Adelaide University Internships - Nicole Cheng
Welcome Nicole!
Nicole Cheng joined our Media and Communications Team for her Adelaide University Media Industry Transitions Internship for Semester 1, 24 March 2023 - 19 May 2023.
She completed a 100-hour internship onsite at the Connecting Up Office, 22.5 hours a week for about 8 weeks around her university classes: (2 - 3 days x 7.5 hours each week to complete her internship). Nicole Cheng's Portfolio of media articles written for the SAcommunity service is >>here.
Personal Biography
Nicole is currently studying a Bachelor of Media majoring in Marketing at the University of Adelaide. She also works as a piano teacher at Learning Through Music, teaching primary school children on a casual basis. She has previous experience in social media marketing for Cha Gei Subtitles, her own translation group, and completed an online internship with DunnArt Productions over December 2022 to January 2023. Nicole speaks multiple languages fluently including English, Cantonese, Mandarin and Korean.
She is now working in the SAcommunity Media and Communications Team where she is looking forward to more real-life, on-site experience in marketing and in creating media content. She plans to apply the theories she has been learning from university, as well as to expand her networks and get to know more people from the industry through her internship in the SAcommunity Team. SAcommunity is a service of Connecting Up, a division of the Infoxchange Group, a not-for-profit social enterprise.
Nicole aims to work in the beauty and cosmetics industry creating marketing campaigns and/or events for social media posts and advertisements. She is interested in promoting the products' value and role for the consumer's well-being and self-image. She plans to be responsible for running industry campaigns across multiple channels, and organising marketing events to promote the brand and its products.
Media & Communication Team Interns: Nada Soldo and Nicole Cheng, with Volunteer Rex Porter at Connecting Up
Work Experience - Staff & Team Introductions, Meetings, Telephone Training
Nicole was officially welcomed into the SAcommunity Team on the 24 March 2023. She was introduced to staff in the wider Connecting Up office and was able to have the opportunity to meet everyone. The gathering broadened her network and she could make connections with people working across other professional fields and with different educational experiences.
"It was very nice to get to know everyone in the office on my first day of my internship. I feel warm and welcome to be able to work comfortably in the office for the upcoming weeks." - Nicole Cheng
During her internship, Nicole participated in one of the monthly Connecting Up staff meetings on 11 April 2023. This provided an opportunity for her to understand more on how the organisation runs, and discover the various positions and teams at Connecting Up and their connection to the broader Infoxchange organisation.
Telephone Techniques: Intern Nicole Cheng with Volunteer Stathis Avramis
Nicole also participated in telephone techniques training, utilising a given template script and learning from experienced volunteers. Volunteer David Webb taught and explained methods of starting a telephone conversation in a way that made the interaction more comfortable for the community service organisation involved. He shared his experience with calling a range of people, and demonstrated how to respond in a professional, yet also approachable way. Nicole then had the opportunity to practice and apply these telephone techniques with volunteer Stathis Avramis to simulate a range of potential telephone conversation scenarios, to prepare her for upcoming media interviews with community services.
Media & Communications Interns: Wing Yi Wong and Nicole Cheng, Nicole speaks multiple languages and was able to provide capacity building assistance for new students
Capacity Building
Nicole quickly appreciated and understood her internship program which included: Workplace orientation and induction modules; Self-determined internship timetable, schedule, and training development program (selected from the Connecting Up Digital Learning Platform); Personal branding (bio & portfolio), telephone techniques training and self-selected mentor meeting. These activities aimed to initiate Nicole into the organisation before preparing and leading to her Media and Communication Team focus, on creating storytelling articles, calendar and an e-campaign for community service news and events.
Consequently Nicole took the opportunity to work with two new interns, who had started a few weeks after she began, to help them with their tasks, between creating her own media articles and undertaking her self-selected training webinars. Using her Cantonese language skills, Nicole was able to explain the internship course instructions and guide two of her fellow interns through their induction modules, internship tasks, and introduce them to the media resources they needed.
Nicole speaks multiple languages and was able to provide capacity building assistance for new students with English as a Second Language (ESL). She was able to make the introduction easy for them as someone who has been 'down the road before' and without a language barrier, only a few weeks earlier and could use her newly acquired office knowledge to help. She assisted them with their work, such as telephone techniques, blog writing, and with software tools BeePro, as well as other miscellaneous tasks.
Consequently Nicole took the opportunity to work with two new interns, who had started a few weeks after she began, to help them with their tasks, between creating her own media articles and undertaking her self-selected training webinars. Using her Cantonese language skills, Nicole was able to explain the internship course instructions and guide two of her fellow interns through their induction modules, internship tasks, and introduce them to the media resources they needed.
Nicole speaks multiple languages and was able to provide capacity building assistance for new students with English as a Second Language (ESL). She was able to make the introduction easy for them as someone who has been 'down the road before' and without a language barrier, only a few weeks earlier and could use her newly acquired office knowledge to help. She assisted them with their work, such as telephone techniques, blog writing, and with software tools BeePro, as well as other miscellaneous tasks.
