“Managing social media must be quite an easy and fun job” I told myself before starting my internship at The Student Hotel (TSH) in September 2021. Let’s say I got that half correct: my tasks as social media intern were often fun and I truly enjoyed the projects I worked on; however, this job is far from easy. I could have never expected the amount of work hidden behind an aesthetically pleasing Instagram feed or the copy of a LinkedIn post. Being a social media intern does not mean only posting appealing content or responding to DMs and my 6 months at TSH taught me all of the important tasks behind this job. From data analysis to translating marketing campaigns into engaging content, I experienced all the fun and creative aspects as well as the tedious and repetitive tasks.
During my time at TSH I also got the chance to experience more than my designated responsibilities and I worked on my own personal project starting from scratch. Together with other interns from the marketing department, we created a post for TSH blog titled “Reasons to study abroad in Europe” for which we worked relentlessly in order to create a brief for the copywriter, lead generation assets, and social media content. The biggest part of the project – for which I take great pride – was the creation of a YouTube video with interviews from students talking about their experience studying abroad. Despite the low budget and some colleagues’ skepticism of our content-creations skills, we decided to produce the video all by ourselves. We had no professional background and encountered many bumps on the way, but we had a lot of determination: we put our vision down on paper (or better, google docs), borrowed equipment from friends, organized the shoot, and edited the footage. The process was long and challenging, but I learned a lot. For example, sometimes it is essential to voice your opinions as well as concerns. When working in a team everyone will have different positions on how to achieve the desired result: it is important to speak up and listen at the same time. It was very rewarding to see the final product published and receive positive feedback even from the most doubting colleagues. You can find the blog post and video here: https://www.thestudenthotel.com/blog/5-reasons-to-study-abroad-in-europe/
I leave this internship at TSH having learned so much about myself and what I aspire to be. No, I did not have a sudden epiphany and found my dream career path. However, I learned that I want my future job to involve creative thinking; I want to be surrounded by inspiring colleagues that challenge me on a daily basis; I want to work with the public, whether that could be in events, creating video content, or engaging with an online audience. I am taking all of these valuable learnings with me now that I approach the end of my Bachelor’s degree and hope to stay true to them wherever life will take me.
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