The last few weeks of my internship were pretty busy and full self-reflection.

Week 12, 4/1-5:  This week was a bit of back tracking. I had to update a few posts I had already made. Dates changed for both the Campus Bus Tour and Kids College. Additionally, the contact person for the Small Animal Fundraiser quit, so a new person had to be found and information had to be plugged in. This taught me that things are always changing, especially in extension, and we just have to be flexible and adapt. It was also a chance for me to look back on the designs of posts to see if I still approved on them or wanted to change them. I actually really did like them still and only moved this slightly to account for spacing changes.

Additionally, I helped Kristy find presenters for Kids College. It is becoming increasingly hard to find people who want to help, especially when the Advisory Committee is dwindling or getting older. This was something I enjoyed doing though because I know how much being a volunteer means to me. And it was a chance to reach out to younger volunteers to get them involved. Sometimes there is a lack of involvement with volunteers because they do not know they are experts at something. It takes someone else acknowledging them or building them up to encourage them to do it! Adults are very similar to kids in the way that we also like to be seen as different and exciting. We have to tell others their worth, no matter their age!

Week 13, 4/8-12: This week I got all my hours in by attending the eclipse! 10 volunteers took 44 kids to the National Museum of the Air in Dayton. I was a group leader and got to chaperone my younger cousins and their friends. It was so cool to listen to these 11 year old boys talk about their love and interest in air and space history. They were so impressed by everything and made the day of walking so fun. I made sure to take lots and lots of pictures both to post and to use as a reference for the newsletter piece I had to write. After lunch and more exploration, we went outside to set up for the eclipse. We made sure all kids were accounted for and had glasses in hand. Each kids also got a snack inspired by the eclipse.

When the eclipse was upon us all the kids cheered and hollered in excitement. I almost wanted to cry at how awesome the whole experience was. After the eclipse we took bathroom breaks, counted kids, and drove the two hours home.

Week 14, 4/15-19: This week I wrote the newsletter piece about the eclipse and sent it on to Kristy. I am really excited to see it published in next month’s state newsletter. It is quite exciting to showcase my skills that way for an extension publication. It will help get my name out there and hopefully reflect good upon me.

This week I also created all the new project spotlights. After I created a template that was very similar to the previous ones I basically just had to plug in information. Which was a really nice process.

After looking at all the projects offered again, I hope I could maybe even create more for the extension office in the future. If not me, they can use my template to plug any project into.

Week 15, 4/22-23: This week was more about finishing projects and thinking about my role moving on. I finished the last of the spotlights and gave them to Kristy along with the template. I think moving forward, considering that I am a cloverbud advisor, I would like to create lesson plans that go along with the activities I’ve created. Along with lesson plans, I would like to share printable activity pages and crafts. I’ve found resources like this helpful in the past and would love to continue to grow my involvement as a volunteer. So this week I will put a few of those together and pitch the idea to Kristy.

During these few weeks I was able to do some new content creation. It was really all about figuring out what I wanted the style of our page to look like and how to catch the attention of parents and FB friends.

Week 9, 3/4-8: This week Kristy informed me of a new fundraiser the Small Animal Committee was starting. They are selling advertisements to go into the new small animal complex. The money raised from this project will go towards even more improvements for fencing and water hydrants. Thus they needed a flyer and FB post to advertise the fundraiser. I knew exactly how I wanted it to look after she explained what they were interested in.

I played around with the simple straight forward approach, which is something I noticed myself doing with most of the content I am creating recently. I also wanted to have a picture of the small animal complex on the fundraiser ad. I think a lot of people have yet to see what it looks like, with it being a new addition. I also thought that it would give people something to visualize when thinking about where their business sign would go. I also of course added green to both the flyer and the post to infer upon those 4-H vibes even though this is not a 4-H committee. People think about kids when they think about 4-H, so I am hoping to capitalize on this subconscious affect.

Our social media this week was pretty down in interaction. I think it was partly due to the down tick in the amount of posts we published. Right after enrollment there is a bit of a lull before clinics, quality assurances, weigh ins, and other things start up. So hopefully our engagement does go up as we start rolling out those important dates.

Week 10, 3/11-15: This was spring break and I did not work at all this week.

Week 10, 3/18-22: This week I created a few different posts to put on Facebook. Next month is very busy for our program so I tried to get ahead before we were there. I created a post about Rabbit Clinic, Kids College and Camp Applications. I again followed the very straightforward approach.

However, I do notice that I like a lot of variety, so I don’t really have a uniform style. Nothing that I create is exactly the same. I think there is a downfall in doing so. People scroll through FB so quickly that they might pass on a post instead of reading it. This is due to the style being so similar they think they have already read it.

