Interning in the Outdoors

For my internship this semester at Famous Reading Outdoors, I got the opportunity to handle marketing at many different levels, and assist in event planning for events.

Marketing:

I got to work on creating social media content for Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and LinkedIn. My bosses wanted short videos that feature our trails, and to create a weekly guessing game. People were tasked to guess where the video was shot, and tag 3 friends on each post. The first one to do this got a $20 gift card to Primo’s Hoagies in St. Clair. This campaign let to more brand awareness, and helped us gain 2000+ followers since when I started.

I was also responsible for email marketing. I learned how to use Mailchimp by Intuit. This software can design each blast, while inserting hyperlinks to whatever our call to action is. For example, for our Brian Rich Jr. Toy Drive, the images linked users to our sign up page on our site.

I also contact outside vendors and influencers who shoot their content on our properties. We hired Discover NEPA to shoot a promotional video, and we got over 190,000 views on Instagram!

Event Planning:

My job is to coordinate all riding and non-riding events. For example, we are planning 2 concerts this summer, one in June & one in August, and a wine festival, which will take place in May. For that, we reached out to Micro-Brews, Distilleries, and Wineries all throughout the North East PA region to participate. I had to reach out to many Artists who would perform on our Amphitheatre.

I learned many things from this job, especially timing. In this industry, late is unacceptable. You must prepare in advance, whether that is contacting people in time, and scheduling/getting approval for social media content. I’m very excited to see the future of working for this company after graduation.