A few months ago I would’ve told you that “I’m not familiar with social media”, “I don’t like it because there’s too much drama” or that “I don’t use it”. This would be a lie though, I had a Twitter, but I rarely tweeted anything myself. It wasn’t until early June 2019, where I was required to create an account on other social platforms: Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+.
I still find that I’m not using social media all that often, mainly just to browse, but I’m learning a lot about social media marketing and why it is important. I currently have a summer internship with RyePoint Internet Marketing, where I am learning about social media marketing, along with other types of marketing and website design.
During the middle of my junior year of high school, I went to the career development teacher and asked about how I can obtain an internship. I continuously went back to her office, week-after-week, because there are not many graphic design companies looking for high schoolers in our area. She was very helpful in helping me find one and her efforts were successful.
RyePoint Internet Marketing was the only business that contacted me for an interview and I’m really glad they did. Without this internship, I would probably be sitting at home watching 123netflix all summer long, but I’m going to the office and learning more and more every day. I went into my first day thinking I was going to be a Graphic Design intern, but I was surprised. I am learning a bit of everything: website design, search engine optimization, creation of graphics, blogging, and social media marketing.
Nowadays the majority of people are on social media, whether they care to admit it or not. Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, I can go on and on about the different platforms, but ultimately, they have an account in at least one of these, for me, that one was Twitter. During the first few weeks of my internship, I had the wonderful opportunity to attend an FV Small Biz Connect meeting, where the whole topic of that night was to discuss social media and tips the different businesses have.
I practically went into it “blind”, but I had my tip ready. I was mainly interested in hearing how other businesses use social media and what I could learn from them or their mistakes. I was the youngest person sitting in the meeting, at the time 16, and I could already tell that most of the people there expected me to know the most about the different social platforms, mainly because I am a teenager. Wrong. I was there to learn from them, surprisingly and no one expected it though.
As for some of the tips that were discussed, mine was about adding relevant images because I know that I’m drawn towards posts that have pictures and not just lines and lines of text, as most people are. There were 8 people at this meeting and all of them agreed with me, but I could tell just by their reactions, they were expecting me to have a better insight just because I was much younger than them.
Another tip from the meeting was to have a schedule or at least stay consistent when posting, so people know what to expect out of the post. For example, some people post Motivation Monday or Throwback Thursday posts that relate to their business. This may seem obvious, but not many know that posting regularly could help bring traffic to their website/page.
This meeting was almost a month ago and since then I have learned more about social media. I have been “promoted” to a social media “manager” of the RyePoint facebook page, this is where I can post regularly on the page to be sure that when search engines see his page, that it is optimized. I have not posted anything on the Facebook page yet, but my role is to be sure that there is a post at least once or twice a week. Most likely it will be a summary of one of the blog posts I have previously written, including a link to the blog itself. There will be other posts in addition to those, but we just haven’t discussed what they would be yet.
In addition to the FV Small Biz meeting, I also have the opportunity to be a part of the Fuquay-Varina Chamber of Commerce Marketing Committee meetings monthly. As a part of this, we discuss how we can promote the GO>FV app, through social media. There are regular videos posted on Facebook, YouTube, and other social media pages that bring a lot of people to download the app Mocospace. Even though there have only been 3 videos posted, we have noticed that every time something is done to promote the app, there is a peak in downloads.
Just like most things, if there is a lot of information out on the internet, the more people see it causing more downloads or clients. I am grateful to even have the opportunity to go and attend these meetings which seem important. All the people that are a part of this marketing meeting are all Fuquay-Varina Chamber members and they are letting me experience what a meeting looks and sounds like.
I agree that without social media, businesses may not have the same amount of traffic to their websites like running 3 unblocked games. Social media marketing/advertising is a cheaper way to show people what your business is and what you are all about. Without a doubt, getting clients is every company’s goal, so an outstanding social media presence is going to be very beneficial. It’s not likely that someone will return to a page if it has not been updated in a while. The business that updates regularly is more likely to get the most clients.
On average, people spend nearly 2 hours (116 mins!) on social media daily! Most businesses do not realize this or take advantage of it but some businesses do realize this and many of them Buy Instagram Followers to get clients. I have learned a lot as an outcome of having an unpaid summer internship in high school, compared to working at a fast-food restaurant for minimum wage. This will help me decide what I want to major in college, but as of right now, I’m still undecided. I know for a fact that without this summer’s experience, I wouldn’t have learned about the importance of social media.
Read more: What To Do If Your Internet Connection Does Not Connect Via Personal Hotspot?
