Introduction:

Since completing my internship with the Marietta College Career Center, I

have found that there are a significant amount of connections between my work at

the Career Center and my learning both at Marietta College and the outside world.

The classes from my Marietta College education that are applicable to my internship

are Desktop Publishing (MASS-370), Integrated Marketing Communications (MASS-

320) and Management Information Systems (MIS-220). An applicable class from my

study abroad experience at Bond University is Internet Advertising (ADVT-141).

Finally, I was granted a travel fellowship from Marietta College to attend the 2011

Midwest Social Media Summit, another experience that I am able to relate

significantly to my internship at the Marietta College Career Center.

Overall, I have had a myriad of experiences that are applicable to my

internship, all of which have come into play for both the work I completed at my

internship and the learning outcomes that resulted.

Learning Objective #1: Desktop Publishing

An upper-level course that has come into play significantly in my internship

is Desktop Publishing (MASS-370). Desktop Publishing taught me the four basic

Learning Outcomes Reflection Essay

design principles; contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity. These principles

have come into play in more then one occasion.

For my internship, I created several flyers or handouts that required me to

apply the previously mentioned principles. Based on the resources available to me, I

typically utilized contrast by printing black ink on either white or brightly colored

paper to make the publications pop to the eyes of the target market. Repetition is

demonstrated through a campaign that this flyer was apart of, where the same font

was consistently used. Alignment is represented in this flyer because everything is

centered, leading the eye down the page in a specific line. Finally, this flyer

represents proximity across the campaign because I used the same fonts for all

publications as well as putting the QR code on all publications. The closeness

represented from the campaign as a whole represents the idea of proximity pretty

ideally. The specific example of all of these design principles is shown in the

example below.

[Example 1]

This design was printed on a bright orange, teal, purple, blue and yellow

paper, and posted around campus in various locations (the strange blocking design

from example 1 will be explained in learning outcome #4). While this flyer is only

one example, the design principles learned in Desktop Publishing have come into

play in a number of other projects that I was required to complete, including the

composure of the holiday postcard, a tri-fold poster for a Gilman Theme Night and a

slide about the Career Center for the library PowerPoint that is continuously

running.

The design principles of contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity also

came into play throughout several aspects of the social media channels. While the

design principles are mainly applicable to design related projects, I found them to be

applicable to the messages that I was trying to communicate to the people involved

with the Career Center’s social media channels. The information that I was

responsible for disseminating through the social media channels had to be unified,

or aligned, in such a way so that I was communicating the same message across all

channels. The idea of proximity was also focused on through the social media

channels because it was important that they communicate a certain image, branding

the Marietta College Career Center with specific colors, values and information.

The design principles of contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity have

been the key to the successes of the campaigns that I have run. While this is not the

only learning outcome that I have taken from Desktop Publishing and applied to my

internship, it is the most prevalent idea from the course that was involved with my

internship.

Learning Objective #2: Integrated Marketing Communications

Another upper-level course that has majorly assisted me throughout my

internship is Integrated Marketing Communications (MASS-320). There have been

several key ideas that I have been able to take from my IMC class and apply to my

internship. I have learned a large amount about branding and brand identity as well

as how to create synergy across marketing campaigns. Both of these key ideas have

been applied and integrated into my work for the internship.

The idea of branding is something that has been really focused on in most of

my advertising and marketing courses. While I didn’t necessarily brand the Marietta

College Career Center with a specific image, I really did brand the Career Center as a

friendly, accessible service that is available for students, alumni and staff to utilize. I

created this brand through social media sites, flyers that were produced and by

being more active within the college community by hosting, attending and

sponsoring various events. The brand of the Career Center is still in the

development stages but it has already been implemented in a positive light.

