This is the next in a series of posts by recipients of the 2018 Career Services Summer Funding Grant. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they’ve been spending their summer. You can read the entire series here.
This entry is by Anna Walzinska, COL ’20
My internship experience was a bit different than others, as I worked remotely. I live in the central Connecticut area and there really weren’t many marketing, communications, or social media opportunities, but I thankfully found a social media internship with Everly Mag through Penn’s Handshake portal.
Everly Mag is a digital publication geared towards teens and tweens. It promotes positivity and features young stars that act as role models to their young fans. I thought this would be perfect for me since I’m a communication major and I had just completed COMM 245: Teens and Screens where I learned about how teens interact with media and what effects they have on them.
The founder of Everly Mag seemed to like my experience and passion, so she made me the leader of the social media internship team, so I was the pinpoint person for other interns and delegated tasks. First I was in charge of just the Twitter page, where I wanted the account to have a unique feel from the rest of its presence, so I made a live tweeting schedule featuring shows that are relevant to the target audience. I also started to make graphics for the publication, which was a very rewarding experience. I’m no graphic designer, but I used to avoid doing all types of art like the plague, so it felt great discovering new ways to make visually appealing images that the audience enjoyed and interacted with.
After several weeks, it was time to really step up and be a leader. The publication’s founder was getting married and going on her honeymoon, so I became responsible for all social media pages, including the publication’s Instagram which had over 15,000 followers. I was now independently thinking of strategies to increase engagement and get the publication’s message across. I was also interacting with the social media influencers who did takeovers on the page, promoting the blog posts from the main website onto the Instagram stories, and continuing my other responsibilities.
Because I succeeded with all this, my boss decided that I can continue posting on the Instagram. I liked having an influence on a publication that had such a great reach with young teens and it felt good to have them react positively to something I posted, whether it was through an interactive poll, a campaign featuring positive teen stars, or even just a silly meme.
It’s a misconception that remote internships are easier or require less work than other opportunities. Remote work is really what you make of it because it is so independent most of the time and requires constant communication with your team. I wanted to put my all into Everly Mag, so I made sure I went to a local library every weekday and worked on it. It didn’t even feel like an internship, it felt like an actual job because I was so invested and was able to have my ideas put into action. The funding award from Career Services made it possible for me to be so dedicated to this internship, and I am extremely grateful. I learned so much about social media strategy and plan on continuing my involvement with Everly Mag into the fall semester.
