From Classrooms to Client Lists

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For the past 3 months, I’ve spent my final college summer break interning here at Black Twig. As an integrated marketing communications major at Ole Miss, working at an agency has been the perfect way to explore every aspect of what I’m learning in school across a wide variety of different industries.

I’ve seen a full picture of everything agency life entails, and I now feel much better prepared to enter my senior year and work in marketing, communications, and public relations.

While school has taught me well and I’ve had other hands-on roles that gave me experience in marketing and communications in the past, an internship prepared me for the “real world” of post-grad life in a way nothing before could.

Working here for just a few months taught me lessons I could not have learned in class and wouldn’t fully make sense unless put into practice.

Where Press Releases Actually Go

A major part of this internship that helped me gain a better understanding of what working in public relations is like was being able to put what I’ve learned about media relations into practice.

In classes, we studied PR theories, analyzed campaign case studies, and learned how to write press releases. While this was valuable to an extent, I never saw a full picture of what happened once the release was written or how companies actually execute these campaigns.

The pieces came together when I learned how to build media lists and pitch stories to those reporters, earning our clients real media placements. Participating in the process firsthand allowed me to more fully understand what engages reporters about a story and how different clients want their brand to be perceived in the media.

This job is hands-on, and it’s tough to get a full view of what that looks like from inside the classroom. Unlike the journalism side of things, where it’s easy to write a story in the environment of a student newsroom, student-run agencies are not usually securing media placements using PR software or getting the real experience of managing different clients’ needs, so I’m grateful to have this real experience before even graduating.

Every Client is Different

Another way interning at an agency gave me a unique perspective that a classroom or working in-house somewhere wouldn’t give me was getting to see how all kinds of companies need help with their branding, and they might all have a different strategy to see results.

In school, I’ve created digital marketing campaign ideas for local restaurants and represented small clients at a student-run agency, but these types of companies don’t even scratch the surface for what’s out there.

Black Twig has clients in industries from construction and architecture to insurance and banking to non-profits and associations, and despite their differences, they all need to communicate who they are and what their brand is to their target audiences.

Whether it’s a B2B company focused on boosting their visibility in trade publications or a non-profit trying to build their social media presence, it’s important to see how various different industries can utilize a PR and marketing agency’s expertise.

Social Media is a Numbers Game

My perspective on social media work has also shifted after interning at an agency. Social media is often a part of the field that is looked down upon as something anyone could easily do, but it’s become clear that there’s real strategy behind social media decisions, and no approach is the same from brand to brand.

Even slight changes in copy on the same post can vary between platforms to achieve the intended messaging and resonate with the right audience. Following a certain trend could work well with one brand’s audience and completely fall flat on another.

The analytics side of social media also proves there’s more to it than meets the eye.

Understanding which engagement metrics matter for different clients with different goals is something I never thought I would find so interesting, and it proves social media managers at an agency put a lot of thought into the decisions they make. It’s more of a numbers game than I ever would have imagined.

Highly detailed reports are created each quarter to provide a visual representation of top performing posts, what’s leading people to the website, the types of people who are engaging with the content, and more. There is a whole lot more to it than just increasing likes and comments.

The Balancing Act of Agency Life

Finally, what may seem like an obvious takeaway is that it’s almost impossible to understand the ins and outs of daily agency life without experiencing it.

I thought I understood it well as someone who took a student agency class in school and has a dad who worked for a similar-sized PR agency almost my whole life, but it’s hard to grasp all the moving parts of different clients and types of work without doing it firsthand.

Day to day, I was researching for one client then building a media list for another and then making Black Twig social media posts, among many other tasks. While there are people focused on different parts of different projects because they specialize in certain areas, no one at an agency just has one task or one client. It’s a balancing act of many moving parts, and it challenged me to switch tasks and work to develop different parts of my skillset.

Overall, I’m grateful that Black Twig gave me a chance to soak in life at an agency this summer and taught me so much along the way. I’ve grown as a marketer and communicator, and I feel so much more prepared and secure in what my career could look like post-grad.

I’ve had the chance to collaborate, work independently, develop my writing skills, learn new skills and software, and become more confident as a whole.

Thank you, Black Twig!