Shraddha Gourishetty (she/her), a second-year Environment student studying in the Geomatics program, gives us a look into her very first co-op term working in social media and shares how this experience has changed her perspective on content creation.
Gourishetty completed her first co-op work term at the University of Waterloo as the social media marketing associate for Co-operative and Experiential Education (CEE) Business Services.
Most of her work was in social media where she created engaging and informative content for co-op students at Waterloo. “Some of the major projects I worked on this term included creating story series to provide information to our followers and engaging the audience," says Gourishetty. "Through our stories, I asked students questions about their work life for more engagement. Also, quizzing students through these story series was my favorite campaign.”
“Giving information on various resources available to the students has helped many students learn more about co-op at Waterloo. I can say this because it helped me know about the resources provided by the University of Waterloo as well. I also created various reels for Instagram to give tips that can help students in their co-op process. I used Canva to create graphics for stories, reels and feed posts, which also included writing captions for all the content I created.”
What does your day-to-day work basis look like for your co-op job at CEE?
“I would be asked to brainstorm ideas for social media content every month. Once I brainstormed the ideas, I presented them to my supervisors to confirm which ideas I should be working on. Then I started my work by prioritizing the deadlines given by my supervisors and organized my work in a Word document and Excel sheet. I also created records for each of these tasks on Airtable to let the team know when and what content will be going out.”
“Once I got all my work prepared and organized, I would send them in for review and after the review has been made, I would make minor changes as suggested. I scheduled them to publish using Emplifi for the social media pages I created content for. Once this process was completed for one particular project, I moved on to the next project and followed the same process. If I had to publish some content directly to the app, I would make sure to add that to my to-do list for that day so that I don't miss out on publishing it on time.”
Did you learn any new tech (hardware or software) on your co-op term? If so, what did you learn and how did you apply it?
“I definitely learned many new tools. The new tools I learned include Airtable, Emplifi and Adobe Creative Cloud, specifically, Premiere Pro and animation. I also increased my knowledge by using Canva for graphic designing and iMovie for video editing. I used Airtable to keep track of all the tasks in that month and the progress of each task."
"Emplifi is a tool I used to schedule content, collect data and analyze the content after it was published. I collected metrics and insights for the content that I published; likes, comments, shares, saves, all that. Adobe Premiere Pro is a tool I used to edit some minor changes to a video, which included combining clips of the video or cutting a video to fit in correctly. I also had a chance to learn the Adobe animation tool and learn more about animation.”
How did you feel when you were first starting your co-op term in comparison to how you feel now?
“It’s definitely different. When I first started as a social media marketing associate, I used social media from an audience perspective. I would judge the content by just looking at what they have presented, like either graphics or just a caption. As I began my work as a content creator, I understood the amount of effort that went into creating each project that was published.”
“I realized it's not just about the graphics looking good but it was also about the quality of the content that should be presented. Coming up with new ideas for every topic has enhanced my creative thinking. I understood the strategy between different social media platforms that CEE had built. I feel my perspective on social media has changed a lot from the beginning till now. I am confident that I will be able to become a content creator if I want to for my personal account in the future.”
“Creating content had not only helped many students who followed my content but also helped me gain more knowledge on those topics. I learned about so many resources provided by Waterloo to enhance the co-op experience while creating content. These resources have and will guide me through my career at Waterloo.”
What’s next for you?
“I'm definitely looking forward to my upcoming in-person study term, which will be my first complete in-person term.”
“In my next co-op term, I would be interested in either being a part of a research organization or gaining skills such as data analyzing and data visualization, which could also be related to my courses in Geomatics.”
“I will also be able to apply all the soft skills I've gained from this work term to my upcoming work terms.”
