Hi everyone! My name is Abby Tutterow and I am a rising sophomore at Davidson College. This summer I decided to explore my budding passion for business through an internship at NEATGOODS.
I am so grateful for my time at NEATGOODS because of the invaluable experiences I’ve had. Over the last two and a half months, Greg and Heidi gave me the opportunity to truly dig into social media and marketing. Because of their support and openness, I was trusted with projects that pushed me and caused me to grow immensely.
I primarily focused on social media, but I tried to take a new approach. As a social media intern, a huge responsibility was keeping up with posts across all social platforms. Knowing that my time with NEATGOODS would be short, I decided to develop a strategy and foundation for social media that could be applied after I left. The idea was minimal content for maximum impact. This involved developing a social media calendar and planner that filled each month with posts, while reducing effort for Greg, Heidi, and future social media interns. I was lucky enough to work with Anne, our marketing partner, to use data analysis to test out earlier drafts of the social calendar. This was an incredible chance to learn about data analysis and testing as valuable tools in marketing.
Growth through social media is exponential, so often it is slow going. But, as the weeks went by, I was excited to see areas of significant improvement. Due to a few of my adjustments, our Pinterest numbers and giveaway participants significantly increased. It was so exciting to see my strategies in action!
Throughout this experience I’ve learned more than I could ever fit into this blog. One learning curve was a platform called Buffer, which is a social media scheduling platform. I had to learn the ins and outs of Buffer in order to efficiently coordinate social media efforts across various platforms. One of my biggest takeaways from my time at NEATGOODS was about balancing marketing with cost and operations. Through mentorship from Greg, I’ve begun to think, not only of creative marketing ideas, but how to operationalize them as well.
I had such an incredible experience at NEATGOODS this summer and I want to thank Greg, Heidi, Anne, and Chris for the time they took to patiently work with me and guide me through my first experience in business. I am thankful for the wonderful opportunity to learn. I will never forget the priceless lessons, and I cannot wait to watch NEATGOODS continue to grow!