As I stroll in at 9am I can’t help to feel a bit guilty, because my colleagues have been hard at work for the past half hour. As an intern my hours are slightly less than the regular crowd; not only do I enjoy the extra snooze time but this also means that I do not have to get coffee for the staff every morning. Most days I sit behind my iMac; I am a PC guy so that took a little getting used to. I work on various tasks such as posting in AdWords and checking conversion code links to ensure they are installed correctly.

Every once in a while I get to do something really amazing. One day I was lead carpenter of the masterful construction of six desks and two chairs. Might I add, these are in fact the best six desks and two chairs in the building! When there is no need for my expertise in the carpentry field, I am hard at work learning the daily tasks in the SEM department. One of the most important projects we do is our weekly deep dives – I know what you’re thinking and no we don’t have a pool. A deep dive is done once a week for each account and it’s our way of looking at every aspect of the account to make sure everything is running properly. It’s our time to make sure we’re fixing anything that isn’t performing or that is underperforming and see what is performing well. Completing this task requires me to shadow one of the two stars of the SEM department, Renee and Sarah.

My hero, The Great Dan Allen, VP of Creative Services, will also summon me to do some work in Basecamp, because according to him “no one wants to shadow someone all day.” After an epic adventure in Basecamp in which I help organize the projects for all departments, I usually go to a company training where I am able to meet up with my fellow interns and apprentices. A current employee usually teaches these trainings, and we learn not only about the goofs of past and current employees, but a great deal on how not to make those same goofs. At Potratz, they are always learning how to offer the best possible services to their clients, by analyzing past performance and discovering how they can be better.

One of my new projects is making sure all the websites have perfect conversions for their websites. For all our clients reading this, if you get a form filled out and the customer’s name is TEST, please ignore as that is me. When I have finished testing conversions, I continue to help the stars of the SEM department by assisting in posting ads. Given that this is still new to me, I have questions and will send out an SOS to the one and only Justin, the ‘web page god.’AdWords is not a new concept to him, so he can save my ship from sinking immediately. After I have finished my posting it’s about that time to head home and go to work on my two online classes.

Well, there you have it, a day in the life of a Potratz intern.

In all seriousness, I have learned a great deal about the future of marketing and how to utilize technology to the best of its ability. I am happy to have had the opportunity to work with the Potratz team, as they are all incredibly hard workers and phenomenal teachers. The amount I have learned in my past month of interning has been substantial, and will be an enormous help to my future endeavors. Thank you to the Potratz staff. And, by the way, I promise I am not writing this portion because the staff is required to read every blog.