Having spent the last two years studying Business Management and Marketing at Liverpool Hope University, I have had little exposure to PR and growth marketing was a mystery. So, when I was awarded my internship at Active Profile through the university’s Insight to Business Awards, I was intrigued to find out what my textbooks couldn’t teach me.

Fast-forward two weeks and I have worked closely with all three specialist teams at Active Profile - Place, Innovation and Growth Marketing – trying my hand at everything from social media management, to attending client meetings and even drafting press releases.

My first day

When I stepped through the doors of Active Profile, I was met with bunch of friendly faces who were keen to get to know me and find out what I wanted to get out of my time at Active Profile. This surprised me due to the tales of interns being given little responsibility and restricted to making the teas and coffees, so I was over the moon when they gave me the responsibility of getting involved with real client work.

Learning on the job

The Place team in particular gave me a lot of responsibility. I had expressed my interest in social media and wanted to get to know how to use some of the software they use, such as Hootsuite for scheduling and monitoring the client’s social media. I was given the responsibility of drafting and scheduling the weekly tweets for a number of clients. I also spent some time sourcing ‘hot topics’ for clients and Active Profile alike.

The Innovation and Growth Marketing teams introduced me to how an integrated comms account works. I attended client meetings, drafted news articles for clients’ websites and came up with event ideas.

During my time here I also worked on a competitor analysis project for Active Profile’s social media accounts, writing up suggestions based on what similar companies are doing and recommendations on how we could take learnings to drive traffic and engagement. From this, I made a calendar to coincide with days to celebrate in the office and made recommendations on how to use them on social media.

What I enjoyed the most

One of the things I found most interesting during my time at Active Profile was being able to join meetings and observe the dynamics of how the team worked, which was especially interesting when they involved external partners or clients. This was really eye opening to me as I had never been apart of a professional meeting before.

As I had expressed an interest in social media, I really enjoyed getting to wrap my head around the different scheduling systems and learning how to tailor different posts to different media outlets, audiences and businesses.

Throughout my time at Active Profile, the whole team created a warm and welcoming environment that made my time with them fly by and I enjoyed getting to know them.

After I graduate University next year, I hope to build my own start-up company within the hospitality industry. You never know, I may end up back at Active Profile as a client one day!