Interning with Girls in Marketing

Hi Reader,

I’ve recently had the fantastic opportunity to learn about new strategies during my internship with Girls in Marketing . Alongside hundreds of fellow aspiring and established marketers, I’ve had the chance to soak up knowledge on various topics, including:

• The Basics of Digital Marketing with the insightful Olivia Mae Hanlon .
• SEO with a deep dive into Monday.com.
• Boosting Productivity with the innovative tools offered by REEF.
• The Power of Coding with Code First Girls .
• Social Media Strategy Success and the captivating world of video content with Iconosquare .
• Building a brand and crafting a compelling CV with Keira Penney .

In this week’s instalment of Life in the Chrysalis, I am thrilled to share some of what I learn’t before jetting off to the enchanting city of Milan - I am so excited! I will focus on the basics of digital marketing, SEO and social media strategy success.

Lesson 1: Navigating the Digital Marketing Universe

Everything is now digital. Traditional marketing methods are either fading into history or being reshaped by AI. Just take a look at the transformation of billboard advertising into 3D digital wonders. The future is all about immersive experiences and embracing AI-driven interactivity is no longer optional – it’s essential.

It all boils down to user experience (UX) and truly understanding your audience – what they want, what they value and their constraints and preferences as consumers. To maximise your return on investment (ROI), make sure to craft tailored content and focus on optimising your search engine optimisation (SEO) strategies. This starts with getting to know your audience inside-out: demographics, psychographics and creating vivid customer profiles are your starting point. You should focus on visualising them as real people with names and jobs, because at the end of the day that’s what they are, not a number in your system. Think about what visuals captivate them? What keeps them engaged? What do they seek on Google? Uncovering these details will help you create precisely the content they crave, supercharging your SEO.

And don’t worry; we’ll dive deeper into SEO later. The key idea here is that digital marketing is omnipresent, and success hinges on using it effectively to reach your target audience. Here are some vital tips:

• Embrace AI: Learn to integrate AI into your marketing strategies. It’s the future so you don’t want to get left behind.
• Master Key Tools and Terms: Key performance indicators (KPIs), content management system (CMS), click through rate (CTR) – know them all like the back of your hand.
• Become SEO Savvy: Learn to implement successful SEO strategies to boost organic traffic and reduce pay per click (PPC) costs.

This has been inspired by the lecture given by Olivia Hanlon of Girls in Marketing, a hub for innovative marketing education. They offer free courses, internships and provide membership opportunities. Their podcast is also a must-listen.

Lesson 2: SEO unveiled – Elevate Your Online Presence

SEO is vital for brand visibility, authority and competitiveness. You want Google to recognise your page, deem it user-friendly and place it at the top of the rankings. After all, no one scrolls to page 10 of search results!

To ascend rankings, you must understand the 200+ ranking factors Google considers, including mobile-friendliness, keyword optimisation, content quality, and domain authority. Learn about the two types of SEO:

On-page SEO: Optimise keywords, internal links and content quality. Build a credible site reputation for quality backlinks. This will help Google to see your site as valuable, credible and useful.

Technical SEO: Ensure Google can crawl and index your pages. Google bots follow links searching for new content and indexing is how Google organises the information such as text, images and videos. Information that is not indexed will not appear in Google.

SEO Pro Tips:

• Review site appearance: Ensure clear and enticing page info (title/meta description).
• Keyword Research: Google your topic, understand user intent, and select relevant keywords.
• Use Keywords: Incorporate keywords in headers, content and title tags.
• User-Centric Content: Satisfy user intent, cite credible sources and keep content updated.
• Internal Linking: Signal relationships between pages with internal links.
• Monitor and Adapt: Measure clicks, track keywords, fix issues and make a site map.

These insights were inspired by Monday.com offering marketers a no-code toolkit to stream workflows. They provide SEO management tools, invoicing and budgeting tools, among others.

Lesson 3: Social Media Mastery ?

I will start by a crucial concept: Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These tools help us gauge the effectiveness of social media campaigns. Monitor them closely to achieve the three main goals of social media strategies:

1. Boost Engagement

2. Amplify Brand Awareness

3. Cultivate an Online Community

Crafting a successful social media strategy involves a checklist:

• Audit your presence: Ensure your brand, tone, engagement levels, hashtags, and keywords are on point. Analyse insights to refine performance.
• Know your audience: Develop customer profiles (remember this helps with content curation as well) and always keep your target market in mind.
• Stay Consistent: Define a clear social media statement aligned with your brand identity.
• Choose the Right Platforms: Keep an eye on your competition and learn from their strategies.
• Quality Over Quantity: Curate content that resonates with your audience.
• Timing Matters: Post when your audience is most active.?

??These insights were inspired by Iconosquare, experts in social media strategy resources. They help enhance your social media presence with exclusive insights and tools to manage, streamline, and schedule your social media content.? ?

Why should you engage in internships?

I know this is quite informative, but I wanted to share with you what I learn’t. I got so much from the Girls in Marketing program and I am so glad that I got the opportunity to have been offered the internship. It was great to see all the other marketers in the slack channel engaging and forming a community of likeminded people. Honestly, it was amazing. Thank you to the organisers who orchestrated this incredible internship for us all. The commitment to fostering knowledge-sharing and collaboration is nothing short of commendable.

I would definitely recommend taking part in internships and any free courses available. You are always evolving and learning and even if you are the most successful marketer in the world, you can still always be taught a thing or two. Engage in resources available to constantly better yourself, do not settle for mediocre.

And as we conclude this week’s Life in the Chrysalis segment, my hope is that you have found these insights to be valuable and insightful as you continue to progress in your own marketing journey.?

Until next time,

Alina x