Bloomsburg Public Library Internship Week 1

My first week as an Emergent Media intern in the marketing department of the Bloomsburg Public Library was a decent introduction to what goes on behind the scenes of  community-focused marketing. I haven't created any content or done much of anything just yet, but I learned a few through observing, listening, and getting familiar with how the team works.

One of the first things I did this week was sit down with my internship supervisor, the head of the marketing team, and talk through a schedule. We discussed the availability of both of us, and decided on Mondays 10-3, Wednesdays 5-8, and Thursdays 4:30-6 with the possibility of extra work on the weekends during big events that require a lot of planning, promotion, and community engagement positions. This helped me understand the expectations of time dedicated and give me a clearer understanding of how I will fit into the marketing team during this internship.

Throughout the week, I sat in on a few events that the marketing team regularly promotes such as the board game club and teen library club. Attending these events helped me see first-hand the kind of programs the library offers as well as understand the target demographics for such programs and how people respond to different types of media advertising. Seeing people actively participate made it easier to understand why these events matter and how social media and in-library can directly impact attendance.

I also spent some time observing the team and department head as they strategized about social media ads and overall promotion. I watched them discuss audience engagement, catering to their target audiences while making graphics, wording, and visuals. Part of this included watching and learning how they use Canva to make both eye-catching graphics for social media advertisements and slides to put in the slideshow that plays on the digital monitor near the front of the library. These slides display infographics about weekly and monthly library events as well as announcements about special events, this monitor is the first thing a patron sees when they walk in through the front door.

One of the most interesting and insightful parts of the week was observing the marketing assistant create Instagram and Facebook posts advertising the 100th anniversary celebration of the day the original part of the building where the library currently resides was opened to the public. During this process, I learned about Loomly which is the platform they use to collaboratively create, schedule, and cross-post content on across their two social media accounts. It was interesting to see how organized and efficient the process is, with them only having to create one caption and add photos once to post on two different websites instead of having to spend time on two different posts. He also invited me to pitch ideas for the caption, and when the post had to be approved by the director, I learned that their social media strategy had almost exclusively to do with informing and very little to do with actually enticing people. This was useful information to learn because it will help me if I have to create posts in the future.

At the end of the week, I did some extra time for the anniversary event. During the open house on Friday and Saturday, I helped encourage incoming patrons to sign the guest book and informed them about the three $100 dollar Barnes & Noble gift cards raffle they could enter to win for free by filling out an informational paper that would help us either create them a library account or confirm the information in their already created library account. This gave me direct experience with interacting with the public in a marketing capacity and experience promoting an event in person. The open house was covered in The Press Enterprise and even had a segment on the WNEP evening news.

Overall, my first week was a majority of learning and observing with two instances of hands-on involvement.