After applying and interviewing at several different places for both full-time, entry-level positions and internship positions, I eventually landed a great web marketing internship position at envisionit media, an interactive agency in Chicago. While I know a lot of people are quick to turn their shoulder at the thought of doing an internship straight out of college (especially if it’s unpaid!), I can honestly say that I’m glad that I did it. Based off my personal experiences as an intern this summer, here is a little breakdown of some the incredibly valuable things you can gain from interning as a college graduate:

WORK EXPERIENCE
I know this one is pretty obvious, but it’s certainly worth emphasizing. No matter what profession you are looking to go into, internships will help you build experience in your industry and help get your foot in the door…and let’s be honest, it will look pretty damn good on your resume too!

TRANSFERABLE SKILLS
In addition to gaining hands-on experience in your industry, internships allow you to really develop your skills in things like time management, meeting deadlines, following instructions, working in teams, working independently, problem solving, customer relations, communication, etc. These are all very valuable skills that will help you excel in your future career.

A TASTE OF THE REAL WORLD
Internships serve as a great transition into the real world. Being an intern gives you the opportunity to surround yourself in a professional work environment and really get a feel for what it’s like to work full-time at a company. In some cases internships are part-time and only require you to come in a few times a week, allowing you to gradually ease into a typical Monday-Friday work week. And although you might be “just an intern”, you should dedicate your time and effort to the position like it’s a full-time job…The company will likely take notice of your level of commitment!

PROFESSIONAL CONNECTIONS
A good internship experience can open the floodgates to great opportunities. While some companies may have a high success rate of bringing on their interns full-time, this is rarely a guarantee. In some cases, the company just might not have the capacity to keep you on…but don’t let this discourage you! Take advantage of the connections you’ve made with the people you worked with and use them as a resource for recommendations, advice, etc. Always keep in touch and check-in regularly with people you’ve worked with, because these are the people that just might help you land a job!

At my summer internship at envisionit media

GRADUATION
The University of Illinois College of Media held its convocation ceremony on Saturday, May 14th in the Huff Hall gymnasium on campus. The weather wasn’t great, but the atmosphere was still wonderful. While gathering before the ceremony, I passed the time by chatting with a handful of my fellow graduates. Some of them I had never met before, but we all shared a lot of similar experiences and feelings of both excitement and anxiety. When it finally came time to enter the gym filled with all our friends and families, all I could do was smile.

Dean Jan Slater opened the ceremony then introduced our student speaker Eddie Revis. Eddie spoke about all of the great accomplishments we’ve already achieved and how the College of Media has prepared us to succeed in the real world. Next was our guest speaker Tim McAuliff, former CEO of Petry Media Company. Tim’s speech focused on career advice and tips for personal success. And then finally, a total of 333 undergraduates and 33 graduate students walked across stage to receive our “diplomas” and celebrate a new beginning…

CELEBRATION
After graduation, I stuck around in Champaign for a few more days to hang out with my friends and soak in my last few days on campus. After moving out all my stuff from my apartment at school, I headed back home to the suburbs and helped prepare our house for my graduation party and for my relatives who were coming in from Canada. It was a super exciting time for my family because my older sister had also just graduated (She recently finished grad school at Illinois State University with a Specialist Degree in School Psychology).

Overall our combined graduation party was a great success. The weather cleared up just before our guests arrived and it ended up being a pretty gorgeous night. It was so great to celebrate with my relatives from out of town and my friends from both college and high school, some of which were people I haven’t seen in a really long time. Although the party is over, the graduation celebration still continues…In June, I’ll be going on a little Vegas Vacation with my sister and my parents (Hopefully it doesn’t turn out anything like the movie!)

A NEW BEGINNING
After my short family vacation, I will begin my summer internship at Envisionit Media, an interactive marketing agency in Chicago. I will be working as a web marketing intern with a focus on support and research in the areas of social media outlets, blog development, Search Engine Optimization, and Search Engine Marketing. I’m super excited about the opportunity to work at a great agency with big-name clients, and I’m looking forward to learning a lot about the industry and hopefully applying my experiences to a full-position this Fall.

Thank you to everyone who has offered their help to me during my job hunt, I couldn’t have gotten this far without you! I will definitely try to update the blog frequently throughout my summer internship, so please be sure to check back here again soon!

