LINK Weekly Blog
Week One
When you walk into a new place for the first time you are always surprised because it doesn’t quite look like how you imagined it in your head.
When I walked into StoneAge for the first time, each of the L-shaped desks were lined up like Tetris, and each department flowed from the front of the front of the building to the back; HR, sales, marketing, engineering, and so on. After a short tour of the entire facility, I soon discovered I had my own little place to work, with a full desk, computers, and tasks to complete each day. Then, I met the people I would be working with for the next three weeks, Carter, Jules, Chris, Randy, Maria, and Margaret. All of them were lively, and eager to work with me.
During the first week of my internship here at StoneAge I was focused on getting my bearings in. Like in any new business situation, especially one this professional, I was intimidated by the new environment, and the new people. At first I thought “Woah, I’m in a real life workplace.” Borderline cheesy I know, but between this and highschool, I was more than excited to be working here with a group of people who were proud of what they did, and who made my internship as enjoyable as possible. The professional setting of being at a business was exactly what I needed. I felt not only valued, but helpful; and everyone I worked with was supportive, and easy to talk to, and I was happy to come in everyday. (not to mention the free coffee, popcorn, and massages) By Wednesday of my first week, after I attended my first meeting with the marketing group, I teamed up with the social media manager and we decided to focus on launching a mini social media campaign by Monday in conjunction with the company’s customer appreciation day. After this, we planned to further snowball ideas for my final project
Week Two
The week kicked off with my social media campaign. The social media marketing manager and I had designed sort of “test run” a type of social media post that would get the community involved and be an easy way for people to have StoneAge “on their minds.” Initially, it was a bit difficult for us to navigate, just because of the type of audience we were trying target and not to mention… making water blasting tools appealing to the general public can be somewhat difficult. So here’s what it looked like:
We posted the same photo onto three different social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin. The photo showed a StoneAge fleece jacket, a hat, a portable charger, and some fudge from a local chocolate company. Below the photo, was a caption that stated:
Happy Monday from StoneAge! Let’s get the week off to a great start by giving away some StoneAge schwag… Everyone who re-posts using #stoneagetools within the next 24 hours in entered in a drawing to win this StoneAge gift pack!
Gift pack Includes:
StoneAge hat
StoneAge fleece jacket
Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory Fudge
StoneAge portable phone charger
Initially we were not expecting a specific number of re-posts from any one of the social media platforms, because the mini project was just an experiment, but in the end we received a total of 65 re-posts. From there, we randomly drew one name and contacted the winner to send them their prize. Additionally, we were able to see how the post positively affected the overall trafficking of the StoneAge social media sites, and raised the total number of visitors even within the 24 hours.
Once I was able to gather the data on the campaign using Hubspot, a social media managing site that compares social media platforms among many other things, I was then able to compile my data into graphs to visually reflect on how my post affected the trafficking and popularity of the StoneAge site and business as whole. Then, I created visual pieces, with the help of the graphic designer named Chris, that showed the positive impact on the site. Then, I went over what my goals had been in the beginning of the project with my mentors and if the campaign was something that the company would be willing to try again.
Week Three
At the beginning of my final week I finally realized how quickly my internship had gone by. I had just finished my final project and things in the workplace around me started to pick up, just as I had started to slow down and get used to everything.
The annual catalog was being completed, I was helping redo the company website from scratch, the yearly report was being sent out, and there was an international trade show to prepare for. Even though there had been many long hours and a lot of readjusting for me to do, I can honestly say that I will miss it, the people, the work that I did, and the experience as a whole. I had just gotten to know all of the wonderful people that were apart of this company, and to be completely truthful I was upset that I had to leave it so soon; yet I felt like I had learned as much as I could during my time spent here and I wouldn’t have wanted to spend my internship any other way.
On Tuesday, after I had finished putting together the final touches of my project with Chris, I helped the content strategist, Margaret finalize company dealer contacts for the StoneAge website. Then, after a short meeting with the marketing team where we over the tasks for the rest of the week we had all decided that we were all overdue for a lunch outing on Thursday to celebrate my internship and a successful three weeks.
On the last day of my internship I walked out tricking myself into thinking that I would walk back in the same doors on Monday and sit back down at the same desk with all the same people. Clearly that wasn’t the case…
Part of me feels as if I should not be this attached to an internship, but the truth is I really did enjoy it and it was the highlight of my junior year; and here’s the thing: I may not know what I want to do for the rest of my life right at this moment, but I do know that after being at a company like StoneAge for the past three weeks, marketing is a career path that I will seriously consider moving forward. I do not take for granted the fact that I got to experience first hand how a business is run and how a team of people is managed, being apart of this and creating things for something bigger than myself was a once in a lifetime exposure into the real world.
