I was a content and social media intern at Wescover, a fast-growing startup based in the Twitter building in San Francisco. It was my first formal role as a marketer.
Shortly after I graduated from General Assembly, I realized that I lived in Silicon Valley where it could take me as much as six months just to start at the bottom with my first entry-level job. Digital marketing is a pretty competitive field as it turns out.
First I tried jumping into entrepreneurship without any prior job experience or real connections to try to build a portfolio first. Turns out that was mostly a bad idea.
So I got my friend Daniel Doan on the horn and asked for his advice.
“What’s your vertical?” he asked me.
“Well, uh, I specialize as an indie game marketer so my ideal customers are game developers,” I sputtered.
“What would you do that for?” he responded. “Game developers are broke. I should know. I used to be one.”
“Well, what do you think I should do?” I asked.
“I’m in tech and ecommerce,” said he. “That’s where the money’s at.”
“Oh well…it could be a while before I get my first job because I don’t have much experience yet,” I said, sheepishly.
“Well, why don’t you just get an internship?” he said back.
I admit I hadn’t thought of that, mostly because I had just turned 28 and most people my age were well into their careers and had since settled down and had kids. Still, I thought it was worth a shot.
Summary
My first formal marketing role out of bootcamp was at Wescover, a startup in the art and design niche. Their website is a global database of artists and designers from around the world.
I was a part of their content team for a two-month period. My responsibility was to help drive traffic to the website by creating blog and social media content about trending art and design topics.
Tactics
- Content strategy
- Influencer outreach
I helped to plan and execute an influencer outreach campaign. The plan was to reach out to art and design influencers with audiences on Pinterest and offer to feature them on our blog in exchange for cross-promotion.
Halfway through my internship, I and the other content writers were asked to write content optimized for a set of trending keywords on art and design topics.
I also wrote material for Wescover’s Facebook page on a regular basis. Towards the end of my internship period I helped create a Facebook photo album featuring some of the most popular creators in the Wescover community.
Results
The influencer campaigns resulted in numerous successful collaborations with artists like Klangwelt and Casa de la Freja.
I also wrote an article on Wescover artists who specialize in Spanish tile-work, which you can read here if you’re interested. “Spanish tile” was one of the keywords we were asked to make content around.
The Facebook creator albums did well, and resulted in an 88% increase in reach and 200% new page likes.
Interning at Wescover was one of the highlights of my life. We still keep in touch.
Me and the Wescover team having lunch together.
One Comment