I’ve been an intern at Red Shark Digital since the beginning of January, and it has been a great experience. Digital marketing is a budding industry so there aren’t many college courses that teach much about it. Most of what I had learned about digital marketing, I learned outside of my college experience but working at Red Shark Digital has shown me how much I still have left to learn. The three major things that I have learned while working at Red Shark Digital are; Search Engine Optimization, how to work in an agency setting and industry jargon.

Learning about Search Engine Optimization, or SEO has been an exciting experience. I love working with data and SEO is all about examining client data from popular search engines and using the information to optimize their websites and content so that they appear higher in the list of results. Let’s say you need a specialty cake for a party. You would probably go to Google and search for “Bakeries Near Me” when you hit enter google ranks the results based on how relevant they are to you. Through SEO we can help clients know where they rank when customers search for bakeries and help them get higher on the list.

One of the most exciting things that I’ve experienced while working at Red Shark Digital is seeing the way an agency operates. By attending team meetings each Monday morning, I’m able to see the process that each account goes through and all the different people that work on various stages of a project. Most clients start out speaking with an Account Executive about their goals and what they want to achieve with digital marketing. Then the account executive works with the project manager and campaign manager to create a proposal. Then, once the client is happy with the proposal, the project manager sets deadlines and passes work onto creative and development teams.

Learning the lingo of digital marketing has been a small part of what I’ve learned here, but it has been invaluable. I’m graduating this semester so, my experience with Red Shark Digital has helped me in my job search. I had experience working in digital marketing before, but I was entirely self-taught. Even though I had some technical knowledge, I didn’t know a lot of the acronyms and shorthand terms for things in the industry. Learned lots of new technical skills and added them to my resume but I’ve also rephrased some of the things that I already had on my resume with industry-specific language.

Working at Red Shark Digital has been an awesome experience. Digital marketing is a relatively new industry, so you won’t learn everything you need from your college courses. If you’re serious about getting started in the digital marketing industry, the best way to learn is to get an internship at a digital marketing agency. The things that I’ve learned here will help me get a job, and I’ll use them for the rest of my career!

Red Shark Digital's Summer Internship application period is April 5th through 17th so make sure you get your application in to be considered!

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