I do really like making graphics colorful and make them pop. I’ve used adobe express for everything, so I really like playing around with the elements and making them into backgrounds.

Week 11, 3/25-29: This week Kristy and I discussed a lot about the upcoming Eclipse trip and Kids College. She informed me that I would be going on the trip to gather pictures and information in order to create a story that will be published in the state newsletter.

Additionally, she talked about the types of posts she wanted to do to get people hyped about the eclipse. This was a social media campaign she took on because she was super stoked about it. However, she did let me in on how she was designing the shirts for the trip and what hoops she had to jump through in order to get branding approved. So this week was full of lots of back-and-forth talk. Kristy really trusts my design skills and my opinions, which was a really great feeling.

I also this week looked back on the requests for new project highlights and what new ones I wanted to focus on making. The family guide is so so big, so I want parents to see all that it has to offer.

In the review of our FB engagement, it seems we had a whole bunch of interaction this past week. A few different posts went out last week about clinics and events coming up. So, I believe the uptick is due to parents going back to look at the important information posted. Which is a great sign that people know where to look to find the information they need.

Overall: I am glad I got to explore a bit more of original content creation. It was really fun to play around with styles and themes. With everything I created I tried to include a post theme that went with the post and stood out. Additionally, I felt very important these past weeks because of how Kristy used my expertise. She really lets me have creative freedom and often asks me what I think of her content. It is so cool to know that my schooling is not for naught.

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.

These first few weeks were all about settling into the Meta Suit and figuring out what all events need coverage. As well as looking at the specifics of when the best time to post is.

Week 2, 1/15-19: I used the Meta Business Suit to look at what types of posts get the most interaction and at what times. This was an important thing to do early on because the enrollment deadline is February 15th and we want to make sure everyone has the chance to see a reminder of this. Parents use Facebook as a way to receive important information when it comes to Facebook, and thus we want to make sure they see all they need to.

For this analysis, I looked back at the last month of posts to see what posts had the most interaction and at what times they were posted at. It seems that posts with the most interactions were the meme’d enrollment posts, and a few link opportunity posts. They are easy to understand posts without large captions or many words on the graphic.

Additionally, none of the posts were posted at a strict time, but it seems that graphics posted between 8am-12pm got a larger amount of reactions. And those posted from 4pm-6pm did fairly well also.

After this I realized our target audience are parents who probably get on social media for a little break throughout the day. They need information fast and quick, and also in a easily digestible manner, as to understand and not stress out. With that being said, I also did a little audit of the styles of posts from the past. I want to see what the style of graphics are and how information was and is displayed. So that I can improve upon it and maybe pine for a simpler style.

Week 3, 1/22-26: I met with Kristy to discuss my findings from my audit and our messaging moving forward. She seems to know the humor and target audience that is the parents and thus she will continue to handle the meme’d enrollment posts. And she is able to reuse many from last year to re-post. We discussed trying to reuse as many posts from last year, just updating them, especially for the time sensitive posts. For new events or events we have more time till due dates I will be creating content for.

I told her I am going to schedule posts for our project highlight campaign to see if we can narrow done our time of optimum reach. She shared that she has project highlight posts already made up and that I can schedule these posts and interact with comments if projects are requested. And I also have the ability to create highlights if more projects are needed to post for the campaign. We decided we will try to start this project highlight campaign next week with two posts a day.

To get ready for next week’s campaign, I looked through all the project highlights to see what projects I could post on the same days. I want to pair up projects that were kind of different that way parents could see a variety of projects.

Week 4, 1/29-2/2: This week started the project spotlight campaign. I decided to post at 12pm and 6pm. I think that this would get a great deal of interaction because this is the time parents have lunch breaks and are home from work.

It was really cool to get to work in the planner section of the Meta Suit. It was something that was new to me, but that I found extremely handy and easy to use. And since I had premade posts, I was able to use my creativity to think about short and engaging captions to use. I wanted to be able to catch attention while also being explanatory about the project posted.

I scheduled most of the posts for the week that way to catch myself up early. But I decided to only post the spotlights during the week as to not overwhelm our page so much. And the weekends as a whole for our page are pretty quiet unless there is a more urgent post that needs to be made.

During this week I got some great project spotlight suggestions that I am hoping to add for this year or the future.

Overview: These weeks was full of review and evaluation which I could tie back my PR class and how the mission and image of the company you are working for is goal number one. It is important to make content engaging and exciting, but also to play into the mission that is established. I also realized that working in social media does not always have to be content creation. Reusing material is just fine as long as the information is just as pertinent. And I really enjoy working with the Meta Business Suit and hope to be able to use it in the future at a job. It makes it really easy to see when you are posting in relation to other people in the company to analysis what content is doing well.