We all know that social media has become a crucial aspect of our lives, especially for businesses. For the past two semesters, I have had the opportunity to work as a Social Media Director for Beach

A display with every umbrella located in Downtown Laguna Beach.

BRELLA. This company is a small company located in Laguna Beach, CA that sells chic beach umbrellas that are 100% UV protective. My learning objectives for this internship included; Conducting research to determine what hashtags and content capture the viewer’s attention the most to determine if our tactics are meaningful as well as, Gain an understanding on how to perform video reels to increase our engagement successfully.

Throughout my internship, my tasks involved:

  • Planning social media posts for the company.
  • Writing blog posts.
  • Communicating with any direct messages received.
  • Overall ensuring our social media presence remained consistent.

The platforms I consistently worked on included; Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. 

The most relevant communication course that helped my success throughout my internship was Message Design 1. We learned how to effectively create content and campaigns to a designated target audience in the class. In this course, I used the tools taught to help develop various campaigns for the company. One campaign specifically was a Valentine’s Day giveaway with a popular swimwear brand called PQ Swim. I was in charge of designing the content, ensuring we were reaching our target audiences, and implementing the giveaway. After the giveaway ended, I evaluated what we did together and discussed things to improve upon next time.

Beach giveaway content

During my time as a Social Media Director for BeachBRELLA, I accomplished and learned so much. I was able to grow the company’s Instagram following by 138 followers. Additionally, I was able to increase our engagement with other users to 8.9% and increase our accounts reached by 12.2%.

Overall, my knowledge of social media marketing has grown immensely. One aspect I learned was that I could always learn something new. As a social media director, the algorithms of the various platforms are ever-changing. So throughout my time with BeachBRELLA, I was constantly reading up on any new change or trend to ensure the brand remained relevant. In addition to that, I learned it is essential to have fun! Every day shouldn’t have to feel stressful and perfect; I learned that the best content and ideas we came up with are the ones where my internship advisor and I had the most fun. My experience interning with BeachBRELLA as a Social Media Director has been nothing short of amazing. I have learned so much and am looking forward to continuing using my knowledge to help other companies grow their businesses.