Robyn Miga: Why I chose an internship with SMD

Robyn Miga | @robynmiga I’m not sure if I am your typical intern or not.

I started the Social Media Delivered internship while working full-time and going to graduate school as a means of getting to know more of the ins and outs of social media with respect to marketing. Despite Facebook really making its debut my freshman year of college, it wasn’t until several years later that it branched out to include businesses, so it was not a part of my college education.  Although it was not a part of my education, I knew it was a skill I wanted to master from experts who had a solid strategy on how to implement social media effectively within an organization. So I began looking for possible conferences or seminars that were in Texas that might be able to provide this at least at a basic level, and that’s how I stumbled upon Social Media Delivered and their internship program.

While working as an intern, I learned about a lot of things that I either only had surface level knowledge of, or things that I had never heard/thought of before. For instance, a task that interns will perform on a daily basis is through Tweepi management, which is basically just managing your Twitter followers. For whatever reason, it never occurred to me that you need to actively seek out people to follow you, as well as filtering out some of those who don’t want to follow you back. It’s a simple daily task that makes a big difference with increasing your reach. I think the other major aspect of the internship is working as part of a team to meet your goal, versus one person doing everything. As an intern you become part of the team, and are a contributing member to ideas that are pitched to clients. I think this is a part that is often missed with other internships, because a lot of times with entry-level internships you are seen more as a flack, and not a contributing member of the team. Not only does Social Media Delivered make you a part of the team, it is my opinion that the organization thrives because of their internship program, thus instilling more responsibility in their interns, which in turn is better for you going forward with your future career.

I was very pleased with my internship at Social Media Delivered. I learned a lot of things that will help me as I move forward following graduation. Social media isn’t going anywhere, and every business, organization and municipality should be utilizing it for their benefit, as well as others. If it’s going to remain an integral part of marketing, it should be a skill you hone through experience.