Today I started my internship. Last night I was so excited I couldn’t sleep. The good thing about this being a social media internship is that I feel I can offer a lot – I’ve been on twitter a lot since being unemployed and so picked up a lot of tips on how to increase your audience. As I also found out, there is no full time social media employee, so I would have (pretty much) full control of the social media accounts, which is a lot of responsibility for an intern!
This morning I was welcomed to work with a 12 page document (!!) detailing the ins and outs of the job – the procedure, my targets, my tasks, which was a bit overwhelming for something so simple. There was so much I didn’t understand, and at the time my boss wasn’t in to ask for help. I decided not to worry about the jargon, and to clear my desk (which was full of old papers). My first question (embarrassingly) was ‘How do you turn the computer on?’.
After my boss came into work and clarified what the jargon meant, we found that all the passwords to the social media accounts didn’t work, and the only one I could access was the Twitter account. So all I did all day was respond to trending topics, find new audiences and tweet at the designated times. I was so worried whether I was doing enough work, whether I was doing it right, if I was varying the tweet content enough for our followers. ‘Maybe I’m not cut out for such a good job after all.’
It felt quite lonely too, because there was no other employee doing the social media accounts that I could talk to. The producer and researchers were off doing their own thing so I sat alone at the table. Once or twice we spoke and made passing comments, but it was hard being new and the only person doing the job.
Nevertheless, for the account I gained 50 odd followers and tweeted 8ish times, and my boss seemed pleased with me. Not bad for a first day I guess.
