Melissa Atanasio – Social Media Internship

My name is Melissa Atanasio and I am currently a Social Media and Communications intern with the Eastern Lancaster County School District’s Technology Department. I work alongside Mrs. Stephanie Weaver and Mr. Justin Johnson to coordinate the district’s presence on social media and other outlets of communication. I was interested in learning more about utilizing social media professionally through marketing, so I decided to pursue this internship to broaden my knowledge of communication skills.

I begin every day at my internship by checking my email for any information on upcoming or past events that would make suitable content for our social media pages. From there, I reach out to others in the district for photos of recent events or create graphics for upcoming events to spread information and encourage interaction on district posts. After rewording information to fit our district’s voice and branding, I submit my posts to Mrs. Weaver and Mr. Johnson who finalize and submit our posts to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I also focus on Retweeting posts from teachers, staff, and clubs that should be widely spread throughout the district.

Throughout this internship, I’ve also had the opportunity to work in the district office with Mr.  Johnson to work on our Elanco Extra district newsletter for the Fall. I’ve helped to write articles on noteworthy events, curate information on our new staff members, and give creative input on photo and design aspects of the newsletter. We’ve also started the district’s Instagram through this internship, and since its creation, we’ve gained over 200 followers. It’s been a great experience to help improve our user engagement across all social media platforms and watch our followings grow throughout the semester.

I feel that I’ve grown a lot throughout this internship within my writing skills and ability to professionally communicate with confidence. The varying types of writing mixed with the knowledge of branding challenged me to utilize my skills in new ways. Before this experience I was extremely unsure about what career path I wanted to take, but now I know that a career within social media communications would be ideal for my future. Every industry needs effective communications teams, so the possibilities in this field are endless!