Hi – I’m Kayla! This summer, I am really excited to be interning with Elevate Online to learn more about Digital Marketing and the Freelance/Consulting world. I’m excited to get a first-hand look at the skills needed to be a Digital Marketer and the personal attributes that make self-employment successful. After the first few weeks of my internship, some of my biggest takeaways are time management, research, and knowledge of influencer marketing.

Time Management

When you become an independent consultant, you have freedom to choose the hours you work, where you work, and who you work with! With so much flexibility around the work day, keeping a schedule and managing your time well becomes one of the most important tools to success. When you’re a consultant, you have multiple clients at one time, and different deadlines for each project, so being timely and organized is essential.

My internship is fully remote and online, which is great practice for being an independent consultant! A certain amount of work needs to be done within a set amount of time, so I keep a to-do list and track the time it takes me to complete each task. This makes it easy to stay focused, while allowing time for breaks to clear my head or go outside.  It’s also great practice for tracking billable hours when working with clients!

Research

During the first week of my internship, I started with a lot of research. Before you jump into creating content for social media, a newsletter, or even a website, you have to understand the market space, your client, and their competitors. This requires research, which can take up a good chunk of time in the beginning!

I researched the industry of specific clients, the competitors of Elevate Online, and potential Elevate Online clients. A great marketing plan can quickly become a financial loss if you don’t understand who you’re marketing to or what their other options are!

Influencer Marketing

A lot of my research included influencers who would be great potential partners for a specific client’s influencer marketing campaign. After you’ve determined if the influencer has part of your target market, the client’s budget affects the number of followers a potential partner should have. A huge number of followers means you need a BIG budget to partner with that influencer, but if you choose someone with too small a following, your product won’t be well-promoted.

Once you find influencers that meet your criteria, you need to determine if they have good engagement. Some influencers have a large following, but very little engagement comparatively, which is something to keep in mind. If the followers aren’t engaging with the content, the partnership is less likely to actually inspire sales. A 3-5% engagement rate is considered average and anything below 1% is not likely to inspire many sales. Then once you’ve narrowed down your search, you can reach out to those influencers and negotiate a partnership!

To Be Continued…

I’ve learned a lot about Digital Marketing in a short amount of time over the last few weeks, and I’m excited to see what the rest of the summer has in store! If you’re interested in learning more about Digital Marketing Consultants, look for future blogs from Elevate Online, where Katie shares marketing tips. I’ll be keeping you up to date during my summer internship here as well! You can also check out Katie’s second business, LEAP, where she helps professionals take the leap into consulting. 

Talk to you soon!

Kayla