NOTE: THIS WAS MY REQUIRED INTERN PAPER FROM LAST WEEK. I WILL TRY AND POST MY WEEKLY LOGS SOONER THAN A WEEK LATE. ENJOY -JMICHAELWILLIS
This is the first week of my internship and I am working at the Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau. It is the main center for tourism and other Cape Girardeau attractions located on Broadway in downtown Cape Girardeau. My unpaid internship began last Sunday, the 22nd, when I worked at the VisitCape booth at the Welcome Back Picnic. My job was to meet students and promote our upcoming events, while promoting our gift card contest that we were holding that day. The main purpose of the contest was to collect student information and compile that into a database that would go into an e-mail system for the monthly newsletter, sent out to Cape Girardeau students and citizens, which told about upcoming attraction and more information about Cape Girardeau. The booth was a success, as we brought in hundreds of students and compiled quite a bit of data for our e-mail promotions.
The next day I worked was Tuesday, August 24th. I worked from 12:00pm to 5:00pm. While working in the CVB office, I started out by compiling some of the student data, obtained from the Welcome Back Picnic, into an Excel database which would go to the e-mail list. This took about an hour and a half. The rest of the day involved my internship supervisor, Stephanie, showing me how the office does its daily operations. She showed me the various social networking sites that the Cape CVB uses. She showed me how to update the certain social networking sites while giving me the user name and password for one of the Facebook accounts. I concluded the day by beginning to fill out a monthly planner for the VisitCape Facebook page. I would continue to do this during my work day on Thursday.
The third day of work was Thursday, August 26th. I worked from 12:00pm to 5:00pm. While working in the office, I completed a monthly planner for two of our Facebook pages. I did the September planner for the VisitCape page and the Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival page. The purpose behind the monthly Facebook planners is so the office can be prepared weeks in advance for what will be posted on any given day. The planners have to be approved by the head director, Chuck Martin, before it goes on the web. Each day of the week on the planner has a certain theme and every month will have different themes geared towards the time of the year or if there is certain events that we are hosting coming up (ex.: The Ghost Storytelling Event in October). The Facebook pages for the CVB are very important in a marketing aspect of the company because with the recent rise in social networking, advertising and promoting Cape through Facebook is not only efficient (you can track the number of fans, comments, and likes), but cheap (a Facebook account is free).
My last day of work occurred on Friday, August 27th. I worked from 12:30pm to 5:00pm. While working in the office, I began the day by creating accounts on various social networking sites, including Four Square and Gowalla, in hopes to use these networking sites to promote Cape Girardeau. After creating accounts on the various sites, I began to do research on how Gowalla works. Basically, Gowalla is a social networking site that requires its users to go on “trips” to various places planned by other Gowalla users. When a person goes on a “trip”, they mark that they went to certain spots through their smart phone, and it if they hit up all of the spots on the “trip” they receive points and other various cyber rewards. After acquiring the information, I went out and created a “trip” for Cape Girardeau by marking five locations across town. Next month, we will include Gowalla and the new Cape trip on Gowalla in the “Cape Social” e-newsletter. This will not only spread the word on Gowalla, but will hopefully get others to go on our already-made trip and for them to make other Cape trips that visitors can go on.
My first week of interning with the Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau went well. Even though I have only worked four days, I feel as if I leave everyday with a little chunk of information that will help me become a better marketer. I cannot wait to learn more skills and other information.
Week Total Number of Hours: 17.5 hours
Number of Hours worked on Internship to Date: 17.5 hours
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