Hello, I’m Keita. I am a Durham graduate with a degree in philosophy, theology and religion, sociology and education. Throughout all of these subjects, my focus has been anthropological – I love trying to understand how people think and feel and work. Starting my internship at Shake Social is an opportunity for me to see another facet of humanity: how inextricably interwoven we are with our social networks.

I’ve never been a big user of social networks, and I hope that as an intern, I will learn more about both the networks themselves and how a company like Shake can exist. Before working alongside the lovely team here, I questioned the feasibility of running a business based on social media. Do people really use Facebook for more than just keeping up with old friends? Surely Instagram is only useful for bloggers in the worlds of fashion and food. What even is Foursquare?

In these first few days, my main networking platform has been Twitter. As far as I knew, Twitter was for hashtagging everything that happened in your life in the hopes that someone might be interested, and following every move your favourite celebrities made. This would leave little space for promoting companies and their ideologies. It seems, however, that I was wrong. The character limit on tweets means that you have to make your message concise, and there is little opportunity for irrelevant waffle. Such small chunks of information are very easy to read, which means that you can get your message through to people very easily. Even amidst mindless scrolling through a page of live updates from global sources, words jump out at you. If you pick the right words, that’s marketing.

The content of my tweets so far has been education-focused: Shake is involved with such a variety of clients that I was able to pick something that suited my interests while expanding my knowledge. Education influences and inspires; it encourages people to develop in such varied ways that it is a thing of beauty. One system, numerous practices, unique people.

I hope to find a career in education in the future. Having tutored and taught children previously, I know that there is nothing more rewarding than seeing someone understand something for the first time, thanks to your efforts. At the end of this internship, I hope that I will be the one who finally understands the full extent to which social media can be used in a professional setting, and I will be able to take my new knowledge and awareness to wherever the future leads.