Things I’ve Learned During My Internship

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Why hello there!

I started my communications internship here at MOS Creative at the beginning of January. When I started, I wasn’t familiar with the term SEO, I had never interviewed a client, my writing skills needed to improve, and I never truly felt like I was a part of a team at any workplace – until I started here.

Even though I have only been here for a couple of months, I’ve learned so much! Here are just a few key tips I’ve acquired so far:

- SEO: Google it, learn about it, embrace it! It is very important to know about certain key terms that can affect the visibility of your site. I believe any traffic is important.

- Ask questions. Don’t be afraid to bother your supervisors when you are given a task you may not understand 100%. Remember: it’s part of their job to help you learn and grow!

- Admit when you’re wrong. Mistakes happen. They’re a part of life, and they’re especially a part of the workplace. If you’ve made a mistake, don’t point fingers or play the blame game. Taking responsibility for your actions in the workplace takes a great amount of courage and bravery.

- Do your research. If you have spare time at work, look up websites that are related to your field of interest. Devour as much information as you can.

Lastly, go with your gut. I know this is something you may here often, but there are going to be many occurrences in which you’ll have to make a big decision on something that is work-related.

These short (but useful!) tips should take you far in the workplace – it has for me!

Laura

Rule 40: Not in Favor of Olympic Athletes

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Summer Olympics 2012 As the summer 2012 Olympics quickly approaches, an estimated 4 billion people will tune in to watch their country’s top athletes compete (NPR). This is an enormous opportunity for any company to drive marketing efforts and reach a massive audience, however, due to Rule 40 it is an opportunity that only official sponsors of the London games can truly take advantage of. Continue reading →

5 Mobile Fails You Should Learn From

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As smartphone sales continue to grow like crazy, especially as we enter the jolly holiday season, it’s no surprise that mobile is the new dot.com bubble. And many companies are paving highly effective ways to engage. Actually we’re all just now figuring it out and grasping the question – how do consumers interact with their mobile devices, what roles do they play in their lives, and how can we tap into that?

So as the learning curve goes, and marketing trial and error takes its course, there are bound to be some fails and missteps. Let’s take a look at five of the mobile fails we can all take a lesson from as we plan our strategies for 2012.

  1. The dying trend, check-in apps. Daily deal offering sites like Groupon and Living Social met the same fate earlier this year. It was enticing at first, and then consumers get bored with it. Oldest story in the book. Gowalla and Foursquare were cool a year ago, but as retailers started to catch on to the trend and created their own shopping apps with check-in incentives, the enthusiasm began to ween.
  2. Forgetting that mobile is a whole different animal. In case anyone out there still questions it, you CANNOT just take your web stuff and throw it on a mobile site. No no no. Mobile is a whole new opportunity to interact. There are benefits, challenges and strategies completely separate from your PC web tools. If you avoid the copy and paste trap in re-purposing the web, you can take advantage new capabilities, such as HTML5.
  3. If you’re doing mobile, do it right. A lot of you are experimenting with mobile tools, such as QR codes and social media, without creating a mobile-optimized destination for visitors. So just when you get them right where you want them, your mobile visitors land on your PC site. Ew! I can promise most of these visitors are not coming back. That’s a lot of lost conversions and sales.
  4. Agencies aren’t focusing on the big picture. Mobile web and mobile strategies can’t just be an afterthought in your bigger plan. But for this fail we blame your marketing agency. We can’t emphasize enough the significance of the mobile experience in the focus of your brand, and in driving further mobile growth. A lot of brands are still just missing the boat on this one.
  5. Manufacturers are still playing catch up. RIP feature phones. I can still remember the simple days, when my phone’s buzz alert could only mean a text message. Now it could be an email, Facebook message, tweet, status update, check-in or any of the thousands of other connections. It was a sudden and unexpectedly rapid death that manufacturers were not ready to capitalize on.

(Thanks to our friends at Mobile Marketer, see their original article.)

Happy Movember! No-Shave November – Day 1

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It’s the rich tradition that men all over the world have been propagating for generations since 1999. This annual, month-long event entails the growing of mustaches during the month of November.

First celebrated by a group of men in Australia, the festivities and reports of facial hair have spread nearly worldwide.

Charitable organizations have also evolved around Movember’s significance, helping to raise money and awareness for men’s health issues, including prostate cancer and depression.
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Easy Halloween costumes for the procrastinating marketer

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The air has turned brisk and the still-green grass is hiding beneath a thin layer of auburn-stained leaves that faintly crackle and rustle with each step you take. We’re approaching the final days of October, people, and you know what that means… HALLOWEEN!

So please ignore the glistening trees, shiny ornaments and alluring bows of holly that for some reason already adorn the aisles of your local Target and Walmart, and for a few more days let’s relish in the holiday which year after year gets pushed aside like the inconsequential step-child of celebrations. Halloween is not just for kids, my friends, it’s a serious event!
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