Volunteering is something I’ve always wanted to do but I never knew where to start.  Through one of my college professors, I came across the Volunteer Center of Bergen County and had the chance to start an internship during college.  After graduation, the internship led to volunteering. Because it’s been such a big part of my life I wanted to share my experience, check it out…

Habitat for Humanity is an important organization to me, and I try to volunteer on my spare time (when I am not working at MWW Group of course!) I wanted to share my experience with my fellow MWWers and all of you, so I have put together a video blog of my day spent at a building project in Waldwick, NJ. Enjoy!

Ming Wang wants to make over the mother of the bride or groom and needs help reaching out and selecting the mom that needs it the most! The winning mom will receive a wardrobe makeover for the wedding and events leading up to the big day, after the submission of a convincing story of why she is the most in need of all the other mom entrants . The submissions will be seen on Ming Wang’s Facebook page in early 2011 (just in time for Valentine weddings!), where fans and pre-selected prominent wedding blogger judges vote (50/50 each) for the mom in most need of a makeover for her son or daughter’s wedding.

Before the contest goes “live”, some research and outreach must be done to let the digital world know about Ming Wang’s generous makeover.  The task began with the search for prospective wedding blogger judges, where the criteria was based on content, engagement with readers, and influence in the wedding community. The list took a few hours to compile after a few Google searches and sifting through each blog individually. Immediately after, I drafted a pitch letter and reached out to my top 20 wedding bloggers since 15/20 bloggers was my overall cap limit. After a day or so, I reached out to more blogs to ensure that I at least had 15 worthy judges to present to the team.  By the end of the week, I had received 10 responses from excited and eager wedding bloggers to participate in the contest- I was equally as excited as they were!

As the date of the contest is nearing, I was able to secure 15 wedding blogs (yeah!) and am continuously communicating back and forth with participating wedding bloggers about specific details of the contest and/or sharing images of Ming Wang’s collection to present a visual, as well as, fill in the unknown to them. Overall, this project holds value to me further than being just another “assigned task” but my first task that I drafted and managed on my own, which leaves me with a feeling of accomplishment and value- I’m beyond eager to see the responses and end result of my contribution!

If you are interested in learning more about Ming Wang, “like” their Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/mingwangknits

As a student needing an internship to graduate, I was expecting to mostly run mindless errands and make copies for everyone in the office. After spending only a few days interning at MWW in Chicago, I was already making media lists and learning how to juggle projects for multiple clients. Two of my favorite projects have been calling and pitching for Aldi and also drafting email pitches for Nutrisystem. I was shocked by how well the two coincide.

I initially felt nervous when I was calling reporters and editors, trying to get them interested in a pitch after only a few seconds of speaking. The pitch was for Holiday recipes created by Aldi including Aldi brands. Even though I was anxious, after the first few positive conversations, the jitter-bugs were gone and I was able to experiment with different styles and techniques. I’ve learned what approaches work best for me and that being polite is half the battle. Now I feel more confident picking up the phone and jumping right into a pitch.

With the experience from pitching for Aldi, I had an easier time adjusting to writing and crafting pitches of my own. Nutrisystem had their customers send in stories about how the program was such a success for them; helping them lose weight and make life changes. For the stories we believed would make an impact on communities, we created pitches. These pitches were emailed to editors highlighting November as Diabetes Month, so I had to write the drafts in a way to get the editors’ attention in only a few sentences. By writing these pitches, I felt more invested in them; I as well wanted the editor to be interested in the pitches and the people they were about.

Everyone needs a plan B, even W.N.B.A players. MWW Group has paired up with the W.N.B.A to give players an opportunity to explore their options after basketball. Internships offer these women a glance at a possible PR profession, and/or different alternatives to starting a second career. Nicole Powell, who plays the forward position for the New York Liberty, is currently interning at MWW Group’s New York office. Powell holds a full-time internship working with the firms consumer lifestyle marketing practice, assisting the account teams for Sara Lee, McDonald’s, and 1-800-FLOWERS.COM.

Michael Kempner, president and CEO of MWW Group, told Brian Heyman of The New York Times, “She’s been a star at everything she’s touched. We would love to have her full time as soon as her career at the W.N.B.A. is over. We’re going to try to talk her into whenever there’s an off-season to come work for us.”

Basketball, like most sports, doesn’t last forever. There must be a point in a player’s career where he/she thinks, “What will I do after basketball?” This great opportunity gives these women 2 to 3 months to explore other fields and learn about what else the world has to offer.

Nicole Powell started her internship on October 4^th and is staying with MWW Group until the end of December. “Basketball has been a wonderful opportunity, but I’m going to be really young making a career change. My dad just retired at 60. I’m going to be half his age — I don’t know exactly when — making a big career change, which is very unique,” Powell told The New York Times.

To read the full article on Nicole Powell and other W.N.B.A players, click here.

