Like many other IIM participants I expected to do summer internship in a big company which will give me a stamp of big brand. Like others I also wanted to leverage my internship company’s reputation during final placement. But few got everything whatever they want. So yes I did not get a chance to do internship in any multinational or for that matter any big brand company. Rather I did my internship in a start-up working on digital marketing. I did not have any expectation prior to joining but whatever I learnt and experienced during those 2 months were noteworthy and much above than my expectation. It helped me to find a new interest area where I really want to start my career. So I wanted to share my extremely enjoyable and lovable journey and this write up is an entry for the Summer Saga 2014 Contest.
Outline of the project:
I worked as Project evangelist for a project
named Adoption of Social Media in Adoption (ASMA ) in Digital Marketing domain. This is India’s first ever comprehensive study on how Indian academic institutes are adopting various social media platforms for various business functionalities be it for promotion, placement or admission. I worked this project from scratch; it was more like my baby where I am the whole project owner.
For this project first we conducted a survey among India’s best B schools which included IIM Kozhikode, SP Jain, IIM Udaipur, SIBM Pune, IIM Trichi, K.J Somaiya, SCMHRD, IIT Roorkee total 62 institutes. Promotion of this survey was done mainly through Facebook, LinkedIn, Blog and Twitter.
Also I conducted interview with
Dr AK Sengupta (Founder and Convener, Higher Education Forum (HEF), Professor
Malhar Pangrikar (Asst. Professor – Marketing & Head – Student Development Section, Branding & Media) and asked them how their institutes are using social media to promote the brand, any innovative initiatives they have taken and many other aspects of social media adoption.
After getting the survey result I did a trend analysis of the adoption and find out the best practices followed by various institutes while adopting social media. This findings were then compiled as a report similar as Ernst& Young ‘s ‘Social Media Marketing , India Trends Study 2013’.For this report I was only the content writer and designer. After some real brainstorming and hard work I completed the report successfully.
Also we got approval from Dr. AK Sengupta to publish the report in Higher Education Forum.
Most challenging aspect of the job:
Being appointed as Product Evangelist I was expected to know everything about how a product is developed and promoted. I found few things very challenging in my project:
Completion of the Survey:
I needed to make sure that the survey is filled by a person who is handling marketing aspects of the institutes. As we know most of the institutes are not that progressed in social media and they don’t have any clue of how social media can be used for their business purpose. So it needed lots of effort, personal communication and promotion to convince them to fill the survey. But ultimately our effort paid off and 62 institutes filled the survey some of them are Tier1 institutes.
Writing content for the report :
Writing content for a report which is going to be marketed to
Professional institutes (B Schools) needed professional content writing skill. I did not have any kind of exposure to that previously. But thanks to my managers for their encouragement and timely feedback, I completed the report successfully and it is going to be published in a platform like ‘Higher Education Forum (HEF)’.
Adopting with the start up culture:
Being an ex employee of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) I was more adapted to more organized and hierarchical management. But the organization where I worked the scenario was different altogether. There the culture was more unorganized it was more like a family. So I took some time to mould myself in that culture. But one thing I am sure, I enjoyed every moment of my journey there.
Most enjoyable aspect of the job:
Freedom at workplace and work:
I enjoyed my work a lot which gave me ample scope to showcase my creativity be it content writing (for report, various social media platforms), promotion, advertisement design, conducting interview or conducting survey. I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of these works. My manager gave me total freedom to take any decision; I was the project owner in the true sense.
Excellent management team:
This is another aspect where I feel I am lucky enough to get such a great management team who encourage you in every step and don’t stop you to take any decision. Also there constant guidance about considering the business aspects before taking any decision helped be to learn that creativity and business should go hand in hand. This was a great lesson.
Organization Environment:
As I mentioned before my organization has more like a family culture with mere hierarchy and organizational restriction. Our bonding was not limited only within organization but beyond that. Our outing for X-Man movie with whole team, team party and birthday celebrations are few such examples.
Young workforce:
The whole workforce was a bunch of young people in the age group 22-34. Few of them were pursuing MBA along with us and few had 1-2 year work experience. So it was easier to discuss with them any idea without any hesitation and taking their suggestion. They were colleagues who were my friends also.
Greatest learning:
During this project I came to know various aspects of product development. I was exposed to various aspects of digital marketing like SEO analysis;
Social media marketing .This is an area where currently I am genuinely interested. Thanks to my internship.
Also connecting creativity with business was another important aspect. As at the end in business the result speaks.
I somewhat understood the start-up organizations dynamics. As once my manager said start-up is objective driven, there discipline hardly matter what matters are passion for the work and fighting spirit. I believe my summer internship gave me opportunity to live that passion. For that thanks to those 2 months I spent as summer intern at
‘InnoServ Solutions Pvt Ltd’.