My latest social media project involved volunteering my knowledge of social media to help out Ebertfest, an annual film festival in Champaign, IL that is hosted by Pulitzer Prize winning film critic, Roger Ebert. Since Roger and several of his Ebertfest correspondents already had a pretty well established following on Twitter, I decided to focus my efforts on creating and managing an Ebertfest Twitter Page.

Thanks to some help from Roger (@ebertchicago) and “Follow Friday” (#FF), the page reached over 100 followers after second day of launch. Leading up to the event, I used the Twitter page to post about event information (i.e. schedule, panel discussions, ticket info, parking, etc.) as well as to generate online buzz about the event by participating in conversations, answering questions, and sharing relevant media content (i.e. blogs, videos, and photos from previous Ebertfests).

During the festival, one tool that I found particularly helpful was HootSuite. In order to actively keep up with all the Twitter activity about the festival, I organized columns on the HootSuite dashboard for @mentions as well as for the #Ebertfest hashtag. This allowed me to follow all the activity relating to Ebertfest from audience reactions to blog posts to new articles to photos. Another helpful feature was “scheduling tweets”, which was helpful at times when I wasn’t available to live-tweet in real-time.

Overall, creating and managing the Ebertfest Twitter account was a really great experience. I feel like it really gave me a tiny sneak peak of some of the many duties of a professional social media manager. I really enjoyed interacting with all the other festival attendees and engaging in conversations with other people who shared my passion for watching movies. Though I have passed on most of my duties to another U of I student for next year’s event, I will continue to offer my advice and insight about Ebertfest’s future social media efforts. While it is certainly great that I have helped Ebertfest establishing an active Twitter page and following, it is important to realize that there is still so much more that could be done with social media that can benefit the festival.

Before I started my fast, I read through all my unread e-mails, posted what I was doing on Facebook and Twitter, and did a couple other tasks online that I felt like I needed to do before I shut everything down. To avoid temptation, I turned off my phone and laptop and kept them tucked away from sight.

Luckily, the weather was really nice the day I chose to do my fast. Not being able to sit inside on my computer all day really helped motivate me to spend some time outdoors (something that I don’t do nearly as often as I should!). So I started out my fast by hanging out on my balcony with my roommates and playing my guitar outside for about 2 hours. During these 2 hours I found myself pointing out some of the things I wasn’t able to do during my fast. One thing my roommates and I do often is look up things on our phones when a certain question about a topic is brought up. It was a little weird not being able to do this because it has almost become habitual for me. Other common tasks I felt deprived of were text communication, checking the time (Why don’t I own a wristwatch!?), checking the weather, and checking my e-mail. Because I don’t use my phone that often for calls, it wasn’t too hard for me give up my phone. The hardest part by far was not having access to the Internet.

Without the Internet, I found myself passing the time by reading a book or magazine, playing my guitar, jotting assorted notes in my notebook, and cleaning my room. Although these are all productive tasks that I generally tend to neglect, I still found myself getting bored pretty easily. At one point I started writing a list of things I planned to do once I had access to new technologies again…and while I was sleeping, I had a dream that I was using social media! (Weird, I know.)

But despite a few difficulties, I eventually survived the entire 24 hours. Though I felt a little disconnected by not being able to check my email, social media accounts, or text messages, I realized that I really didn’t miss out on much. When I needed information such as the weather or the time, it was easy to just ask one of my roommates. Because my roommates are also constant consumers of new media technologies, I almost had to stay away from them at times to fully avoid being exposed to these technologies. While I certainly missed using my phone and checking my social media accounts, it was good to actually do activities that didn’t require any new media like reading and playing guitar. As much I love tweeting, blogging, and surfing the net, this assignment will hopefully encourage me to take a break from my beloved media every once in a while and take the time to read a book, play music, or embrace the outdoors!

“If you find yourself tweeting from the shower and updating Facebook while doing 85 on the freeway, we created this graphic to save your life. Click below or go here to view the full-size version.”

1.) STAY INFORMED
In an industry as new and dynamic as social media, it is important to keep on top of the latest social media news and trends. To do this, I’m constantly following sites like Mashable, Social Media Examiner, and Smartbrief on Social Media.

In addition, I’ve found that books like “The Social Media Marketing Book” by Dan Zarrella and “Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business” by Erik Qualman have served as great resources for learning about the basics of social media.

