Making A Career Out Of Twitter

Throughout my college career, I have had three very different internships, ranging from an internship at a top designer in the fashion industry, an internship at a love and relationship website, and now, one in the hospitality industry. I currently intern three full days a week for a company called The Blaq Group.

The Blaq Group is a full service public relations and social media marketing agency for the hospitality industry. As the social media intern, I manage Twitter and Facebook accounts for 6 different restaurants, as well as any special events we may be hosting.

Every morning, I respond to tweets or Facebook comments on all the walls, and then post new status updates or new tweets. I have to do at least 3 tweets and 3 Facebook posts a day for each restaurant. I use a special Twitter platform that allows me to schedule posts, so I can write a tweet at 11am that will actually be tweeted out at 4pm. This allows me to focus on other tasks for the rest of my day.

As the social media intern, I need to be an expert on all current social media platforms and all developing ones. We do not only use Twitter and Facebook to promote the restaurants, so I need to be aware of all the do’s and don’ts of Tumblr, Blogger, and YouTube. My days in and out of the office are spent learning the best practices of blog sites, Pinterest, Foursquare, and more.

It’s a lot of fun to tweet and post on Facebook as a job, but it can actually be pretty challenging. Every tweet and Facebook post must be different and unique, so my creativity skills are constantly tested. It is also important that all posts get our audiences engaged. The amount of likes, reply tweets, and comments my posts receive is one of the ways my boss can measure my performance.

This internship has been tremendously valuable to help me in my career. Social media marketing is a relatively new and rapidly developing field. You cannot really learn about social media marketing in any textbooks.  Every couple months there is a new social platform, so it is impossible for textbooks to always be up to date. It is something you have to get first-hand experience doing to become a master at.

Social media marketing is something I would like to make a career out of, so having this internship experience will prove to be extremely helpful.