Once upon a time I believed being overly organized was a tad unnecessary. Detailed check lists for every minute task and constant calendar and post-it reminders seemed appropriate for forgetful and scatter-brained people, but not me, I was a born multi-tasker – how wrong I was! I quickly learned that relying on my multi-tasking abilities was not going to cut it here at MWW Group. As a PR intern I work on multiple projects on different accounts at the same time meaning I have to keep up with different deadlines and utilize different resources. It was time for me to get organized.

I began my get-organized-adventure by creating folders and sub-folders in my email inbox, designating each folder to admin duties or a specific client. From there, I organized sub-folders by project or task and named them accordingly, such as “Current Tasks”, “Past Projects”, “FedEx”, and “Phone Demo”. This is my key to staying organized during an unexpectedly busy day because I can drag and drop emails into the accompanying folder and come back to them later and set email reminders about deadlines. The folder system has proved especially useful for working on the Samsung account. Helping the team for Samsung’s mobile division has been a phenomenal experience, but it can get hectic during phone launches so keeping track of the devices and media requests is crucial. I never know when we will need to track down a device that we sent to a reporter or blogger, so I store all of the media requests in one folder giving me easy access at a moment’s notice. I learned that developing a system for how I do things is an easy way to stay on track as well. When I receive a list of media requests I print the list immediately. Then, I make the FedEx labels and cross off each name as I go. Four months ago I would have considered this process of double-checking myself redundant, but it helps me stay focused and stress-free when I am working with a list of 40 requests or more.

At the end of each day I make a list of everything I completed that day and make note of what I need to finish. I usually leave a post-it on my computer to remind me of what I need to do when I get to work the next morning, which saves me countless minutes of trying to recollect yesterday’s thoughts before I’ve had my morning caffeine fix. I realized that much of my previous stresses were caused by trying to remember every little detail. I used to fervently refute any claims, mostly made by my mother, which insinuated I was not organized enough. Take if from a reformed “multi-tasker” – you can never be too organized as an intern or with anything you do for that matter. It took me a while to develop a system that works for me and though it isn’t completely flawless or without a few human errors every once in a while, it has saved me much unnecessary angst and has made me a more efficient and productive intern.

There is nothing better than knowing you are getting the skills needed to grow in your career. For me, interning at MWW Group has been very beneficial so far. Coming into the internship, I must say, I had high expectations for the company. I felt as though I would be able to learn so much from everyone I would deal with on a daily basis. During this past month, MWW Group and its team has completely met my expectations. Everyone is very willing to help and teach, and have made themselves very accessible. Everyone here is very hard-working, but the office also has a laid back and friendly environment.

My internship may be a bit different than everyone else’s. I’m working with the marketing department for MWW Group. This department doesn’t handle client accounts, but rather markets the firm itself, which has been a perfect fit because that is where I see myself in the future. During this past month I’ve been able to write up internal and external announcements on awards that MWW Group has been honored with. I was also able to attend an awards dinner in Manhattan, which was very exciting. It was interesting to see the internal side of PR and not what we all see as consumers. It was nice to witness everyone, including MWW Group, receive awards on their hard work and dedication to the industry and their clients.

I’ve had one other internship prior to joining MWW Group as the Marketing and Public Relations Assistant for a non-profit organization in Hackensack, named The Volunteer Center of Bergen County (VCBC). The organization has different programs and I was working on one called Bergen LEADS, which is a leadership course for adults who live or work in Bergen County. My primary tasks were to update their Facebook, blog and website, sending out press releases, along with making sure that everyone joining the program was up to date on all the details. Comparing both internships, I think the biggest difference is the experience in the organizations. The program I was working on at VCBC was fairly new so I was building a template for future interns. MWW Group’s years of experience and honors are very visible. It is exciting to know that different aspects of PR are within reach and there is such an abundance of experience and skill to learn from.

However, even though many say there is a major difference in a PR environment at a non-profit compared to a corporation, the transition from my previous internship to MWW Group was very easy to adjust to. To me, the environment in both places is relaxed and everyone is very nice and willing to help. I notice that there is a team camaraderie and good communication. MWW Group is a perfect place to get a broader view on the PR industry, and to me it was a perfect fit coming from a small non-profit organization into a mid-size corporation. At MWW Group I’ve had the best of both worlds: the interpersonal relationships of a smaller environment with the industry experience of a leading PR firm.

When I was growing up in the early ‘90s – a booming era of videogame advancement – Tetris rocked my world. It was the old standby. It was familiar and unwavering, always there when I needed it.

However, a decade’s passed since those memorable thumb-tiring hours waiting for a tall-thin block to grace my screen so I could finally nail that four-line combo. Subsequently, when I was greeted with the opportunity to assist Tetris’ PR campaign on my first day at MWW, you can imagine that I was equal parts nostalgic and excited.

One of my first undertakings was to draft a pitch letter to get the game on holiday gift guides throughout the country. This was a task familiar to me from school; however, those never carried the added weight of the real world. Initially, I was a little nervous and my first few hours of work amounted to nothing useful.

Then, it hit me.