Another skill that has been focused on heavily from Integrated Marketing

Communications is the fact that synergy is a must for all marketing campaigns, an

idea that I have been able to apply to my internship. There are several ways that I

created synergy for the Career Center. The first way was by linking together all of

the Career Center’s online presence. Facebook and Twitter work simultaneously, so

if the Facebook status is updated, it automatically updates on Twitter as well. I also

had the plug-ins for direct connection to the Twitter and Facebook accounts placed

on the Career Center website, allowing users to be able to automatically connect to

our social media. Another way that I created synergy was through the signs and

posters that included the QR code. Once the QR code is scanned, it led to the Career

Center website. Scanning the QR code from our traditional flyers that led to the

website is a fantastic form of synergy.

As explained above, the skills taught to me in my Integrated Marketing

Communications class came into play heavily in my internship. And while not just

these skills were the ones that we applicable, the idea of branding and creating

synergy were the two most prevalent skills used. Integrated Marketing

Communications has been a very applicable class in general, not just to my

experience working this internship.

Learning Objective #3: Management Information Systems

Management Information Systems (MIS-220) has been a class that has taught

me about an extreme amount of tools available to me for successful project

management. From programs offered such as SalesForce.com to applications

available to me from Google, we covered it all. But the most important take-away

from MIS has been in my learning about Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

tools and how they come into play with the world of social media. Traditionally,

CRM programs have been used for all kinds of different customer related purposes,

from tracking sales to analytics.

In the case of social media, it is being used to create conversation and

generate closer relationships between the business and the customers (B2C), which

is exactly what I have used CRM for with the social networking sites of the Career

Center. I set up Twitter and Google+ accounts for the Career Center so that we can

stay more connected with the students at Marietta College through one of their most

popular communication means. I also utilized Facebook, a page that was set up

previous to my internship, to communicate as well. These sites have granted me the

ability to stay in touch with students who are active on these platforms but also to

create conversations about what the Career Center is doing or how they could be

assisting students. A good example of this is from a conversation via Twitter posts:

As shown, I was able to start a conversation with some of our followers and

ultimately, suggest a program that would be able to help them! This is CRM at its

finest!

Another way I was able to use CRM within my internship is from the insights

available to me on our Facebook page. The idea of the insights is for the page

administrators to get statistics on how many people are looking at the page, the

feedback rate on certain posts, etc. Basically, we can take the stats and find the ideal

time to post status and what content it is that gets the most feedback.

Overall,

Management

Information

Systems taught me

that applications

like “insights” are

available and also taught me that they are a form of a CRM application. I was also

able to take-away an applicable skill from the combination of having MIS at the

same time of my internship because I was able to use everything that I was learning

in the classroom on my internship.

Learning Objective #4: Internet Advertising

A course that I have taken but it isn’t an upper-level course that has been

immensely applicable to my internship is Internet Advertising (ADVT-101), a course

that I took when I studied abroad at Bond University in Australia. While the course

was listed as an introductory level course, it was made up largely of 5-7 semester

students so it is a course that I consider to be a 300 level at Marietta College.

Internet Advertising focused heavily on best practice cases, something I found to be

very helpful because we could see what we were learning being applied to the real

world. In the course, I learned about digital media tools that are easily accessible for

everyone, the largest learning outcome that I was able to apply to my internship.

Throughout the course, we focused on small ideas that typically lead to

successful digital campaigns. There were 3 tools that seemed to be repetitive in the

successful campaigns: 1) QR codes, 2) blogging and 3) virality. With all of these

channels used, a campaign almost never failed, so I decided that I would try my best

to include each of them (falling a bit short with the virality factor) in my Career

Center internship work.

1) QR Codes – QR codes are essentially bar codes that a user is able to scan

with their smart phone or digital device that has a QR code scanner

application (usually it is a free app!) installed on it. The QR code is a

programmed code specifically made to take the user somewhere in the

digital world, whether it be to a companies website, to offer a coupon

discount, a social media site, YouTube, etc. Typically, wherever the QR

code is linked to, some sort of incentive or action is invited to the user. In

the Career Center’s case, I created a QR code, printed it and hung up flyers

around campus with the QR code on it and a creative saying. The QR code

took users to 1 of three places (I created 3 different QR codes), either the

Career Center website, our Twitter page, or our Facebook page for,

encouraging users to “like” us on Facebook or “follow” us on Twitter. The

only tool not available to me that would have been fantastic to have is any

way to track how many times the code got scanned or what our

involvement rate/ROI was.