Media and Communication Interns: Nicole Cheng and Hoi Ching Wu, Nicole provided capacity building assistance for new students"It is good that I can assist other people with skills that I did not recognise as helpful. I can reflect on my past experience and provide advice to my team members from what I have learnt." - Nicole Cheng
SAcommunity blog articles published by Nicole Cheng
Media Project
As part of her internship, Nicole has been working on blog posts for community events around South Australia. Whilst looking for media stories and activities, she has been using her research skills to update community service details and search for possible organisations to add to the SAcommunity listing.
Nicole contacted a number of community service groups by email and phone using SAcommunity email and telephone training templates, to seek permission to publish their upcoming Not-For-Profit community events. She also interviewed a few of those organisations about their events and organisation for her blogs. These communication activities enabled her to collate the SAcommunity May Calendar of Events.
SAcommunity Social Media posts published by Nicole Cheng
Nicole also created social media posts on SAcommunity's Facebook and Instagram page for the blogs and events she wrote about. Her content writing, copywriting and social media skills enabled her to promote the events to the audience across multiple media platforms. She was able to engage and inform SAcommunity followers about the upcoming events happening across South Australia.
The interviews, articles and social media posts Nicole conducted with various community organisations include: Willunga Recreation Park (Annual Willunga Jigsaw Mania 29 April 2023), Australian Plants Society SA (Australian Plants Society SA Plants Sale 13 May 2023), Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) (ALIA National Simultaneous Storytime 24 May 2023), Reconciliation SA Inc. (National Reconciliation Week Breakfast Commemorating National Sorry Day 26 May 2023) and The Smith Family (The Smith Family's Dream Run June 2023).
Storytelling Article Feature Subject: Taekwondo
SAcommunity lists more than 14,500 community services and encourages volunteers and interns to write about the groups, sports and organisations they are involved in. One of the many aims of the SAcommunity service is to improve social connections and resilience, and decrease individual loneliness. Finding out our teams' stories, and learning how they started their interests and how they participate in their community can inspire others.
Nicole shared her experience with Taekwondo in Adelaide, and wrote a blog post introducing the martial art. She introduced all the Taekwondo clubs around the Adelaide city in her story and updated their information, to ensure both the database content and promotional article information were current, so that interested readers' could easily find a club to 'come and try' near them.
"I was happy to share my own experience through SAcommunity and introduce people to the passion I have for Taekwondo. I could connect my interest together with what I am working on during my internship and it made the process and content more engaging." - Nicole Cheng
Find all of Intern Nicole Cheng's portfolio of blog news stories >> here.
SAcommunity May Monthly Calendar of Events, SAcommunity May eNews campaign created by Nicole Cheng
SAcommunity May eNews
Following Nicole's media project, she designed an eNews campaign for May 2023. Nicole collated the monthly eNews from blog events captured in her monthly events calendar post, creating a final eNewsletter using BeePro. She listed event details, feature stories, and designed the newsletter with photos, images and return links to the SAcommunity website.
Nicole had the chance to create graphic images for the May 2023 Community Events in BeePro using Canva to clearly present the listed events happening during May. She was able to utilise the skills she learnt from the Connecting Up webinars she watched and her previous experience to design this visual calendar to use in the eNewsletter.
"I had the chance to use my graphic design skills in creating and designing a May eNewsletter for SAcommunity. It was a great opportunity to put in the skills I learnt from the online webinars and from other interns in my team." - Nicole Cheng
SAcommunity Team (L - R): Volunteer David Webb, Volunteer Rex Porter, Intern Gilliane Restor, Volunteer Putri Kamaluudin, Volunteer Stathis Avramis, Intern Hoi Ching Wu, Volunteer Yang Jiao, Volunteer Jiahong Su, Intern Sarthak Jain, Volunteer Camille Sze Pui Ko, Intern Nicole Cheng
Training and Development
Nicole had been learning and developing her skills through online webinars provided by the Connecting Up Digital Learning platform a training and development online learning platform with a selection of relevant live webinars and recorded webinars, workshops and webcons from a range of subject-matter experts who also have a deep experience with not-for-profits. She explored relevant media and communication topics including Adobe Photoshop, Canva, social media digital marketing, and other tactics in not-for-profit sector.
Relevant weekly webinars, workshops and webcons selected by Nicole for her internship included:
Become a Photoshop King or Queen, Stu Peace
"I acquired knowledge on the various features and tools available in Photoshop, as well as how to utilize them effectively. My prior experience with Photoshop was limited to the fundamental functions, and I relied solely on trial and error. This webinar taught me all the functions and actions that could be made in Photoshop, and will help me when I design work in the future."
Digital Marketing Webcon - CRM Fundamental: Organising your data is non-negotiable for NFPs, Sorcha from Nation Builder
"I have learnt about the importance of organising data for the organisations for digital marketing. Linking tags and having a landing page for people to sign up helps both organise data and build relationships with your audience. It emphasized the point that having well-structured and managed data is essential and should not be overlooked. NFPs can gain valuable insights into their target audience, track their interactions, and improve their overall marketing strategies with this data."