I was out of touch with the game. I was no longer 12 years old and I couldn’t relate to it anymore and that needed fixing. I took the next five minutes (maybe it was ten, who knows … I was in the zone) and played an enchanting session of Tetris Party Deluxe – the updated version of the gen-y classic.

After I wrapped up my game I sat down and wrote a great pitch.

At that moment, the importance of knowing your client, its product and the message strictly dawned on me. It sounds a little silly in the context of playing Tetris, but I’d argue it rings true with each and every agent-client. It was an extraordinary lesson from a humble project.

Lastly, a slight digression: I want to tell my preceding MWW Seattle intern, Nick Stubberfield, that I fondly empathize with his confusion of cloud computing and its accompanying jargon when first greeted by it. Fortunately, not unlike him, I found my inner-techie and overcame the troubles as weeks passed. To better understand our bewilderment, read Nick’s blog here.

Most people perceive an intern as somebody who does the dirty work around the office. Interns are often seen as the go-to people when employers need something done that is “tedious and of little importance.” In the PR world, this tedious and unimportant work can best be described by two words – media lists.

I myself, probably like most others here at MWW Group, also started off creating media lists. I expected to be creating media lists for the remainder of my internship, however, what I did not realize was how these media lists could be put to use. Along came a project presented to MWW Group by the Bowling Proprietor’s Association of America (BPAA). For the first time in history, they would be hosting an online competition to determine who would be the 2010 Bowling Celebrity Hall of Fame inductee, in which nine different celebrities – including Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian – had the chance to be inducted into the International Bowling Hall of Fame via fan votes through their website. Under great leadership here at MWW Group, a plan was devised to conduct viral outreach to fans through social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter to rally each celebrity nominees’ fans to vote for them as the 2010 inductee. Luckily enough, I was chosen to take part in such a large project that would soon prove to have even larger results.

First, I was assigned to create media lists for different celebrities involved in this contest. Then I was tasked with developing creative messages to post on fan sites and blogs in order to bring in the largest number of votes possible. An initial press release was created to announce this contest and a second to update anybody who was following the campaign. Additionally, I had the privilege of monitoring reports that would be sent to the client. Soon enough, my efforts turned into results, as the votes began to sky-rocket. As the month long campaign progressed, voting reached well above one million votes – bringing in the most traffic ever to the gobowling.com website. When the contest came to an end, the campaign generated media placements across the largest media outlets, including ESPN.com, PerezHilton.com and the Associated Press that announced the contest and its results. OK! Magazine even dubbed the contest “Best PR Stunt” and was the first outlet to announce the Taylor Swift as the 2010 Celebrity Bowling Hall of Fame inductee in their August 23 issue.

Coverage totaled from more than 360 outlets yielding more than 765 million media impressions, with 893 tweets – reaching more than 1.9 million followers!

Nobody likes to be proven wrong, but when it comes down to redefining what it means to be an intern, I’ll be proven wrong any day. MWW Group has taught me that interning does not have to be about doing the dirty work, but rather, how an intern can take that dirty work and be trusted to apply it effectively into results-driven situations that matter.

My MWW Group internship got off to a thrilling start with the news that I would be the Nikon team intern just after receiving a Nikon COOLPIX SL3000 digital camera for my birthday in the same week!  I learned that one of the major projects the Nikon team would be working on throughout the course of my internship would be BlogHer and “Nikon Night Out.”  Given my interest and past experience in event planning, combined with my untapped passion for photography and a brand new digital camera, I couldn’t be more excited to jump into the role.

I was involved in all aspects of the planning process and it was a very exciting learning experience for me.  It was even more rewarding to see the end result of the team’s hard work when I was able to attend “Nikon Night Out” at the Bryant Park Grill.   One of the most interesting aspects of the entire process to me was research and learning about the blogger attendees, which then transitioned in to personal interaction with the bloggers.   The very first week of my internship began with going through a list of possible Nikon Night Out Invitees and researching their past BlogHer attendance, BlogHer 2010 attendance status, and the focus of their blogs.   Through my visits to their blogs I was able to gather fascinating information about their personalities and life through their writing.  Additional projects that further increased my blogger attendee knowledge included more focused research, correspondence with bloggers, and support securing items for their personalized gift bags.

The event was invigorating because so many elements came together in a short period of time.  It was a satisfying reward to realize how much I remembered about each blogger and how comfortable it was to interact with them.   Since I was responsible for check-in at the front door, I was in prime location to meet each blogger and interact with them on a personal level.   After reading each one of their blogs, I genuinely felt as though I knew them on a personal level and I was excited to talk to them.   Based on the feedback I received from the bloggers, they seemed appreciative that I was familiar with them and their work.  These interactions with the bloggers gave me a greater understanding and appreciation for their enthusiasm and excitement towards BlogHer.  The value of the connection these bloggers have established with each other in the blogosphere was much clearer to me.  It was a privilege to play such a prominent role in these important relationships.

Overall, “Nikon Night Out” and supporting BlogHer was a great professional learning experience.  I am extremely thankful I had the opportunity to be a part of such an important event and hope to bring the knowledge I have gained with me to my future professional responsibilities.