Internship Blog 3: Evaluation of Learning Objectives

Objective One: (Learn how to tailor media posts to different target audiences.)

Working with YAV, the posts have been incredibly straight forward. The audience at this company is the same all over each platform. Through Facebook’s publishing tools, we are able to view our reach. Since Facebook changed its algorithms appealing to personal interactions, it has made it much more difficult to reach as many people as we would like.

With that being said, it was difficult to perform the research I desired and I couldn’t get as “creepy” as I would have liked. In order to have been able to do such, I would have needed to study the demographics of the targeted audiences and learn more in-depth about their overall lifestyles. I wanted to be able to take the generalizations within the demographics and focus on points that can make the same announcement unique to the differing individuals. It would have been extremely difficult to go research as intensely as I would have liked when the audience has been the same for years. It was clear that the workers of YAV knew exactly who they were marketing so it actually made it easier to market similarly across the board.

Objective Two: (Learn about the best times to reach audience and make effective posts.)

Since timing is especially critical, the posts went public at different times on the social media platforms. As Facebook reaches a large audience of adults, the best time to reach the audience is morning between 6am to 8am, seeing how people check their Facebook accounts similarly to when they would read an early morning newspaper before work. On the other hand, the younger audience platform of Twitter indicates the best time to reach individuals on their platform is after work around 5pm-7pm. I was able to schedule the posts at the prime time for the best reach possible. By doing this, I was able to become aware of the peak hours of all social media platforms utilized. This has become a skill of mine that I have been able to develop with this experience.

Objective Three: (Learn how to write concise media content without being too wordy.)

Next, I’ve learned how to be less wordy. Although, I tend to over sell information, my supervisor, Kelly, has helped to teach me how to be more concise on social media. My word choice has expanded to get the same message across in more effective diction as I have been creating content for my internship at Young Audiences of Virginia. Though, Twitter has a limited word count, it has doubled its word count since and has made it much easier to get the same message across. YAV has become more involved in hashtags than before. This has allowed the designated public posts to become more searchable for our audience. Since creating a social media calendar, consistent posting and engagement has increased the likability of our content to be seen from a large audience. Overall, this has made me force myself into being more concise to increase the reach on each post.

Objective Four: (Learn about marketing analytics and change marketing styles to increase audience reach.)

Lastly, I have not been able to learn about marketing analytics. I still am unsure about analytics of any type. I still want to dive deeper into the realm of analytics and really understand every aspect about it. I still believe that it will assist me greatly in anything I decide to pursue after graduation. I still want to be educated on marketing analytics, as I want to improve my marketing strategies to advance my craft. My goals still mesh together to make me an amazing strategic marketer in the future, but there are some goals that fell short. I am grateful for the lessons I did learn along the way and anticipate learning more about all marketing aspects as I grow in this industry. YAV has been helpful in the way that my supervisor always made sure that I am able to complete a task that I have never tackled on before. I learned a few helpful skills and will utilize them in my upcoming journeys.