Digital Marketing Webcon - Facebook and LinkedIn as cause community building platform, Kate VanderVoort from Social Mediology
"This webinar explains why Facebook and LinkedIn could help in engaging with the community and build relationships with people. It tells me what other sorts of things I could do on the platform other than creating a protfolio and how I could manage building up a good cause community. Other than personal use, the webinar taught me about how to use these for an organisation as a business tool."
Digital Marketing Webcon - How to master Facebook and Instagram Advertising, Alecia from Hancock
"The digital marketing webinar taught me advertising skills on Facebook and Instagram. Despite the fact that I am a marketing student, I was not able to connect theories I learnt to apply on these online platforms. The webinar showed me the steps to effective marketing and looking at the organisation's insights for improvement, such as finding the target audience for the organisation."
Digital Marketing Webcon - Learn How to design with Canva, Kate Longman and Donna Ling from Hancock
"As Canva is another popular website for designing other than Photoshop, I was able to learn more about this tool for its easier functions and layout. I learnt about designing with the templates and images provided and also ways of creating a brand style guide for your organisation to keep all the designs consistent and neat."
Digital Marketing for Non-Profits: Getting Started with Google Analytics, Tim Brack from Leafcutter
"One of the main parts of marketing is knowing more about data insights and traffic on your posts success. I wanted to learn more about how I could look at the statistics, in particular with Google Analytics. Through this webinar, I gained a basic understanding on how Google Analytics works and also about using different metrics for different objectives for the organisation."
Become a Canva King or Queen, Yvette Adams
"This webinar is pretty similar to the Canva one before, but it further introduces design skills and how you could produce professional images in Canva. The webinar focuses more on the sense of how I could design my work with the purpose of digital marketing, and what I can do to make it more effective and attractive."
How to Create a Winning Social Media Strategy, Rubina from Refuel Creative
"I am passionate about social media marketing, in terms of designing, content writing or communicating. The webinar taught me how to maximise the effectiveness of my content, such as setting SMART objectives for the goals and planning in advance for them. I realised that there is a lot to consider about before posting anything, including the timing, wording, image, colours or font."
Create a Website that Inspires Action, Nation Builder
"I have always wanted to improve my knowledge of website design. I think it is hard to create a successful one that can receive high exposure and engagement. I learnt about creating action pages in this webinar. Also, how to manage the events when you need people's involvement and build customer support to facilitate their journey on the website."
The online training provided focussed on Nicole's passion in digital media, mainly in social media. She also explored her interest in graphic designing with Adobe Photoshop and Canva as well as website creation. She wanted to develop her data analytic skills in reviewing media metrics, and also participated in webinars that could help her in this area.
Chloe Le, Marketing Coordinator Products and Services, Infoxchange and Intern Nicole Cheng
Mentor Meeting
Nicole met her chosen mentor Chloe Le, Marketing Coordinator Products and Services, Infoxchange on 4 April 2023. It was a great opportunity for her to have a chat with someone currently working in a career that she is interested in, and explore on what could be done and what to prepare for the job she wanted.
Chloe was picked as a mentor because she has the experience in digital marketing and content creation in the fashion retail industry, which is Nicole's desired career path. She now work in Infoxchange as a marketing coordinator for its products and services, doing strategic partnerships and communications.
Mentor Meeting Takeaways
"It was a really great time and opportunity to talk with Chloe. She introduced me to the duties in the marketing and PR position in the industry, particularly in the non-profit organisations. She also provide me different options and marketing media channels that I could possibly be intersted in working in the future. She gave me advice on how I could approach the industry and how I could spend my time in my last year of university to be ready for the future. Here are my key takeaways from my mentor meeting with Chloe:
1. Social media marketing is important and is the trend for fashion beauty industries, data analytic skills helps to know about the customer persona and what to focus on
2. The customer centric mindset is a key to success in marketing rather than just selling your products/ services for more brand loyalty
3. Event marketing is a big area in marketing that includes presenting, marking leaflets
4. Marketing brand is more on the creative side and involves in lots of designing of posters and writing stories (graphic design skill is a plus)
5. Experience is important in marketing and a lot of things in the business involves in marketing, thus it is good to try on different marketing jobs"
- Nicole Cheng
"Thank you for having me as part of the Infoxchange family these three months. I am very happy to be part of the team and it was really rewarding for my professional and personal growth through the past few weeks.
I now have a much better understanding on how non-profit organisations operate and what it is like in a office like workplace. I had the opportunity to create blog posts and social media posts, undertake interviews with various organisations and design images for the eNewsletter in BeePro.
I am very grateful for the opportunity to try out all sorts of tasks that improved my communication skills, including my copywriting and designing abilities. I am glad to be able to apply what I have learnt from my studies to the organisation and connect with all sorts of people from the industry." - Nicole Cheng
