The theme for these next couple weeks is about relationship building and interacting with other people in extension to learn about their experiences and tactics.
Week 5, 2/5-9: This week I had the opportunity to go to spend the afternoon and have dinner with Kristy and a few of the other educators from the area. They talked about the in-service they attended that day and how their guidelines are always changing. It was really great to hear about the events they are hosting in their counties and how they go about advertising for enrollment and such. I’ve known most of these educators since I was in high school, and they have always been a source of encouragement and mentorship. They even told me about a couple job opportunities I should look into as I near graduation.
This week I also wrote a blog post about the upcoming 4-H Conference. It was a bit of a challenge because I have never been to it and thus I had lots of research and reading up to understand what the event was. I think this was a good skill to engage because we are not always the expert of the story we are trying to communicate. We must educate ourselves fully in order to communicate the most important and exciting parts of a topic. Which after learning more about 4-H Conference I was a little jealous that I had not gone in the past and I want to now in the future. It is a great opportunity for teen and adult volunteers to share ideas and learn more about how to become better positive role models.
I also scheduled more project spotlights for the week. And I noticed that since this week was rather heavy in activities and posts our engagement has week down on a lot of them. This could be that we are flooding the algorithm and it is having trouble promoting all of our posts for people to see. I am unsure how to remedy this problem without lowering our posts or spending money to boost them. Maybe next week I can look at the analytics more and figure out what may be causing it.
Kristy also asked that I make a graphic for a new trip that the county 4-H is taking high school students on. They will be visiting campus to tour and to watch a hockey game. I was really excited to make this graphic as it is the first original one that I am able to do for the extension office! I think it turned out rather nicely and I was able to incorporate some of the brand assets shared by CFAES!
Week 6, 2/12-16: This week was a lighter week for me, as the project spotlight campaign came to an end because enrollment is due this week. So I took time to look at how my campaign ran and how we could improve for next year.
It seems that none of the project spotlights had real good engagement. They ranged in reactions from 100-300, and the highest one being around 830. And our really good posts get at least 1.5K reactions. This tells me that either people are not seeing them, graphics were not engaging enough, or that they thought they were seeing the same graphic time after time. One thing I am unsure of is if the timing of the posts really matter. It is hard to tell when our most engagement is because it seems all over the place. Bold print and easy to read graphics still win out though.
With this in mind and suggestions at hand I hope to get to working on new project spotlights to utilize for next year. Hopefully they will engage more folks while teaching of all the opportunities they have with different projects.
Week 7, 2/19-23: Considering I had a big week for school Kristy approved for me to lessen my hours. So I did not do much social media wise this week. We did discuss more events coming and a graphic creation opportunity I have with the Small Animal Committee.
However, I did attend a professional networking event with Kristy. We went to the Blue Jackets Game where we had a reception with other 4-H Professionals put on by the 4-H Foundation. I got to meet Crystal Ott 4-H Foundation Manager, Alex Fehr 4-H Foundation Coordinator, and Megan Fillings 4-H Foundation and Engagement Program Assistant, among other professionals. I am glad I made these connections because they could be very useful to me in the future, and perhaps I could be useful to them as well. In fact, I actually had to work with Alex this week to coordinate AgNat ad sales. Overall, it was interesting to learn about the foundation and the work they do, and how it is different from the Youth Development department, but intertwined.
Networking is super important and through it we make important connections. And this night I learned of a great opportunity that might be coming to my county given that financial support makes it through as it was promised in the past. Which means that the people I talked to this night very well could be interviewing me in the future, so I made sure to introduce myself and make a good impression.
Week 8, 2/26-3/1: This week was rather light as well. I had a good meeting with Kristy where we discussed further the graphic creation that the Small Animal Committee needed made. I gathered all the details for it and we brainstormed ideas for it. Kristy also told me that she has been resharing a good bit of posts and reusing some. It is hard sometimes to know what to post because there are things that pop up that she does quickly and on her own. Or posts that don’t need a whole lot of work done for them so she takes on the job of quick updating and posting.
We are going to think through some more things I can do so that my job is more valuable as well as necessary. She does think adding some more project highlights will be beneficial to next year’s intern thought. So maybe I can start creating those next week.
Overall: I obviously know the value of communication as it is my whole degree, however this month I was able to engage in a lot of different communication. It taught me that interpersonal communication and relationship building is just as important to a job as the blog writing content creation. I do think that with the nature of this position it can be really easy to repost old material, but I want to make a good effort at showing my skills. Which means creating new content to be used, and that is my goal for the next month.
Carlie, thank you for the updates – it looks like it’s been a busy few weeks! I appreciate your insights into your social media content’s performance and am looking forward to seeing the new graphics you create! I also appreciate your comments on the importance of relationships (especially in an organization like Extension), and I think that’s an important lesson that we can’t necessarily teach in a classroom. Keep up the good work!
Carlie, thanks for sharing your experiences and insights! I appreciate your sharing about your evaluation of your social content and how it’s influencing your goals for the next month. Your comments about relationships are also on point – working with people is so important to what we do as communicators!