Summer internships are a chance to find out about your strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes in this wide field of Marketing. The scope and dimensions of marketing are changing, the strategies that worked before are simply not clicking today and sometimes the entire reach depends on a critical mass of appropriate keywords. My internship helped me understand the upgraded, modern and overwhelming Era of Digital and Social Media Marketing and also gave me a hands-on experience of the necessary skills a marketer should possess.
It all began with a campus opening from Bewakoof Brands Ltd., one company project and two interviews later I landed myself as an intern in the company. I was greeted by the company HR as soon as I came to work and he made sure that I was introduced to everyone. With a brief meeting with our mentor, we were immediately assigned tasks and were treated as employees of the company. If you are wishing for an induction week at a startup, then forget it. The job description was exhaustive and included the following:
- Handling social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat.
Search engine optimisations for the company
- ORM
- Backlinking
- Website product sorting (Maintaining the look and feel of the website and the mobile app)
- Handling Facebook Ads
- Campaign creation and consumer interaction
- Bank Affiliations
We were two interns from IMT and met three other interns, two from MICA and one, who came a week later, from KJ Somaiya. Our mentor supervising us gave us a brief summary of how Bewakoof Brands works the crux of which included an open door policy, healthy work environment and a fast-paced decision making culture. The platforms given to us were rotated regularly amongst us on a timely basis and we got to understand how the audiences of different platforms react to and consume content that is tailor-made for that platform which is as follows:
- Facebook: Gags, memes, product ads, campaigns and competitions
- Twitter: Gifs that follow brand language, campaigns and regular competitions
- Instagram: A variety of posts that followed a symmetry on the page along with memes
- Snapchat: Stories connected to office, work culture, employees, product launches and model photoshoots
This is not an exhaustive list as a lot of new things were tried and tested on these platforms to improve user engagement.
Our other duties mentioned above involved:
- Intensive keyword research and relevant content generation that helps customers and in turn improves organic reach of the company
- Answering queries put up by customers
- Brainstorming and initiating campaigns that revolved around important days such as Mother’s day etc.
- Participate and contribute in identifying fashion trends and help bring new product designs to the customers
Being a fresher, working at Bewakoof taught me a lot about work culture and demands of the industry from a marketer. For 1st year students who are about to go for their internship, I would like to end my article with the following tips:
- Keep asking questions but don’t pester as your mentor just like mine would be preoccupied with a lot of work. Try to find out a common free slot and ask all your queries then
- Never take a day for granted. By this, I mean that you are interning to learn as much as you can so keep working, don’t slack off and ask for more work if you are done with what you were given
- Talk to everyone in the office to gain from their experience and meanwhile learning from their role in the company
- Take initiative and be bold in introducing new executable ideas, this habit of being proactive and creative thinking helps a long way
- Don’t get too attached to your ideas and always be in a position to disrupt yourself for making way for a new line of thinking
To summarise with what I was able to learn from my mentor; always try to ask for more be it questions or work, be practical in your approach and never expect to hit it off at the first strike as good results come from hard work and ingenuity and rarely from luck.