By: Hailey Muscarella and Matt Murphy
My name is Hailey Muscarella and I am a Junior at Niagara University. I am a Marketing major and just finished my summer internship here at Discover 716! Before coming to this internship, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do with my degree. After coming to intern here at Discover 716 I found my passion and my love for Social Media Marketing/ brand content creating.
This internship taught me all about social media and how to capture an audience and keep them engaged. I also learned alot on communicating with local businesses who are sponsors with Discover 716 and how to bring new content for their business that will interest locals! I would say my critical and creative thinking has sharpened after this summer! We did a lot of collaborations with local businesses coming up with ideas to promote their brand through outreach! It was great to meet new people and improve my oral and written communication skills. Social media can be tricky, so I found creating a content calendar helped in keeping me organized. My job was to co run the main page with my fellow intern Matt who also goes to NU. We would come up with ideas that would interest the community and keep them engaged and then post to the Instagram! We also would post for businesses we were working with to bring fresh new content each week for them so things wouldn’t get repetitive. I find it so interesting that you can have a job where you come up with fresh ideas , make content using Instagram tik tok, etc and post your content to get your brand out there and keep the audience coming!
The most memorable experience of the internship was the tasting tables for me. I have never done something like it before. We went to Falley Allen and Spot Café in Niagara Falls. We got to taste test their most popular menu items and drinks, take pictures and then write a blog post on our experience. It was so much fun and it was something I never thought I would be doing! I also had the privilege to take a boat ride on the Edward M. Cotter Boat for its boat blessing. That boat is run by volunteers and is a historical part of Buffalo. It is the oldest fire boat in North America and is still running! The fact we got the chance to be on it is a rare one in a lifetime experience. It was amazing to talk and hear stories from the volunteers.
Overall, it was an amazing and memorable experience working at Discover 716 as an intern. It is something I will take with me as I venture further in my studies at NU and as I Go off into my career. This internship helped me to find my passion for social media and branding marketing and without it, I still wouldn’t know what I wanted to do! If you have the chance, be an intern here and you will create great connections and awesome memorable experiences to take with you into your future!
Here are two pictures from the Edward M. Cotter Boat Blessing!
Pictured to the left is the delicious Mac n cheese we got to try at the Falley Allen tasting table!
My name is Matt Murphy, and I am a summer intern here at Discover 716. I am going into my Junior year at Niagara University, and I am a Marketing major. Before my internship at Discover 716 I knew I enjoyed marketing through the classes I was taking but this internship at Discover 716 was putting what I learned in class to application and has taught me a lot about social media marketing and content creation.
To start when I first started this internship I felt like my understanding of social media and the content on it is very different from what I see now and after my internship. Following a marketing strategy, aiming your content at a certain group or target audience, and seeing if what you post achieves what you want is extremely important. I worked with local businesses in Buffalo as that is the mission of Discover 716 local students supporting local businesses in different ways. We did work with different local businesses and created a market strategy for posting on social media weekly. This internship taught me how to post when to post and differentiated forms of content is what people want to see and deliver that to them. I worked with Intern Hailey to co run a couple of businesses and ran some on my own who goes to NU as well. We would come up with different ideas that the local business would want with a caption and tailor it to a market of people that follow them and our page as well. Gauging what would work and not work was important to see what no to and what to continue to do to gain people’s interest. Social Media marketing is a limitless world and this internship at Discover 716 showed that through how I learned many skills for my career.
The best moments for me were working with the local businesses and the Friends of Carly White Party having a fun time. These events and posting on social media made me embrace and inspire creativity within myself and see how different business approach everything they do and want to gain interest and attention from people.
Discover 716 proved to be an amazing experience I would never forget and taught me many essential skills that my degree from NU will provide and help get a jump start on my career. This internship showed me that there is more to marketing then I thought, and creativity and inspiration are a huge driving force to help you excel and grow. I would recommend this internship for anyone in business interest at all! You can learn many things from good hands on experience, learn and meet great people and have lifelong connections!
These are two pictures from the Spot Café Tasting table!
This picture is from when we got a tour of the Niagara Power Authority!
Awesome art someone sent us!
Two yummy meals we got to try from the tasting table at Mississippi Mudds!
Thank you Discover 716 for a great summer! We will take these experiences with us as we go into our careers! Join the Discover716 team to really gain great knowledge of so many interesting fields!