I never thought I would be ready to leave Miami University, the place I call home. During high school, I thought college would be one of the best times of my life. After those four memorable years, I imagined I’d be forced into the ‘real world’. I never believed I’d be prepared for life after college, but following my summer internship at KemperLesnik, I couldn’t be more ready to start the next chapter of my life.
I had the opportunity to perform public relations activities for several of our accounts including Aon Risk Solutions, Aon Consulting, Forsythe Solutions Group and Diamond Management and Technology Consultants. In the beginning, I did not have high expectations about my internship as I thought I’d be in charge of tasks such as filing papers and getting co-workers coffee. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I was treated like a full-time public relations employee. My interests and talents were actually being put to use!
The best part of my internship was working on different aspects of public relations. I especially enjoyed challenging my writing abilities by developing press releases and pitches. The KemperLesnik team taught me the importance of including news-hooks in pitches, which influenced the number of journalists interested in reporting the story. Public relations writing must undergo many revisions and edits before it is ready for the media. The KemperLesnik team helped me to become a stronger writer.
Another favorite thing of mine was creating media lists to contact reporters. Producing a media list involves research, organization, patience and knowledge of the media industry. Every pitch and press release can be completely different, which requires forming new media lists all the time. Working on media lists can be a timely process, but the ability to reach out to the proper reporter is essential.
A growing feature of public relations is the use of social media. Another one of my responsibilities was to manage the Twitter handles of some of our clients. I created client reports, analyzed the data, and interacted with the people, media, and corporations to build our clients’ brands.
This internship gave me the opportunity to begin developing myself as a public relations professional. I enjoyed the hands-on experience, rather than completing homework and taking exams. I applied my knowledge from school and integrated it with real clients and real public relations responsibilities. KemperLesnik helped me grow as a professional, and it helped to prepare me for my future career in public relations. As my summer comes to an end and I travel back to school, I now look forward to finishing my studies and starting the next chapter of my life.
Written by Meghan Reilly
Tags: Aon, Diamond, Forsythe, Public Relations