Week One
When you walk into a new place for the first time you are always surprised because it doesn’t quite look like how you imagined it in your head.
When I walked into StoneAge for the first time, each of the L-shaped desks were lined up like Tetris, and each department flowed from the front of the front of the building to the back; HR, sales, marketing, engineering, and so on. After a short tour of the entire facility, I soon discovered I had my own little place to work, with a full desk, computers, and tasks to complete each day. Then, I met the people I would be working with for the next three weeks, Carter, Jules, Chris, Randy, Maria, and Margaret. All of them were lively, and eager to work with me.
During the first week of my internship here at StoneAge I was focused on getting my bearings in. Like in any new business situation, especially one this professional, I was intimidated by the new environment, and the new people. At first I thought “Woah, I’m in a real life workplace.” Borderline cheesy I know, but between this and highschool, I was more than excited to be working here with a group of people who were proud of what they did, and who made my internship as enjoyable as possible. The professional setting of being at a business was exactly what I needed. I felt not only valued, but helpful; and everyone I worked with was supportive, and easy to talk to, and I was happy to come in everyday. (not to mention the free coffee, popcorn, and massages) By Wednesday of my first week, after I attended my first meeting with the marketing group, I teamed up with the social media manager and we decided to focus on launching a mini social media campaign by Monday in conjunction with the company’s customer appreciation day. After this, we planned to further snowball ideas for my final project
Week Two
The week kicked off with my social media campaign. The social media marketing manager and I had designed sort of “test run” a type of social media post that would get the community involved and be an easy way for people to have StoneAge “on their minds.” Initially, it was a bit difficult for us to navigate, just because of the type of audience we were trying target and not to mention… making water blasting tools appealing to the general public can be somewhat difficult. So here’s what it looked like:
We posted the same photo onto three different social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin. The photo showed a StoneAge fleece jacket, a hat, a portable charger, and some fudge from a local chocolate company. Below the photo, was a caption that stated:
Happy Monday from StoneAge! Let’s get the week off to a great start by giving away some StoneAge schwag… Everyone who re-posts using #stoneagetools within the next 24 hours in entered in a drawing to win this StoneAge gift pack!
Gift pack Includes:
StoneAge hat
StoneAge fleece jacket
Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory Fudge
StoneAge portable phone charger
Initially we were not expecting a specific number of re-posts from any one of the social media platforms, because the mini project was just an experiment, but in the end we received a total of 65 re-posts. From there, we randomly drew one name and contacted the winner to send them their prize. Additionally, we were able to see how the post positively affected the overall trafficking of the StoneAge social media sites, and raised the total number of visitors even within the 24 hours.
Once I was able to gather the data on the campaign using Hubspot, a social media managing site that compares social media platforms among many other things, I was then able to compile my data into graphs to visually reflect on how my post affected the trafficking and popularity of the StoneAge site and business as whole. Then, I created visual pieces, with the help of the graphic designer named Chris, that showed the positive impact on the site. Then, I went over what my goals had been in the beginning of the project with my mentors and if the campaign was something that the company would be willing to try again.
Week Three
At the beginning of my final week I finally realized how quickly my internship had gone by. I had just finished my final project and things in the workplace around me started to pick up, just as I had started to slow down and get used to everything.
The annual catalog was being completed, I was helping redo the company website from scratch, the yearly report was being sent out, and there was an international trade show to prepare for. Even though there had been many long hours and a lot of readjusting for me to do, I can honestly say that I will miss it, the people, the work that I did, and the experience as a whole. I had just gotten to know all of the wonderful people that were apart of this company, and to be completely truthful I was upset that I had to leave it so soon; yet I felt like I had learned as much as I could during my time spent here and I wouldn’t have wanted to spend my internship any other way.
On Tuesday, after I had finished putting together the final touches of my project with Chris, I helped the content strategist, Margaret finalize company dealer contacts for the StoneAge website. Then, after a short meeting with the marketing team where we over the tasks for the rest of the week we had all decided that we were all overdue for a lunch outing on Thursday to celebrate my internship and a successful three weeks.
On the last day of my internship I walked out tricking myself into thinking that I would walk back in the same doors on Monday and sit back down at the same desk with all the same people. Clearly that wasn’t the case…
Part of me feels as if I should not be this attached to an internship, but the truth is I really did enjoy it and it was the highlight of my junior year; and here’s the thing: I may not know what I want to do for the rest of my life right at this moment, but I do know that after being at a company like StoneAge for the past three weeks, marketing is a career path that I will seriously consider moving forward. I do not take for granted the fact that I got to experience first hand how a business is run and how a team of people is managed, being apart of this and creating things for something bigger than myself was a once in a lifetime exposure into the real world.