Interning at 360innovate

by Harriet Steele

I was quite happily surprised when I received a phone call to say I had been offered a summer placement at 360innovate. My background is in film and writing so I felt like I was chancing my arm a little by applying for a field I wasn’t trained in, however I quickly realised after starting that the aim of the placement was for me to learn as much as I could about SEO and social media marketing and I had a lot to learn – so it was a perfect opportunity.

The key things I have learnt are:

• What SEO is; and how to implement changes in your website to improve your visibility & performance. This meant doing a lot of homework and reading up on strategies and getting to grips with how links are made and how they affect your search results.
   
• Working in an office was a new experience for me. It’s different from my usual working day which would be on a film set or editing with several breaks over 12 hours. It was good to test myself to see how I would get on sitting at a desk concentrating for 8 hours and I found that it’s something you adapt to easily. Nowadays I think most people would be able to, as we are constantly online on phones or whatnot so I think it was an easy progression for me into office life.
• Using social media as a tool and not just for fun… although sometimes it’s very easy to get distracted!

The great thing about the internship was that I was allowed to focus on whatever I wanted to learn: if I wanted to spend a few days working on the basics of coding then that was fine and if I wanted to read up on the latest goings-on in Glasgow, so I could decide which gig to cover, that was OK as well.

It was a very chilled out time in the office – it’s a quiet place where everyone just works away and with headphones in you can almost forget you’re in a room with people.

I think as well I understood how I worked and I was allowed to just get on with it. If I was writing for the blog or I was creating content for the website I brought in my own little Macbook Air and used that and for the more techy things, like learning how to code, I would use the PC.

Advice I would give to someone else who was thinking about doing the same thing? The short version would be – DO IT! You’ll learn so much and feel good for having a pro-active summer month!

In more detail I would say if you are considering it then you must be interested in the field and want to learn more. The desire to learn, I think, is the most important thing you can come at this with. If you are interested and hungry you will get the most out of your experience.

This wasn’t a ‘make the coffee and do the paperwork’ kind of internship, it was challenging and rewarding from day one. I was made to feel part of the office team and everyone treated me with respect from word go, making me feel at home and including me in the office banter.

Given the chance, I would do it again in a second and I truly believe that this internship will stand me in good stead for any future opportunities in the sector.

Jordan ULTRA.FLY