Life as a Social Media Intern

If social media interests you, or you want to find out how life is as a social media intern, read on!

Social Media

Social media has enabled masses to connect with one another across barriers. As someone who has always been intrigued by the power of social media as a tool for communication and marketing, I knew that I wanted to apply for such an internship before I graduated. As a Communications and New Media student here at NUS, I felt even more drawn to the idea of applying what I’ve learnt in school while picking up skills in the workforce.

As the world of social media is a fast-paced one, I knew I wanted to challenge myself and find an internship where I could experience that. Eventually, I landed a role as a social media marketing intern at Shopee!

Social Media Marketing Internship at Shopee!

The team~

So how is life like as a social media marketing intern?

The Experience

A large part of my role revolves around creating content and drawing insights from performance data and metrics. Then there’s the BAU (Business as Usual) tasks, one of which is trends outlook. For this, we monitor local and global trends, as well as social media trends.

On my first day, I was filled with excitement and anticipation. At that time, my colleagues mentioned that the period I was starting in was the less busy period as they had just completed 12.12 campaigns.

That one “chiller” week was then met with the fast-paced nature of social media marketing for an e-commerce platform like Shopee. On my second week, I felt that urgency and intensity working in the social media team. As busy as it was, this was one of the best decisions I’ve made— I’m immensely grateful to have landed this role and work alongside a fun and nurturing team, while enjoying what I do. Moreover, I have another intern by my side whom I’ve grown close to and we work closely together on various tasks. Especially during busier periods, it’s always nice to know that there’s someone by my side.

Interning part time with a full load at university can be taxing, but I’ve slowly gotten used to it. It can get tough, but what’s important is to always take short breaks and prioritise!

First day with the team!

Interns~

The Actual Work

With social media, trends are an important part of it. To remain relevant and grow brand awareness, it is crucial to hop on trends and create content based off it. Trends and fads come and go in an instant, which is what causes the nature of social media to be so fast-paced! A topic could be relevant for a day or two, but completely forgotten after.

As such, we would have to identify local and global trends on a weekly basis, as well as social media trends on TikTok that resonates with our audience. Most time, we would have to jump on the trend on the day itself.

One of the most memorable trends we partook in was the Hanteo Awards Ceremony in Seoul, or some might recall, the “fan poop incident”. For context, a fan pooped their pants at the award show and the smell travelled to a point it reached some of the idols, and they were seen wrenching at it and trying their best to keep a straight face. (https://www.koreaboo.com/news/fan-pooped-in-pants-2024-hanteo-music-awards-steps-forward/)

This sparked discussion online, which was an apt topic to hop on for content.

The video we created ended up going pretty viral, which attests the fact that keeping up with trends and news is important so that your audience can relate to your brand better.

As fun as it is to look for trends, it does get tiring, and it’s not always that trends are around. Sometimes, I can spend an hour looking on TikTok for trends we can hop on which can be demoralising. After aimlessly scrolling, the team will turn to each other and hop on each other’s ideas as a more collaborative approach.

Content Creation

Exploring creativity is something I enjoy thoroughly, which is one of the things I experience during this internship. Content creation in itself provides you that space to explore your unique ideas and to see them come to life on the screen. As Shopee covers many sectors, from fashion to beauty to tech, I’ve gotten countless opportunities to ideate and come up with various types of content.

With the recent Eras Tour concert, we created an outfit look book video promoting Shopee clothing items that viewers can buy for the Eras Tour. I had a lot of fun creating this video with my fellow intern as we shot the video at Design Orchard, giving us a chance to step away from the office. As someone who likes fashion too, this was definitely a plus!

Filming in progress

Filming at home!

Content creation comes with its set of problems too. Some days, you just lack the motivation to create something and generate fresh ideas. And on others, it can be hard to come up with ideas. Our creative juices may not work all the time.

Putting yourself on the Internet also comes with inevitable negative comments and sentiments. Initially apprehensive about this during my internship, I've since learned to accept it as an unavoidable aspect of online presence and to stay authentic to myself. These individuals are often hidden behind their screens and their opinions shouldn’t dictate your self-worth! Embracing this reality has actually bolstered my confidence. I've found that navigating through these challenges becomes more manageable.

Data Analysis

With content creation comes performance tracking and data analysis. Not only do we put out content pieces, we need to analyse the performance of such videos such that we can identify what was done well and how we can improve in the future. Of course, it can get demoralising when you put in effort for a video but the results don’t seem to do justice to it.

It is interesting to gather insights through data, as much as I hate dealing with numbers, but it helps set up a more practical and concrete approach for your next steps. There are many reasons for why videos don’t do as well as we think it would be, one of which could be the lack of call-to-action cues!

Every month, we track data for the previous month across all social media platforms—Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Reddit.

Overall, I’m thoroughly enjoying this internship, especially for the wonderful team I work with. It’s fun to bounce off each other’s ideas and gain fresh perspectives from my teammates. I’ve also been enriched with knowledge and skills that I hope to transfer in the future.

What’s next?

With 2 months left, I’m savouring every moment. If you were to ask me whether I see myself working in this role in the future, I would say “I don’t know”. I can’t give you a definite answer. I still have a year to graduation and I don’t have a clear idea what I want to do yet. What’s important is to gain experiences and have no regrets!

Social media is fun, it’s fast-paced, and it challenges you. But not everything is pretty! Despite that, I’d highly recommend experiencing working in a social media team— it is definitely one of the most memorable experiences I’ve had.

All in all, it’s okay to not know what you want to do yet, or even if you don’t for a long time. What matters is what you make out of the time you have, to experience things, to find out what you love and desire. I hope I’ve provided you some insight into what it’s like working in social media and possibly convince you it’s something you should try out :)

Thankful!