UniSA Internship Experience - Jay Tayiana
Welcome Jay!
Jay Tayiana joined our Media and Communications Team as part of her internship course, Communication and Media at the University of South Australia for Semester 2, 2023 28th April 2023 - 23rd June 2023.
She is completing a 80-hour internship onsite at the Connecting Up Office, 7.5 hours a week for about 11 weeks around her university classes. Jay's portfolio of articles for the SAcommunity Team is >>here
Personal Bio
Jay Tayiana is a student at the University of South Australia studying a Bachelors in Communication and Media with a sub-major in Marketing. As an international student from Kenya, Jay first arrived in Australia in 2017, returning home in 2019 during the Covid-19 pandemic, she came back to complete her studies in Australia in 2022. She is interested in social media management and content creation, especially in the food and entertainment industry.
Jay Tayiana is a student at the University of South Australia studying a Bachelors in Communication and Media with a sub-major in Marketing. As an international student from Kenya, Jay first arrived in Australia in 2017, returning home in 2019 during the Covid-19 pandemic, she came back to complete her studies in Australia in 2022. She is interested in social media management and content creation, especially in the food and entertainment industry.
Jay is also the founder of The Tayiana Foundation which is a non-profit organization based in Nairobi, Kenya, that is dedicated to supporting vulnerable girls and children in need. The foundation was founded with the goal of providing aid to young girls who have undergone Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) or are at risk of early marriage. The foundation is also committed to providing support to children who are in need of basic necessities such as food, shelter, and education.
Over 2021 - 2022, Jay worked as an intern in an e-commerce fashion company where she was later absorbed as their Marketing Assistant in Nairobi, Kenya. That opportunity enabled Jay to learn more on marketing and expand her skills within the Kenyan industry. Her consistent interest in Communication, Media and Marketing has led her to seek an internship opportunity at Connecting Up a service of Infoxchange, where she is looking to gain hands-on experience working in the Australian industry.
Jay’s aim for the future after graduation is to build a career in Social Media Marketing for an events company or wine brand. She plans to become a Communications/Marketing Manager and own her own Social Media Agency.
Welcome Jay, we are glad to have you!
Media Interns Nicole Cheng, Ada Wing Yi Wong, Rhea Rao, Jay Tayiana and Stephanie Hoi Ching Wu.
Mentor Meeting Experience
On 16th March 2023, Jay attended a Teams meeting with her mentor, Bede Eagle who is the Strategic Communications and Engagement Manager at Infoxchange. Bede is highly experienced in senior level content marketing, data-driven strategy and delivery, content production skills and its distribution. Bede’s expertise in Communications and Marketing helped Jay have more understanding regarding Australia’s marketing industry.
Some major takeaways include:
Bede Eagle's responsibilities majorly involve amplifying the voice of the organization. This includes how to get genuine engagement and better communication using their main approach which is collaborations. He also works out the company's key messages and what their objectives are, including aligning business goals to the marketing goals.
I was also advised to narrow down my interests, figure my niche, work towards expanding my knowledge towards it and improve on it daily.
We also discussed social media. Bede mentioned the two most important pillars of success in social media are consistency and collaboration. Consistency is about knowing who you are both as an organization and in personal branding. Consistently contributing towards my specific niche build trusts amongst my audience, therefore brings about data inclusion and capabilities. On the other hand, collaborating involves engaging other people; two voices are better than one and 100 voices are better than two. The more people involved, the more the content will be well received and shared.
Another key takeaway was regarding the marketing industry. Bede advised that one of the main function of marketing is to drive sales. However, when it comes to not for profit, one ends up having different goals; Is it to drive fundraising? Is it to drive awareness? or is it to drive advocacy where one is looking to get policy changes or such. One should figure out their mission and marketing comes in as it helps do that through the art of communication.
“Destroy the rules of what you think is good writing”. Understanding copywriting that converts is very important especially in the not-for-profit sector. As social media marketers, we are 'attention thieves' and therefore trying to think of different ways to do things is important as Stop-The-Scroll (STS) is always your mission. I also learnt that you shouldn't write anything that you wouldn't say verbally which is a good rule because then people read it like that.
