Melissa Atanasio – Communications Internship

My name is Melissa Atanasio and I am currently a Marketing 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, newsletters, and other outlets of communication. I have extended my internship into the second semester to continue broadening my knowledge of marketing, communications, and media-related skills.

I begin every day at my internship by checking my email and content calendar for any information on 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 engagement on our posts. Using the Adobe Spark software, I am able to create graphics utilizing our official district colors to present information consistently and orderly to our community. To create effective posts, I often reword the information we receive to fit our district’s voice and branding and then submit them to Mrs. Weaver and Mr. Johnson who finalize and upload them to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. For example, for posts on successes throughout the district, we often use “#SpartanPride” when sharing with the community. I also focus on Retweeting posts from teachers, staff, and others that should be widely spread throughout the district. We also started the district’s Instagram profile through this internship, and since its creation, we’ve gained over 400 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 year!

Throughout this internship, I’ve also had the opportunity to work alongside Mr. Johnson in the district office to work on our Elanco Extra district newsletters for the fall and winter. I’ve helped to write articles on noteworthy events, curate information on our new staff members, reformat information into articles, create advertisements, and give creative input on photography and design aspects of the newsletter. Each time we’ve gone through the process of designing and publishing our newsletter, I’ve gained more insight into the process.

I was also able to help with varying aspects of event planning/coordination for the Lanco Learning summit and Leadership Lancaster events. I was able to aid Mr. Johnson in putting together hundreds of lanyards for teachers and staff, set up tables, take photos, and serve food.

Last but not least, I was able to help create content for our Digital Sign that can be viewed along Main Street. With the “Ignite” software, I’ve had the opportunity to create posts for students of the month and the GSPA spring musical to effectively share information with our community as they pass by our campus.

Overall, I feel that I’ve grown immensely throughout this internship within my writing, graphic design 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. The number of projects I was able to work on all required me to think outside of the box and explore new areas in my education. Before this experience, I was extremely unsure about what career path I wanted to take, but now I know that a career within marketing is ideal for my future. Every industry needs effective marketing teams, so the possibilities in this field are truly endless!