FIRST BLOG POST:
Hi there! I'm Elisenda Llauradó and I am in my last quarter of the Digital Design program. I am looking forward to learn a lot this quarter and for the opportunity to apply all my knowledge and passions into a company that I love.
Internship at Merin Designs
Merin Designs is a small retail company from Seattle that started in 2008 by a mother of three children. They created a multi-purpose tote bag made of soft, pliable canvas, with interior waterproof pockets to keep your stuff organized and with a waterproof bottom to keep the dry from getting wet.
I've worked for Merin Designs in the past building their website and with their social media platforms but being a full-time student and working part time, I was never able to spend the quality time I wanted to help Merin Designs grow.
Eventhough M D is a small company, there is so much potential and so many things to do. That's the beauty of a small company, where you get to work one on one with the owner, learn their vision and work on a variety of projects.
After meeting with the owner of the company we made a list of our goals for this internship:
-Create successful social media strategies: increase traffic in their social media platforms, interact with customers and engage with other accounts to bring traffic and increase MD's following. (Platforms: Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, twitter and update blog).
-Blog: The blog is a great tool for making the product more attractive, we can use it for promotions, give ideas, interviews customers...
-Website content: Take photos of the product, edit pictures,
-Website Management: update new information, include press articles, upload videos, product description, manage inventory.
-Email Marketing campaigns: create visual appealing emails to increase sales and enourage customers to share their merin love sending pictures and sharing them in social media. I don't have much experience doing email marketing campaigns but I've been seeing what other successful companies have done and will try to apply what I've learned.
-Track results: of marketing campaigns (mailChimp), promotions in Instagram (iconosquare (Enlaces a un sitio externo.)), social media.
-Videos: small videos are a great way to make the product appealing and show potential customers the functionality of the bag; Shoot videos, edit them and share them in social media, website and emails.
-Collaborations with other companies to create cross-promotions to reach out to new audiences and increase following: this is something I am really interested on working on, contact other companies or bloggers that have similar audience and related products to Merin Designs that would be interested in doing cross-promotions, giveaways to help reach out new customers and increase web traffic.
For this Internship I will be working on-site for a few days a week to meet with the owner and I will be working from home the rest of the time. Some weeks I will be working on-site more than two days since we are working on some promotions and we will be meeting with other individuals for cross-promotions and giveaways through social media.
Programs I will be using:
I will be working with Illustrator to create different Illustrations, icons, logos and flyers, Photoshop to retouch, add text and edit pictures for the website, social media, emails... InDesign to create stylesheets for whole sellers's reference, Adobe Premier or iMovie to edit videos, SquareSpace is the website's platform so I will be managing the back-end of the site to create nice designs and add new information to the site and other needs for the company.
I am really excited to work for Merin Designs this quarter for this Spring Internship and I feel prepared and capable to help the company with the goals I described above. This will be a great opportunity to use all my skills and learn new ones. Working on different projects for a small company has many benefits; problem solving, strategy, tracking results and working with a variety of projects at the same time. I think this will be great for my experience, since I am really interested in retail and marketing, and since I love the product and I believe it has great potential, I will be able to create exciting projects for them.