Some of the challenges facing the organization is identifying which channel works best, where for Infoxchange, he narrowed it down to LinkedIn and Facebook. He picked the platforms, especially the former because it’s a very professional network and the organization relates with their target audience. I also learnt that posting content on your own organically instead of reposting already shared content has better analytical results.
At the end of the session, I was advised to keep learning, for instance; Learn more about customer journeys; awareness, consideration and purchase. Other options include taking course webinars and trainings that improve my soft skills professionaly; Going through different companies profiles and taking notes of how they do their social media marketing such as copywriting, the diversity of their posts, tonal differentiation and which posts had better engagements.
Bede Eagle, Strategic Communications and Engagement Manager, Infoxchange at the Connecting Up Conference 2023
Pankaj Chhalotre, Head of Connecting Up, Volunteer Rex Porter, and Intern Jay Tayiana
Work Experience
During my onsite placement, I had the chance to meet Pankaj Chhalotre, who is the Head of Connecting Up. Pankaj began his journey at Connecting Up as an intern and worked his way through to his current position. We had a conversation on my experience as an intern and my future plans afterwards.
On 20th June 2023, I attended an Infoxchange People and Culture Lunch & Learn meeting remotely regarding Client and Case Management. The meeting informed us on what a CCM system is and its strategies, and how it directly impacts the consumer experience. Jay appreciated being part of the meeting as it was very insightful and assisted me to learn more about a division of the company and its progress. I also stayed informed regarding Infoxchange's weekly staff through emails and staff news via Yammer.
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Training and Education – Professional Development
During her internship, Jay undertook different online webinars from the Connecting Up Digital Platform which is an online learning service for training and growth that offers a variety of useful live and recorded webinars, workshops, and web conferences. Connecting Up offers these courses for free, on a weekly basis, for both interns and volunteers to assist in creating quality content for the SA Community media projects.
Jay has a vast interest in social media which led her to choose webinars related to that as part of her schedule and therefore improved her understanding on communication and media marketing.
Below are the Connecting Up trainings accessed by Jay alongside her feedback;
Getting started with LinkedIn profiles - setting up or improving your profile by Yvette Adams, The Creative Collective
In this webinar, I was able to learn more about LinkedIn and how to set up my profile on the platform. This includes an orientation around LinkedIn and the importance of writing a good description as well as utilising keywords. I was also able to learn the new features on LinkedIn and how to use them to my advantage.
Digital Marketing for Non-Profits: Getting Started with Google Analytics by Tim Brack Digital Marketing Lead, Leafcutter
In this masterclass, I learnt what Google Analytics is and how it works. This also included other learning important key notes such as tips for better ways to use Google Analytics and how to achieve the numbers I need. I learnt important terminologies that are used, what different metrics used for measuring and how to find insight in the default reports for different organisational objectives such as optimising content. This was a very helpful webinar and I am looking forward to implementing the lessons learnt.
Basic Facebook marketing for not-for-profits by Christine Gooding, Social Media Director, The Shannon Company
Facebook, having millions of users, is one of the most common platforms used for marketing and heavily relied upon by NFPs to raise awareness, share stories, raise funds and gather the community to support their cause. This webinar taught me the do's and don'ts of Facebook marketing as well as how to increase and maintain engagement.
SAcommunity August 2023 eNews
Jay created the August 2023 e-Newsletter using BEEPro for a promotional e-campaign release. The newsletter includes upcoming events during the month of August. The blog stories written and monthly calendars published by the SAcommunity Media and Communications Team are collated for the release of the monthly eNews.
This email campaign is designed in BeePro, an email design suite for export to Campaign Monitor, email marketing software. Jay collated stories from the team for the August Events Calendar and then explored and used BeePro to collate stories and images for the SAcommunity August eNews. Using Canva to create her own designs to improve the overall eNewsletter design, creating an eNews for August 2023.
Interns Nicole Cheng, AdaWing Yi Wong, Jay Tayiana, Jordana Izquierdo and Sarthak Jain
Please note the anecdotes above are written by the intern themselves in a mix of first and third person to capture and record their internship experiences effectively.
