In my three(ish) months as an intern with Agent99, I’ve covered a lot of ground…physically and digitally! I’ve been writing, logging, packing, researching, and most importantly, learning! As it turns out, office life isn’t as scary as I once thought. There have been a lot of little learnings along the way i.e. what to do if a random dog wanders into the office (answer- lots of pats and then begrudgingly take her back to her owner), how to most efficiently pack a giveaway hamper (answer- with a lot of pleading to inanimate objects to Just. Stay. Still.) and the most important lesson of all, have your coffee order ready to go (answer- I’ll take a small Mocha, please!). But right alongside the little lessons have been the big ones, and so here are my big two take-aways from the last 12 weeks of a PR internship.
Lesson One: The influencer market is way bigger than I realized!
As an intern, I’ve been researching influencers for a variety of clients and campaigns. Take a guess at how many Australian influencers there are out there…now add a zero on the end, and you’re starting to get close. Instagram is absolutely flooded with Australian content creators that cater to a wide range of audiences, that I had absolutely no idea took up such a large part of our social market. Trying to find the right influencers for every campaign was a challenge most days, but the more I researched, the more I learnt that it is like a community within itself. Content creators tag each other, like each other’s posts and always leave positive comments. They care about each other’s opinions and look to influence positive reviews and change within their communities.
But if you’re an Australian influencer trying to be found by PR agencies for work, here are some of my top tips for ensuring we can find you and add you to our books:
- List your city in your bio
- Pin your photo location AND hashtag your area. #searchable
- Engage with the products or brands you’re interested in collaborating with.
- List or link an email address
- Use Australian-specific hashtags like #hikeaustralia, #aussiesummer or my personal fave, #happyaslarry
Lesson Two: Paint is not dead
Logging, tracking, and reporting media coverage is central to PR campaigns. As an intern, I was tasked with screenshotting, saving, and recording any news stories or Instagram posts that were relevant to Agent99’s clients. A good clipping is a screenshot with the publication name, the headline, the publish date, and some easily readable body text where the client is mentioned. This is where my personal hero, Paint, stepped in. The last time I’d used Paint I’d been in primary school, making a digital painting of myself and my dog outside my house. As it turns out, Paint does a lot more than that. Instead of saving a screenshot of a web page zoomed out to the point of illegibility, I could cut, crop and paste images to make one clear, readable clipping. Paint also helped me save Instagram stories. My advice for future interns: keep Paint in your taskbar.
I had a great few months interning at Agent99. I got to work across so many exciting clients, learn lots of new skills and see how real PR professionals work day to day. The team of Agents here were very welcoming and patient, and gave me so many opportunities to learn. They’re enthusiastic and passionate about their work and gave me real tasks to help me learn and grow (I never went on the typical intern coffee run), thanks team!
Signing off for final time,
Intern Agent Tamara
Agent99 is an award-winning PR and communications agency based in Sydney. For more information about our services, contact us at info@agent99pr.com.
