Journal - Week 1

This week will be our first internship class as well as my first official day at my organisation. I'm not too nervous as fortunately I have been there a number of times already. Mr Lovitt, my internship supervisor, was also my mentor in the Griffith University mentor program I was part of in 2008, so I know a lot of the people that work there and have taken part in a number of projects for Gold Coast Tourism already (Inc. "108 Things to see and Do" -http://www.goldcoastthingstodo.com/, and "YourCoast"- http://www.yourcoast.com.au/)

I’m pretty frustrated at the moment because my original project proposal is similar to another students so I have to start all over again! I was just starting to get really inspired about it too so it will be hard to completely change direction. I guess I can look at it as an insight into real business functioning because sometimes you may work really hard on an idea and then it gets rejected or scrapped, so you just have to start again.

I think I'm more scared about my internship class! I am still blank as to what I should do my project on now that I have to change it. I'm thinking something related to digital marketing as I feel this realm is becoming a more and more influential channel of communication. Not only do most people have internet access at home and/or work, now I look around and see people sending emails, viewing videos, getting directions and reading reviews, all from their phone. I am swaying more towards a research project because I don’t really feel confident with public relations or organising and hosting events etc. I just want to make sure that the knowledge I acquire through my project will be useful for my organisation and relevant to their marketing objectives.

I think that if I do go ahead with researching the value of online marketing channels, finding the best method of measurement will be a challenge. Sure a website may get a million hits a day, but how many of those viewers are within your target audience?