What do a curry loving nan, SEO and Photoshop all have in common? My first week at Holyrood PR

Time flies as a PR intern at Holyrood PR

By Lucinda Kingham

THE WORD ‘internship’ fills me with dread. Having previously spent internships copying and pasting documents into files or watching someone type emails all day, the thought of doing another monotonous month of nothing did not appeal to me.

However, after deciding PR might be the career I wish to pursue, I began looking for a PR internship in Edinburgh. Thankfully, Holyrood PR showed up on the first page of Google, thanks to their great SEO tactics and now here I am writing my first blog comfortably using terms like SEO.

I am currently going into my 4^th year of university reading Ancient History and so the world of PR is a far cry from anything that I know. I must admit I felt slightly nervous walking into the office on my first day at work, but my worries soon melted away as I was handed the infamous Intern Bible. I spent my first morning reading it page after page and slowly began to understand how PR works and what the company does.

If you want to participate in an internship where you make the tea and coffee or spend all day filing, this is not the place for you. During the afternoon I was already being handed jobs and helping everyone with their daily lists of tasks. This certainly made me feel less like an intern and more as a part of the team.

Throughout the week I have experienced the likes of WordPress and Photoshop while quickly learning the importance of a good notepad and pen. Although I am not the most tech savvy of people, with the help from various members of the team, I began to grasp the art of ‘screen grabbing ‘and learn how to successfully upload a press release.

The hyperlink tool on wordpress has become a familiar icon and scaling images for press releases is now an everyday occurrence. Throughout my attempts to master the simplest technology everyone has been extremely helpful and has always taken the time to answer any questions I have, even during hectic periods of the day.

The highlight of my week has to be the story of ‘The 103 year old nan who loves naan’. It may sound strange I know, but the story of the curry loving nan featured heavily in tons of regional and national newspapers with extensive coverage online and was a real success story for the team.

The amount of media attention it received put everyone in great spirits and emphasised the reasons why Holyrood PR is an award winning PR agency.

I think the transition from writing academic essays to press releases and media coverage has probably been the most challenging part of my internship so far. Trying to come up with creative release titles and google descriptions has forced me into the mindset of a PR account executive rather than a student and the more I write the easier it becomes. Practise does make perfect after all.

The fast paced, ever changing environment is fantastic to work in, with something new happening every day. I know the next 3 weeks will have a lot more in store for me and I look forward to experiencing what else Holyrood PR has to offer.