Today’s blog is going to be a little different than usual. I’m Ascent Digital’s “intern”, Kuriko. When I’m not an Account Coordinator for Ascent, I’m a (soon-to-be) fourth-year student at Fort Lewis College studying digital marketing and graphic design, with dreams of being a web designer/developer. I’m also a dog mom, an avid crocheter, and a master at puzzles.
I came to Ascent in March, and this week marks my 3-month milestone working here! To commemorate such an important step, I will discuss what I’ve learned at Ascent Digital.
My Story With Ascent
I came to Ascent with very little understanding of what my role was going to be While the company was growing rapidly, it was still a small startup so nobody was sure what to expect. I began by simply sitting in on meetings, helping with advertisements, and doing smaller check-ins. I was working part-time while being a full-time student, so there wasn’t much time for me to do more than those tasks.
Once school was out and I became full-time, my role changed quite a bit. I began to focus mostly on the internal aspects of Ascent: creating our social media posts and blog content, while also sending out reporting to our clients and assisting in other tasks. I’ve done blog research, created job postings, and written website pages for clients to name a few of these above and beyond tasks. Because of my major, I’ve done a lot of design work for Ascent and some clients to help me learn more about graphic design for my degree. Through these different tasks, I’ve learned a lot of things about the digital marketing industry and working with clients that you can’t really learn in school.
What I’ve Learned So Far
The first thing I learned at Ascent is that digital marketing is a way more expansive field than I had initially thought. I learned in school about SEO, content marketing, social media, and email marketing, but there’s so much more to digital marketing. It’s been around for years in a different way than you probably think. At Ascent, we have the capabilities to do YouTube preroll ads, advertisements on cable TV, and even streaming services like Hulu. Radio and music streaming ads on apps like Spotify also fall under the umbrella of digital marketing as well, which I didn’t expect going in. It’s been fascinating learning about all of these different aspects of digital marketing and how they all work together to create a digital presence for a company and grow its audience.
In addition to the Digital Marketing 101 lessons that I’ve learned here, I’ve received some very valuable lessons in general business and office environments. In my classes, our design and digital marketing work is mostly for ourselves. We do receive feedback, but as far as creatively, the work is ours and there’s little change requested. But in a work environment, there’s a lot more pushback from clients. They want the design to match their business and their vision, and it can be difficult sometimes for us to get a full understanding of what that vision is. Especially with clients that are out-of-state, communication can be very difficult by email alone. Ideas get lost in communication and things can get muddied. Fortunately, I’ve gotten much better at communicating with clients and understanding their wants and needs.
I’ve also learned a valuable lesson in working with a team. While I’ve worked in teams before, a lot of my previous jobs haven’t required that much collaboration with my coworkers. In those part-time jobs, I’ve also never had much incentive to become close with many of the people I was working with. I made a few good friends, but I knew the positions were temporary. At Ascent, I’ve developed great relationships with my coworkers and work very closely with all of them. Because the team is small, we all have a great dynamic together and work hard to get things done for our clients and go above and beyond. If anyone needs help with something, we’re all happy to assist.
I learned pretty quickly that being organized was a beneficial trait. Since I’m acting as almost an assistant for the sales team, a lot of information and tasks get thrown around, and it’s important to be able to keep them organized so that the business runs smoothly. For a while, this meant taking notes in meetings and sending them to the team members involved, but it’s become more of updating on tasks. As Ascent has evolved, so have we. With new team members joining and even more new clients, we’re learning a lot about how we can all work together better to go above and beyond for the clients of Ascent.
In Conclusion…
I’ve had a great time at Ascent over these last three months, and I can’t wait to continue my journey with them as I finish college and start my career as a web designer. Their support thus far has been incomparable, they’ve become like a family to me here. I know that I have help and support in Durango whenever I need it.
Ascent has helped me a lot, learn more about how we can help you with your digital marketing efforts!
