Intern’s Corner with Taylor: Signing Off!
As I sit in the Intern’s Corner for one last time, I am able to reflect on the most fun, educational, hilarious seven-week experience as the Digital Content Intern.
When applying for this internship, Alexis Zarycki, the Digital Content Manager, asked me what I was looking to improve in, learn about, or focus on during my time as an intern. I told her I wanted to get my hands on as much as I could in my short amount of time, regardless of if it involved writing. Ask and you shall receive, right Alexis?
I have had the opportunity to write and publish posts on six different websites and include my own byline on each one. Over 70 posts have my name on them and being able to see viewers react and share my work has been incredibly rewarding.
Outside of the regular blogpost-writing, I was also able to manage each station’s social media accounts, including the Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook accounts. This allowed me to get creative and fun when promoting On-Air talent or events that were happening in Charlotte.
I was able to shadow several on-air hosts, multimedia designers, photographers and videographers and collaborate on fun projects that would later be posted across each station.
Occasionally, artists stop in to hang out and sing a couple songs as a part of their radio tours. During the time I was here, I was able to meet singer-songwriters like Nina Nesbitt, Rita Ora, Madison Beer, Kim Petras, and Everette. I was able to compose interview questions that would be asked and answered with Nina Nesbitt right in front of me.
I attended events like the Jazz Fest and Kiss Girl’s Night at Rooftop 210 in order to see the execution of the promotional management department, as well as give live updates on the socials.
I created each station’s weekly newsletters from scratch in order to give subscribers a dose of the most important or engaging content that had been posted on the website.
Despite my fear of math and analytics, I had the opportunity to do Social Media Recaps, which inform the customers of the interactivity that takes place when content is posted for their business. The math was not too scary, thankfully. Just some simple addition!
To commence my internship, I was asked to create a post that could go across all stations, including writing and video. I decided to take this opportunity to capture what a day in the office is like from a perspective like mine. During my last week, I spent pretty much all of my time coming up with the idea, pairing employees to TV characters, taking pictures that captured their personalities well, and a video that captured the essence of the entire place.
Overall, I have learned that the most important lessons come about from my mistakes. The Charlotte team has done an incredible job of guiding me, critiquing me, and encouraging me throughout this learning experience. As I reflect on this journey, there were times that I had to step outside of my comfort zone, times that I had to come up with ten ideas, only to cross them all out, and times that I felt like my brain and creativity had left the building long before it was time for me to leave. Those times are so minuscule in hindsight because as I pack up my things for the last time at Beasley, I know I am so much more confident in content creation and publishing than I ever imagined.
I cannot thank the people I had the pleasure to work with enough for instilling this confidence and drive to do more and do better, inside of me. This internship only confirmed and emphasized how passionate I am about writing and creating content. I’m looking forward to more opportunities like this in the future!
Taylor Helson – High Point University
Digital Content Intern – Charlotte, NC
