A little digital marketing can go a long way.

Erica Lorenz, a senior marketing major from Sheboygan Falls, had her summer plans upended in April when the internship she’d secured with Kohler Co. was rescinded because of the coronavirus crisis. As recent as mid-May she was looking for another opportunity.

Then a series of social media interactions, kicked off by an educator at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh who had Lorenz in two classes this year, helped land her a summer internship with the Texas-based marketing company Zen Media.

The initial bit of online promotion came courtesy of digital marketing lecturer Kathy Fredrickson. During the January interim, Fredrickson had Lorenz in a marketing analytics class that included a project where students conducted social media audits of well-known online marketers. Lorenz and her partner, Bailey Lemke (who graduated in May with a bachelor’s degree in business administration), chose to focus on Shama Hyder, founder and CEO of Zen Media.

Hyder is a digital marketer, author and speaker who’s landed on various lists of young entrepreneurs and “movers and shakers” in her industry. She’s also a regular on LinkedIn’s annual list of the top marketing and social media voices, and it’s on that platform Lorenz and Hyder connected.

“The students and their partners select, most often, a very well-known marketing influencer with a massive following,” Fredrickson said. “So then I take a picture of them with their presentation slide and I tag the professional in hopes that we get some sort of response.”

Hyder took notice, and after some back-and-forth, the lauded marketer sent all of the students in the class signed copies of her books.

She also came back to Fredrickson via LinkedIn when Zen Media was looking for a summer intern. In a response to an end-of-the-year farewell, Hyder encouraged students at UW Oshkosh to apply for the opening.

“I don’t know how many other students took advantage of that,” Lorenz said, “but because I knew I had a connection with Zen Media and Shama knew of me because of the project I had done on her back in January, I figured I had nothing to lose.”

Lorenz applied, four days later interviewed and in the last week of May showed up (virtually, of course) for her first day. The early goings have mostly been about getting acclimated, but moving forward she’ll be helping the company’s chief marketing officer and executive account manager with whatever tasks she can.

It’s all a testament, Fredrickson said, to the limitless nature of digital marketing. Zen Media could have scooped up an intern from anywhere—the company’s employees work remotely, pandemic or not—but found the right person at UWO because of previous outreach.

“A Titan got this job,” she said. “It could have been any student. (Hyder) is from Texas—they have amazing universities there in her backyard.”

Also important is Fredrickson’s strategy of keeping the students front and center. She wasn’t pushing out information about the social media audit project to marketers scattered around the map for her own good. It’s to help open doors for people like Lorenz, who on her first day at her new gig got a welcome greeting from the very subject of her class project.

“I did a presentation on her and now she’s welcoming me to her team,” Lorenz said. “It’s a cool transformation.”

Hyder said one of the important factors in Lorenz getting a look was pretty basic: She took the initiative to follow-up. A lot of people might hear about an internship position getting filled and think, gee, that would have been nice. But they didn’t even make the effort to apply for it in the first place.

“I wish more students were like Erica,” Hyder said. “You never know until you ask or apply—and it pays off to put in the work.”

Learn more:

• University of Wisconsin Oshkosh College of Business