2) Blogging – I met with Chris Craig, the Marietta College Webmaster, and

was able to set up the Senior Spotlight Blog on the Career Center website.

I sent out requests to 9 senior students asking them blog once or twice

this semester about their job search, future plans and how everything is

going, along with a few plug questions concerning the services the Career

Center offers. I ended up only having 6 of the seniors actually commit and

I have completed 2 posts successfully from each blogger. Once again,

there is no way to track how the traffic is on the site but I have had

several students talk to me about it and I have brought it to the social

media sites as well so that more conversation is generated around it.

3) Virality – First off, this isn’t really a word but it makes sense once I

explain it here. Virality is essentially how often you are in conversation

across any digital media channel. The Career Center has a low amount of

virality compared to large companies, however, our virality has increased

significantly since the beginning of my internship because we are on

more social media platforms and are using more digital media channels

then we were before. The only way I was able to measure our virality was

on Facebook because it is included in the “insights” section discussed

previously. Based on trial and error and the percentage of the virality

reports on Facebook, it is clear that statuses containing videos generate

the most virality with statues with websites coming in second.

Overall, Internet Advertising was one of the most applicable courses when it

came to completing my internship. The 3 key ideas to successful digital campaigns

of QR codes, blogging and virality really came into play throughout the entirety of

my internship. The applications that I took away from the course fit in perfectly with

what the Career Center needed done.

Learning Objective #5: 2011 Midwest Social Media Summit

The 2011 Midwest Social Media Summit provided me with an extensive

amount of knowledge for future improvements for both the Marietta College Career

Center and other potential groups that I may work on social media management

cases for. From the myriad of expert professionals that were in attendance and

presented at the summit, I took away several key ideas that are crucial to successful

social media management and campaigning ideas. The most active, exciting and

applicable presentation was from Jeffery Rohrs, the Vice President of Marketing at

ExactTarget, titled The 2010 Executive Summary. Rohrs hit the audience with data

that is very relevant for future endeavors that the Career Center should follow up

with. The 3 biggest facts from the presentation that blew me away were:

These facts encourage more activity with social media and digital presence.

While Rohr’s presentation was not the only phenomenal presentation, his was the

most enthusiastic and applicable from the day. These statistics prove all of my

decisions to use the social networking sites that I chose. From the same

presentation came the side of “Quick-Hitting Ways to Integrate Email, Facebook, and

Twitter” seen below:

Though hard to read at this size, these 12 tips are exactly what I was trying to

accomplish during my time interning at the Career Center. The fact that these 12

tips fall in perfectly with my overarching goals proves that I have set the Career

Center up on the right track. The 2011 Midwest Social Media Summit affirmed all of

my decisions concerning the Career Center’s social media campaign and also

provided me with many ideas for any social media campaigns that I might work on

in the future years.

Conclusion:

Overall, with the combination of knowledge from my educational

experiences and knowledge from the professional conference I attended, I believe

that the completion of my internship has helped me realize just how applicable my

experiences have been to real life. My classes provided me with the bases of

knowledge to complete my internship successfully and the information that I

obtained from the 2011 Midwest Social Media Summit assisted me in creating a

strong social media campaign for the Marietta College Career Center, something that

I knew I could accomplish.

In reflection, I feel as if I created a strong basis for the Marietta College

Career Center in terms of social media and basic marketing. I was able to synergize

most, if not all of the advertising for events that the Career Center hosted in forms of

social media (including Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, Google+), digital media

(including the Career Center website, QR Codes), and traditional media (flyers,

magazine articles, newspaper articles, word of mouth). Overall, based off of the

work and time that was put in, the outcomes have been more then expected.

Working for the Marietta College Career Center as an intern for their social media

has been a wonderful learning experience and hopefully something that I am able to

apply to future social media endeavors.