2.) UTILIZE YOUR SOCIAL CHANNELS
Another way I’ve been keeping up with social media news is by creating a Twitter List, which allows me to curate information from people who consistently share great social media content on Twitter. Here some other great suggestions on how to find great social media content.

Another great social media tool to utilize for job searching is LinkedIn. Lately, I’ve found LinkedIn to be a great way to network with other professionals and research different companies and industry players. Here is a great article about some of the DOs and DON’Ts of using LinkedIn.

3.) BUILD YOUR EXPERIENCE
It’s never too late to gain more experience in your field. A great way to show initiative is volunteer work. So far I’ve helped out a number of different people with their social media accounts including Kamberos Insurance (a friend’s independent insurance business), PrintEco (a local tech start-up), and the EatCU Food Drive (a local fund-raising event on campus).

I have also recently reached out to the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center and the director of Ebertfest 2011 about offering my assistance in managing their social media accounts and developing online marketing strategies.

4.) NETWORK, NETWORK, NETWORK
This is really a crucial element of the job search. I started the networking process by thinking of some people that might be able to help me out (former teachers, advisors, internship coordinators, etc.) and creating an Excel spreadsheet to organize all my contacts. From there I’ve been sending out a ton of e-mails, making a few phone calls, and meeting up in-person with several different industry professionals that have been offering some really good advice, putting me in contact with other helpful people and resources, and even sending out referrals to different agencies!

Recently I also attended a great social media networking event hosted by the Chicago Web 2.0 and Social Media Marketing Group. The keynote speaker, Ramon De Leon, was very informative and entertaining and the event served as a good opportunity to meet other social media enthusiasts. Here are some tips on networking that I will be sure to incorporate at events I might attend in the future.

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Huge thanks to: Scott Meis, Pat McCarthy, Stephanie Florence, Howard Berg, Aubree Holly, Lorrin Millette, and all the other awesome people I’ve been seeking out recently for providing some of the advice that helped inspire this blog post!

Check out some great article written about Twitter’s 5th anniversary below, as well as a video clip of Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone on Conan.

CNN – “5 Ways Twitter Changed How We Communicate“
Mashable – “Happy 5th Birthday, Twitter“
CBS News – “Twitter at 5: Powerful Social Force“

Biz Stone on Conan [video]

“The digital revolution has swept away many tree-based products…but the lowly business card, against all odds, is thriving.”

That is a quote from a great Washington Post article from last year about the staying power of business cards. Sure there are plenty of new digital resources such as Facebook, LinkedIn, or iPhone applications that can be used to quickly exchange and catalogue contact information, but as the article points out, something about business cards makes the exchange feel “more intimate and immediate.”

During last year’s Advertising Week at my school, U of I Alum (and fellow social media enthusiast!) Stephanie Florence spoke about her past experiences with the job hunt, and making business cards was one of her top suggestions. Initially I thought it was a bit silly for a college student, like myself, to have a business card. But after much more thought, I was finally convinced that having a business card as a student can actually serve as a very useful tool for networking and it can really help you stand out in the job search. It demonstrates to the people you network with that you are serious about getting a job after graduation and that you are beginning to think like a professional.

So earlier this week, I finally decided to design my own business card on 123print.com. The site is very easy to use and the prices are very affordable. An order of 100 business cards was only $8.95, but I added on another $6 to have them printed on recycled paper. I ordered them on Monday and received them today (Saturday) with no extra charge for shipping! Here is a picture of how it turned out:

Super Size Me documentarian, Morgan Spurlock is at it again. This time he is tackling the world of product placement, advertising, and marketing in his upcoming film, POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. The film addresses the product placement and corporate culture that has taken over film by becoming the subject and making its own sponsorship the entire plot. The film was shown at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and it will be released in theaters on April 22nd. Check out the trailer below:

For more information about POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, check out their official website here. Also check out this great montage video of all the most noticeable product placements in movies (courtesy of Oliver Noble from FilmDrunk):

Source: The Huffington Post

I decided to join the cause this past weekend and launched a little charity campaign of my own. Through Twitter, I started a “Movie Picture Game” in which I would post a screen-shot from a movie and my followers had to guess the movie. For every correct answer I would donate $1 to Red Cross for their efforts to help Japan. After eight rounds of the game through Friday and Saturday, I ended up raising $32!

With social media, we all have a tool to help spread awareness and show support for important world issues. Please consider making an online donation yourself at RedCross.org or text REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation. In addition, here are several other ways in which you can help.