Intern’s Corner with Taylor: Shadowing Nick Rowlett
Welcome to my corner! I’m Taylor Helson, the Digital Content Intern at Beasley Media Group in Charlotte for the summer.
It’s 2018, we all do a lot of scrolling, liking, reposting, tagging and sending emojis literally anywhere they’ll fit. I, however, think I have you beat with this internship. As the ~intern,~ I usually write posts for each station’s websites, which I then shamelessly plug on the respective Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook accounts. Outside of the usual writing, publishing and scheduling posts, I have gotten many opportunities to meet, shadow and learn from awesome, charismatic radio personalities.
This week, however, I have been shadowing and collaborating with the digital team. I spent some time in what seems like the design bat cave today with graphic designer, Nick Rowlett. Nick uses Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to create content for socials and web ads. He explained to me that the first step in creating content is recognizing who your audience is and adjusting to their expectations and preferences. He used the example of Apple to get this point across, saying that the world knows about Apple because of their sleek, plain, black, white, and sometimes grey aesthetic. If one were to change up an Apple ad and use colors and fonts that pop, it wouldn’t please their audience.
Nick and I tackled a Fourth of July graphic that could be used for socials and he showed me the different rules and restrictions for creating ads on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Because of Facebook’s “20% Rule”, ads are limited to how much text can be included. This means Nick has to create content with an understanding of priority of text. He explained to me that while he understands it very clearly now, some clients do not. Nick said it is better to learn your client and communicate these expectations in a way that matches their needs.
In order to come up with this graphic, we both agreed on taking whatever came, easily, to mind when we heard “Fourth of July”, and tossing it immediately.
I explained how I didn’t want this post to be the typical bright red, white and blue post that simply says “Happy 4th!” and I didn’t want to settle for a cringe-worthy pun either. Instead, Nick instructed me to choose something that can trigger a sense of emotion, nostalgia, or a specific memory in an audience’s mind. I decided that out of all the themes and ideas I came up with, many can associate fun sparklers to a childhood Fourth of July celebration.
Nick started clicking away and pressing keys faster than my intern brain could comprehend and soon enough, I had this beautiful graphic in front of me.
My biggest takeaways from my experience shadowing Nick were to stay organized, embrace weirdness, and exercise your imagination and creativity often. These are three things that can also be applied to a position like mine. It is essential, as a writer, to add your own flare and make your personality apparent in each piece. Nick uses his flare and personality to create graphics and content that audiences can relate to and think about, rather than just scroll past. It’s my goal to use these takeaways in each opportunity I am given to write, moving forward.
Taylor Helson – High Point University
Digital Content Intern – Charlotte, NC
