I have had the amazing opportunity to work online with Social Journal, a Canadian-based start-up which aims to create an online site that will become the foremost online destination for social entrepreneurs. My job is to analyze visitor traffic and behaviour to Social Journal's blog and beta site using Google Analytics and other analytic tools. Overall, each day of my online internship has been a unique and extraordinary learning experience, and today was no exception.
I started my internship today in a hotel room in Los Angeles, California, after lunch. Taking out my laptop, I discussed with my boss over Skype and we determined the assignments I would complete over the next few days. The call was casual, with no need for formalities or any sort of defined structure. Throughout the call, we shared knowledge and discussed ideas equally, and I could always interrupt my boss to raise a point of issue. Thus, my boss treated me not as an employee, but as an equal partner in business, which is representative of my entire internship experience.
After the call ended, I proceeded to start completing one of my assignments, which was to research tools to analyze social media traffic to our website. By reading through several sites, I learned a lot about tools such as KISSmetrics, Twendz, Twittersheep, and Huitesuite Analytics. The next step was to identify which tool Social Journal would use and to sign up for the tool, but first my family had planned to attend an admissions tour at CalTech. I returned to the hotel room at around 10:00 in the evening and finished setting up an account for KISSmetrics, the analytic tool which I felt was best for Social Journal.
Each day of my internship has been the same as this one in terms of how flexible my work schedule is and how much control I have over my work. Thus, I have truly enjoyed working with Social Journal as they have given me an endless amount of opportunities to learn and develop my skills as much as I want. Though my internship is ending in a few days, I hope to continue working with Social Journal as a team member in the following months. Thank you so much, Shad, for giving me the opportunity to work with such an amazing company as well as giving me the opportunity to experience an amazing month of July! Thanks, too, to Social Journal, for giving me an incredible internship experience. I'll certainly look forward to continuing my work with Social Journal.
Victor Shang
SoJo
Victoria, BC