Media Huddle: Trend Hunter's Internship Academy Featured

The search for valuable Toronto journalism jobs in the digital age is not easy, but our Trend Hunter Academy does provide a beacon of hope for recent graduates, offering an entire curriculum dedicated to optimizing the skills they unknowingly already possess. Jennifer Alvarez from The Media Huddle dove into the inner workings of our Trend Hunter Academy last week, discussing subjects like personal branding and social media with our VP of Operations Shelby Walsh, Contributing Editor Rebecca Byers and of course, myself.

All three of us Trend Hunter ladies profiled had firsthand experience with TH Academy, having successfully graduated the program with tons of employable skills and amazing positions at Trend Hunter. The true beauty of the program, however, lies in the preparation it provides for any potential job in the digital journalism industry.

I firmly believe one of the most employable skills we provide is how to craft a personal brand. I communicated this to Alvarez, stating that "[...] the key to making your online persona or personal brand is being consistent with it; being able to hone in on what you like talking about, and who you like talking to." This is something we push our interns to perfect.

Shelby Walsh, Vice President of Operations and Community at Trend Hunter, furthered this idea of personal branding and focused content, stating that "If you’re putting up quality content, you’re going to organically increase your inbound links and you’re going to get more social media traction."

Contributing Editor Rebecca Byers echoed this message, placing emphasis on how translatable the Trend Hunter-taught skill of focused and careful personal promotion is. "The Trend Hunter Academy teaches how to make your articles stand out on Google so people can find it easily," she says, "This has helped me get exposure on the Internet, not only for what I was writing at Trend Hunter, but if I wanted to create a blog for myself afterwards."

Check out our Trend Hunter Internships here.

Read the full article at The Media Huddle

Trend Hunters: Helping Graduates Optimize Your Skills
The Media Huddle
By TMH Contributor Jennifer Alvarez

"A Toronto-based online community with almost 40,000 monthly views is giving young graduates the chance to be a part of the online trend news world.

TrendHunter.com, a website dedicated to rising trends, viral news and popular culture, continually hires interns and provides them with valuable online training.

Armida Ascano, strategist at Trend Hunter Academy, an intern developmental program within the company, said that Trend Hunter’s training focuses heavily on teaching personal branding.

"I think the key to making your online persona or personal brand is being consistent with it; being able to hone in on what you like talking about, and who you like talking to," she said.

Of the belief that an individual’s personality is also an advantage when it comes to reporting for the online world, Ascano said: "If you don’t want to be somebody who just spreads news but is also a part of news, you have to make your personality a part of everything you do."

Shelby Walsh, Vice President of Operations and Community at Trend Hunter, echoed the same message.

In addition, Walsh said that the company is dedicated to teaching its staff and interns about the importance of providing readers with reliable information.

"If you’re putting up quality content, you’re going to organically increase your inbound links and you’re going to get more social media traction," she said.

Creating a personal brand online is integral for any aspiring journalist, and can lead to many opportunities for employment or freelance work.

"Social media is a big umbrella trend, and within the social media sphere there are so many revolutions going on," added Walsh. "That’s why having a personal brand today is so important."

Rebecca Byers, a journalism intern who has recently been offered a contract position with Trend Hunter’s sister company www.socialbusiness.org, said the skills learned during the internship are transferable.

"They take you through, seminar by seminar, everything you need to know to succeed in your internship, and they’re all valuable skills afterwards."

She also said Trend Hunter, which hires new interns every two months, provides them with a positive learning environment committed to creating digital media professionals.
"What’s becoming more important for any digital media is Google+ and something we call search engine optimization," said Byers.

"The Trend Hunter Academy teaches how to make your articles stand out on Google so people can find it easily. This has helped me get exposure on the Internet, not only for what I was writing at Trend Hunter, but if I wanted to create a blog for myself afterwards."

Trend Hunter currently has over 216,000 Twitter followers, a 2 million strong Facebook following, will celebrate its billionth online view in July and has recently entered a partnership with TEDx Conferences.

Trend Hunter’s next intern recruitment month will be in June. Check www.trendhunter.com/internships for more information."