Sean Carolan

From April to September of 2015, I worked at Bat Conservation International as a Communications and Marketing intern. At my internship I worked with the organization’s communications director managing social media, creating graphics, responding to public inquiries, improving our website, and writing posts for our website and quarterly magazine.

Below are links to some of my work with Bat Conservation International:

I helped redesign our “Bat Houses” webpage to make it easier for people to make their own bat houses and answer common questions.

I also wrote and contributed to multiple web and print articles for Bat Conservation International, including a story on Bats in the House, a feature article about the Golden Crowned Flying Fox, 6 Facts about Pollinating Bats, 10 Bats of Texas, and a story on the Gomantong Caves in Malaysia.

During my internship I was responsible for creating graphics and other shareable content about bats for social media. These posts varied from cute bat photos to #FunFactFriday, and were meant to both engage our current followers and drive follower growth.

On Facebook typical posts would get anywhere from 700-3,500 likes, depending on the picture posted (cute bats tended to get a lot more likes, as you can see here) and on Twitter posts tended to get around 20 retweets or likes.

Below is an example of a #FunFactFriday post, highlighting the Honduran White Bat. You can find the Facebook post here.

I also made and posted graphics involving holidays, including the Fourth of July, Father’s Day, and Pollinator Week. Below is a graphic we posted on both Twitter and Facebook for Independence Day:

Working at Bat Conservation International gave me my first real experience in the world of public relations, and was a challenging first internship. Effectively working as the PR person for all of the bats in the world is difficult, as you are constantly facing an uphill battle against the fears society has of them. It was a constant battle against the misconceptions that bats carry diseases or are vicious, and our job was to convince people that bats are cute, harmless, and vitally important to nature. It’s hard convincing people that what they’ve been told about something their entire lives is wrong, but it’s the first step in convincing people that bats are worth saving.