Breaking the Illusion with Ilfusion

INTERN CHRONICLES: Breaking the Illusion with Ilfusion

It’s like a crime show on TV with the super fancy forensics lab and the one clue that somehow always perfectly leads to the criminal. Just the same, all of my thoughts about the world of advertising and public relations were based off bits of pieces of facts, but overall my view was more of an illusion than reality.

Fresh out of high school, I wanted to break the illusion before I left for college and jumped on that opportunity with a Social Media Internship at Ilfusion. I was a little intimidated not knowing how an office functions. Nevertheless, it wasn’t very hard to adjust to office life as my attention was focused on learning the tricks of the trade and I was told upfront that I would be working with all the social media sites to promote our clients. Even though I’m very comfortable with Facebook and Twitter, I wasn’t quite sure how I would be interacting for business purposes.

I felt so official as I walked in the door my first day and found my own desk right beside everyone else in the social media department. First things first, I had to familiarize myself with all of Ilfusion’s clients and what they did, learn the their personality, views, and audience. With social media, it’s hard to directly measure the posts’ influence on followers, but there are certain numbers that can be tracked to relay the outcome of that influence. One eye opener was the social media analysis comparing one of our clients to competing companies. By observing and recording the numbers and different aspects of companies’ pages, pictures, posts and more, I saw the details, quality, and interaction that build up to success. Additionally, when we received new batches of pictures from clients, I learned how to watermark and upload them. I created boards on Pinterest and Flickr, and interacted on Google+ by starting conversations with other companies.

It’s great being part of a company like Ilfusion. They set high standards for any future companies that I will work for. Who else has a pool table, photo studio, bouncy balls to sit on, and an arcade game in their office? But honestly, it’s the camaraderie and environment – the type of thing that you can’t describe in words or learn from reading an article or watching a TV show – that has taught me the most through this internship. I’ve realized that whatever I decide to do should not be a job; it should be a passion that drives me to wake up every morning, striving to constantly learn, perfect, and share my work with others. They don’t show that on crime shows now do they.