As I reach the final weeks of my internship, it has become clear to me how much more you learn throughout a placement than you ever could in the classroom.

In PR school, you touch on the basics of press releases, communications plans and how to be a great senior member of a PR agency. But students aren’t given the breakdown on how to be a successful intern. If you’re a student or a recent graduate and currently looking for a PR internship, here are some resources you may want to familiarize yourself with to prepare for that first day in the office.

1. If you’re not already, become familiar with Excel

Almost everything you will work on will be on an Excel spreadsheet. Tasks like research, crunching data and overall organization is a dream through the use of Excel. Brief yourself on a couple of YouTube tutorials on formulas and formatting to sharpen your skills. It’s still something I find myself constantly working on.
Advanced Excel Tutorial

2. Cision will save you time

Not all agencies have this resource, but if you’re lucky enough to work with it, Cision is a database that presents you with the contact information of journalists through various search engine results to help you build a media list. Media lists will be crucial in your role. They’re typically organized on an Excel spreadsheet, and layout journalists contact information for your colleagues to pull from when sending out pitch emails.

Example: If you were creating a media list for our client, Planet Fitness, your keywords would be; fitness, health, wellness etc.
Cision Tutorial

3. Meltwater is your new best friend

Meltwater makes media monitoring easy. It gathers results from carefully calculated search filters that you’ve entered to narrow down online client coverage, it also allows you to download print coverage as well.

Media monitoring will be the majority of your role. It is an important factor in demonstrating you’ve hit campaign KPI’s. Basically, it shows the client that they’re getting what they’re paying for. 
Introduction to Meltwater

4. Klear helps to recruit

Klear, a secondary resource powered by Meltwater, is a database that narrows down influencers that suit your client’s brand needs. During your internship, you’ll most likely be asked to recruit some influencer names for social media partnerships, being well equipped in this software will be a huge timesaver. 
Introduction to Klear

5. MRP is your daily tool

MRP- a.k.a Media Rating Points is an industry-standard software that helps you track your clients earned media coverage. This platform provides a standardized way to measure earned, paid, shared and owned media. MRP is how we measure the reach of each media relations win, and evaluate sentiment, tone and key performance indicators (KPI’s). These factors combined provide the client with an MRP score. It also allows us to set goals with our clients as another way to show how their investment in public relations is working in their favour.
Breakdown of MRP

6. Canva makes social fun!

Chances are you’ve worked with Canva before and if you haven’t, it is the easiest way to create beautiful graphic images specifically for social. If you’ve looked through the @apexpr and @ruckusdigital Instagram feeds you’ll find canva images throughout to help promote our blog posts.

Social media will be a huge part of your internship as well. It’s your job to communicate with followers and more importantly, potential clients what you’re currently working on and what wins you’ve accumulated. With Canva, you can use your new graphic design skills to show them how great you are!
Canva tutorial

For more insights and ideas or how to improve your marketing and communications strategies, drop us a line here.