What I did this Summer

Walking to Principles of Advertising last fall I remember talking to a fellow student about how college is all about pushing you to recreate the boundaries on what you can and cannot do. I think that’s the same thing with an internship. Going into my internship at Salesnet I was nervous that I wouldn’t be able to complete the tasks that were assigned to me, just as when I enter a new class I am nervous about the syllabus. My solution to those butterflies is to dive in, head first and tackle that sucker.

The first month at Salesnet was a toe dip in the pool of what I would accomplish by the end of my internship. I started off with organizing their blog. I researched Salesnet’s partners and assigned what blog topics I thought appropriate for said partners. I then emailed the partners and asked if they would do the assigned blogs. Throughout the internship I have built relationships with not only Salesnet employees but also the partners. I have contacts in companies outside the CRM realm because of it; hopefully one day they will come in handy.

Another activity that was assigned to me at the beginning of the internship was to basically learn all the ins and outs of CRM. I have a huge notebook full of notes detailing the industry. I researched the competitors, what made Salesnet different, Salesnet’s past and the basics of what CRM is. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. Basically, CRM is an organizational tool that allows salespeople to improve and increase their sales. (See "What the Heck is CRM" post below).

Pod casting was also a big activity I was assigned. My supervisor handed me the people to contact and told me to research how to do a pod cast and what materials would be needed. I researched and did a presentation at one of the Monday morning meetings. The first pod cast I did was interviewing Roger Hamilton, he is a salesperson for Contact Science. I was also in charge of editing it. As of right now it is waiting to be posted on the website.

I wrote two press releases this summer. One introduces Salesnet’s presence on Twitter and the other talking about the new interface of the product, both of which will be disbursed in the next week. I not only wrote the Press Release but I also created a format for all future Press Releases. I was also instructed to try to get media coverage on a past press release, which was hard to do considering the Press release was from the beginning of May and I didn’t start work till June. I did post it to some wires and Salesnet now comes up on google alerts. Throughout this semester, I will be writing the Press Releases for the company in hopes of getting them more media coverage.

One of the main problems Salesnet was having was search engine ranking. In May, Salesnet launched a new website, but website search engine optimization was put on a back burner. I was assigned to research how to increase the search engine ranking. I made a presentation at a Monday morning meeting and basically told them what needed to be done. This was probably my favorite project of them all. I learned so much in the process and I was really treated as an employee rather than a lowly intern. I have also discovered I am a very visual presentation presenter. I don't like to just give information, I want charts and graphs to explain it, and justify the information.

Twitter was another one of my projects. I had to create a business plan and implement it. I also had to create a base of followers before we could send out an email through Marketo to Salesnet’s clients, and create said email in Marketo. Marketo is a Marketing Automation Vendor that Salesnet uses to help "spread the word" to its customers. Marketo was definitely a trial and error experience. I am told that this is actually a good program to know for future jobs, which considering how long it has taken me to get the hand of it, is a good thing.

The last thing that I worked on, and am still working on is how to do a Digital Press Kit. We shall see how this develops.

To sum up what I did outside of my internship:

-Visited Louisiana for my friend Emily's Wedding

-Took a Maymester Spanish Class

-Played on the Lake

-Went to White Water

-Visited a couple of friends in their home towns

- Went to the Redneck Games(that could be a whole post)