I did my internship at Wailea Realty and my mentor was Liza Pierce. I really enjoyed doing it. During my internship, I learned a lot including what I originally set out to learn. The thing I set out to learn was how to promote a product or business via social media. I learned how to promote a business through social media by doing things like writing blog posts, editing videos, writing a newsletter, and picking out pictures for Instagram posts. I also learned the importance of tagging posts. I helped with tagging blog posts and Youtube videos so people would easily find the posts and they would be led to Wailea Realty’s social media accounts.
Liza and I met up in person 3 days a week. On Tuesdays and Fridays, I went to Wailea Realty’s office at The Shops at Wailea. On Wednesdays, I went to another office that Liza and some other people worked at on Wednesdays. That other office is located near where the old Kihei Charter High School campus is. On all three days, I would stay from 9:30 to 4:30. The internship took three weeks to complete. Liza and I talked about different ways to promote on social media. A person can use different social media platforms like Instagram, Youtube, or Facebook to promote a product or business. While I did learn a variety of things, my number one takeaway from my internship is that promoting something on social media can be difficult and it takes time but stick with it and be patient. Liza would sometimes mention how many subscribers a video brought in on Youtube or how many followers a post on Instagram brought it. At times it would be close to ten but other times it would only be one or two. Even though posts would sometimes only bring in one, Wailea Realty wouldn’t get discouraged by that. They have stuck to making regular posts on all of their social media accounts and now they have a good amount of followers on multiple platforms. A skill I used during my internship was thinking and problem-solving skills. I made some posts on Google Business but the pictures for the posts have to be a certain size. Sometimes the pictures I wanted to use would be too small so I would have to find a picture that was still related to the post and that would fit the size requirement. Another skill I used was communication skills. Before starting my internship I communicated with Liza through email to figure out when I would start. I went to the Mainland in June so I had to communicate with Liza about the days I would be gone and when I came back. I also used interpersonal skills. If a problem came up when I was doing a task I would tell Liza about it and we would work together to find a solution. I met my internship goals by closely listening to what my mentor had to say and by completing a task correctly. Liza would show me how to do a task and she explained why they do a certain thing like putting a link to one of their blogs posts in the description of their Youtube videos that go into more detail about the topic talked about in the video. By having things like that explained I learned why little things like tagging and leaving links are important. One of the most valuable aspects of my internship was working with people who know how to use social media to promote something. My mom owns a store so learning how to bring attention to her store using social media as made me be able to help her. It was also valuable because I plan on writing and self-publishing a book one day and now I know how I can bring attention to it when I eventually write it. A challenge I faced was the long days. I’m not used to working for seven hours a day. Towards the end of the day, I’d be tired and started losing focus. I could’ve had shorter days but it was already the end of June when I started and I wanted to finish the internship before school started. Another challenge was meeting new people. I’m introvert and I met a lot of new people in only a few days which was a bit overwhelming. What I learned will help me with my life after high school because, as I said earlier, I want to write and self-publish a book. When self-publishing a book the author needs to do the promotions themselves. If an author publishes through a publishing company then the company does all the promotions. I could do it through a publishing company but I get more money from the royalties by self-publishing. Since I will have to do all of the promotion myself learning how to bring attention to something via social media will be really helpful. |
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