This summer, I had the amazing opportunity to work with Lindsey Carmichael, owner and founder of Soleni Shoes! I have knowledge and experience marketing products on social media to help drive up customer views and eventually, sales. Lindsey expressed that she needed help sending out promotional emails and managing some of her Soleni Shoes social media (ex. Facebook page). Since I was working remotely for my STEM Externship (Soleni Shoes is located in Boise, ID and I work out of Moscow, ID), we decided this would be a great use of my skill and fulfill a need Lindsey has for marketing her business.

Meeting & Training
Lindsey had expressed an interest early on of getting her three STEM Externs together for a team building weekend, including training for programs and platforms we would be using during the course of our STEM Externships. Since I live 6 hours from Boise, we agreed that I would stay there in a hotel over the weekend. The weekend we chose ended up not working for the other two STEM Externs, but Lindsey and I met, and I received training on some of the programs I would need to have access to for setting up email campaigns promoting Soleni Shoes to current and potential customers.

Email Campaigns
Throughout the course of the summer, I created, scheduled, and sent 3 different email campaigns each week. The first campaign went out Monday, June 30th and the last scheduled campaign went out the week of Monday, August 4th. Each campaign was created through the Shopify platform and through Klaviyo. These were new programs for me, but the training Lindsey provided helped me to be able to efficiently and effectively create, schedule, and post 18 email campaigns throughout my STEM Externship experience. I used images from the Soleni Shoes Google Drive (stock images, professional photos of people wearing the shoes in different situations) and AI (ChatGPT) to help come up with on-band messaging that was short, sweet, and to the point.

Social Media Posts
I took over the Soleni Shoes Facebook Page the same time I began creating email campaigns. For this platform, the goal was to boost views, comments, and interactions on the site because it had been pretty stagnant. I began by scheduling a daily “Morning Motivation” message that was meant to uplift and inspire. Soleni is a brand created by women, for women. Inspiring confidence and celebrating achievements is very on-brand, so the Morning Motivation messages were perfect! They went out every morning at 6:00 a.m. for the month of July (30 posts total).

I also scheduled a daily “Interactive” post to get people commenting on things they like, experiences they have had, or preferences. These posts were fun and brought in lots of engagement from viewers to the site! These daily posts went out at 4:00 p.m. (30 posts total). In addition to creating these posts, I also took responsibility for reacting and commenting on every comment we received from a viewer. These interactions were crucial for increasing brand and page visibility.

Lastly, I created unique Soleni Shoes Facebook posts marketing different shoes, styles, or situations where the shoes could easily be worn. These posts were our direct on-brand messaging to show off the versatility and features of Soleni Shoes to our audience. These posts included fun messaging, pictures, and even music to increase engagement and views. The posts went out at 6 p.m. and started with a few days per week, quickly updating to a daily post (and are still currently scheduled and posting on the Facebook page daily – 42 total posts). Examples of each type of post is shown in the pictures, along with a picture of an email campaign.

Impact
This experience introduced me to a new side of any successful small business – marketing and promotion. Although I did have some prior experience, this Externship taught me ways to be much more efficient in less time while utilizing new business platform tools (Shopify and Klaviyo). Even Chat GPT was relatively new to me and I learned ways to use it effectively for short marketing campaigns. Although I don’t plan to use all of these skills to influence my teaching this year, I know some things will come in handy, such as:

• Transferring prior knowledge to using new platforms. Teaching is a career driven by the newest and latest technology platforms. Being proficient at using different platforms and using prior experience to drive new learning is always going to be a useful tool as an educator.
• Best practices for communicating with students, parents, and community supporters. Being a teacher means that you will be communicating with lots of different people at different times and for different reasons. It is important to understand how successful communication can help support your cause, while ineffective communication can harm it. I am always looking for new ways to effectively communicate with my parents, students, and public education allies.
• Collaborating with others toward mutual goals. Working with Lindsey Carmichael this summer was incredible. She is a phenomenal human and small business owner. We often collaborated before to make sure that the messages I was sending out were on-brand for Soleni Shoes. We wanted to work towards the same goal of expanding viewership and audience for potential customers, as well as driving some “potential customers” into “new customers.”

I appreciate the opportunity I was given to expand my knowledge and expertise in the area of STEM through this Externship!

Grade Level and Subject Taught: 2nd Grade