Friday 31 July 2009

Exciting first week as an intern for Hai Media Group

Last Friday I became the Summer 2009 Intern for Hai Media Group, a multimedia PR 2.0 consultancy based in London. The offer came through Twitter, which is nothing really exciting nowadays, right? I was following Lisa Devaney, my current boss, for couple of weeks and she, apparently impressed by my tweets, gave me the chance to learn.

My first week was an exciting and challenging one. We met up for an interview in ICA and straight after that went to Tuttle club meeting. What a fantastic event! Anyone can join in and network, share knowledge and learn and more.

I met quite a few interesting people and all that in just couple of first minutes of my official internship! How exciting, looking forward to the next week...my first one.

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Monday – I received a detailed email with info on my PR 2.0 internship. WAW! 4 pages! Lots of interesting tasks though! Don’t know where to start but cannot wait! As I intern mainly from home, I had a Skype video phone call with Lisa (first of many) and straight away started off on media/blogger research for my first HMG’s client. In addition, I began working on my second project: creating a more comprehensive social media presence for HMG. Plus I set up my LinkedIn, MySpace and FriendsFeed account (I already am on Facebook and Twitter, who isn’t really...actually I would be able to find one person and my parents).
Tuesday – Another big client is in the game! I was asked to stop doing what I was doing and start off on blogger research for the new client. I started shaking, why? Maybe little bit of a stress or perhaps my brain started speeding while trying to figure out how exactly am I gonna squeeze all of that in just couple of days, max weeks? Needed a cuppa and biscuits...
Wednesday green green green, so many green/eco friendly/sustainable/eco conscious bloggers, but which ones are the most influential? A million thanks to Alexa.com. What a useful online tool, I’ve just learned to use. I can see the traffic rank of each of the sites, which helps me to come to a decision to add or not to add a particular blogger to my already fast growing database. BTW I even figured out how to share this document via Google document share tool. All by myself, starting to think that I am brilliant...
Thursday – Oh no! My land line phone doesn’t have the function for making conference calls! Oh, D'oh! Never mind, next time, right? I was actually invited to sit in at a conference call with the new client, who is based in the US. And I missed the chance.... Therefore I work on my database and clean it up a bit plus search for missing contact info/email/mobile/whatever. Why some people don’t share their contact details on the Internet? I mean, they are missing out this way. They will fail to benefit from possibly the next big thing! This is really driving me a bit mad...
Friday = Tuttle Club on the itinerary! Where to start? Missing my morning bus (have to wait for 20 minutes for another one, sometimes I wait even more than that!!), laptop over my shoulder seems much heavier that it actually is. Tube – horrifying! Victoria and Piccadilly line – all hot, dusty, noisy and me standing all the way!! (like 45 minutes – with now even heavier laptop over my shoulder) Hate to go by the tube! Wish I lived closer to the central London, but... Running the famous Duke of York Steps down only to find a little notice on the door asking me to go back up the steps (grrr) and enter from the other side. I have to save money and get one of the smart phones, maybe even iPhone, to stay connected to Twitter 24/7! Tuttle Club is all chatty and friendly as always, seeing old faces and some new ones too. (haha, talking like if I wasn’t a newbie there too!) 3 pm a webinar on Social Media Networking and how to use it for a company. Interesting attempt but I know that all anyway. If anyone needs a lesson on that, feel free to get in touch: @Kat4PR

Weekend!!! Time to switch off, NOT. I am starting to get the feel of working as a PR consultant – never ending work! But there is lots of fun on the way so definitely worth it. Now, let’s finish my cuppa and go back to my projects. Glad that my boyfriend thought of me and brought a sweet pastel de nata.
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