values.  When I first started, I wasn’t all that great at it.  Don’t get me wrong, some of my ideas were creative, but they weren’t really on-brand.  To help me out and give me a better idea of what they were looking for, the KKPR team showed me how to use client brand sheets.  The sheets were a great reference with details about how client social media should look and the kinds of messages they should have.  After some practice, I learned how to create quality content that better related to the clients.

Continuing on with my internship, I was introduced to the wonderful world of social media management.  It was my job to go over all of the client Facebook and Instagram accounts for KKPR.  I would send invites to like pages, respond to comments, repost content, and track engagement.  If you’ve ever done this yourself, you know that there’s usually a lot to work through.  It took some time, but I learned how to get through everything and even managed to create a workable routine.  Once I did that, managing social media wasn’t so bad.  I also got better at reposting content that worked well with client brands (yeah, I wasn’t perfect at this when I started either).

I worked on a couple of different projects while I was interning, but one of the biggest learning points for me was blog writing.  I’m usually a pretty good writer when it comes to school papers.  Blog writing is a different thing entirely; your writing has to be engaging, informative, and stylish.  I had the information part down pat, but the engaging and stylish parts definitely needed work.  One of my biggest problem areas was that my writing often came out a bit stiff and boring.  This was especially true when I started writing personal blogs about my internship experience for KKPR.  Fortunately, Katrina was there to give me some tips.  Her advice was to think about some of the questions I wanted to answer in my blog; what did I want to tell the readers?  With that in mind, I figured out a way to put my thoughts into a more personal form: I wrote as if I were being interviewed.  I came up with questions to ask myself and answered them as if I were talking to someone.  This method worked out great and my writing finally had some personality to it.

I learned so much from my internship with KKPR.  I got to experience what working in an actual professional setting is like.  I got to develop my social media and writing skills.  I also got a chance to work on some incredible projects with a great team.  Most of all, I learned some important lessons about branding.  Your brand is your story and every message you put out is a part of that story.  With all that I’ve learned here, I know that I can continue to successfully work towards earning my degree and finding a rewarding career.