Marketing, Social Media, and Art Internship
At Animas High School one of the graduation requirements is to complete a 3 week long LINK Internship. That requires you to complete 90-120 hours, have a final LINK project, and present your LINK at all school exhibitions and Transitional Presentations Of Learning.
For my LINK internship I interned with a local artist, Hannah Wilson at Hannah Wilson Art. She is a landscape artist as well as does live wedding paintings. Hannah's work is in a number of shops around Colorado, such as Animas Chocolate Company and The 9318 Collective in Silverton. She has been doing live wedding paintings in and around the four corners for 2 years now and has been working to expand that aspect of her business. Along with all of that she also sells prints, originals, stickers, etc on her website. She is a strong entrepreneur and has created a way to sustain her creative life style throw her art that she loves. This is inspiring and I loved working by her side over the three weeks.
Throughout my LINK experience I was thrown into a wide variety of tasks, everything from website coding to social media management. I developed both technical skills, while also growing as a person in the workplace. I was challenged during my internship, forced to adapt and learn new things on a whim. Before starting this internship, I was fairly familiar with what it takes to successfully market a brand and what it takes to have a positive image in a community. Along with photography and photo editing skills that came in handy. For example, my mentor allowed me to go take photos to market a hat she sells. I had to do the entire process from start to finish, each and every step. From finding models, taking the photos, picking them out, editing, and uploading them, then adding them to her Instagram, Pinterest, and website to show off the hats. This taught me the entire process of doing marketing campaign to target a certain audience.
There was a great deal of independence that came with having a link internship. You had to be accountable for where you were supposed to be and when, making sure you have reliable transpiration, and communicate with your mentor about any surprises or interferences that came up. Another reasonability we has was making sure you were progressing on your link project over the course of the 3 weeks.
One of the largest challenges I experienced during my LINK internship was when I was working with embedding a Pinterest Tag into the code of Hannah's website. I did this to track content engagement between Pinterest and her website. When I began to install this tag everything went well and it seemed to be working. Then a few hours later I checked to see if it was tracking what it needed, and it was not. This took me many days to fix, I had to reach out to Pinterest, watch videos, follow articles, and experiment with the code to see what would work. This was quite the challenge although it made me have to be persistent and work on my problem solving skills. I couldn't give up and just had to keep trying new ways to fix the code, until it tracked what I needed it to. Although there were many times I wanted to give up, I didn't want to let my mentor down so I continued on.
Due to the fact that Hannah Wilson Art is a one woman show, having an extra hand in this season was extremely helpful to the success of various events. With the sun coming out and melting away all of the winter, wedding season is springing to life, Hannah had a lot on her plate. Having an extra set of eyes to work on all of the loose ends, allowed Hannah to do what was most important to her business. While also allowing me to develop new skills and learn about a new field of work, it was a mutually beneficial relationship.
This internship allowed me to see what it takes to start and run a small business from the ground up, while also showing me what online marketing is all about. I really enjoyed my time working with Hannah, although I don't believe that is for me. It made me realize that personally, I would want to work with more people and be able to collaborate with different people and ideas everyday. So owning and operating a small business all by myself is not for me. Although I did discover that I enjoy and excel at social media marketing and branding. I find a lot of interest in that field and how it is going to expand and shape the coming years of our society. I would not want to do that for the rest of my life, there is too much of a pattern and simplicity, I would need more excitement and challenge in my life.
Over the course of my LINK I had my hands in a number of different areas from learning how to code websites to hanging up art in a gallery. For my LINK project I wanted to represent all of the different aspects of my experience. Therefor I made a collection of everything I have done in this presentation below.
Over the course of my LINK I had my hands in a number of different areas from learning how to code websites to hanging up art in a gallery. For my LINK project I wanted to represent all of the different aspects of my experience. Therefor I made a collection of everything I have done in this presentation below.