I am asked "What is your background with blogging/social media or internet marketing?"and "How well do you think your college career has prepared you to handle a job as social media/internet marketer before having any professional experience?"
I learned a lot about blogging and social media in my Seminar in Marketing (Social Media Marketing) class at RIT. My classmates and I were required to write a blog post once a week; the theme was entirely up to us. The theme was easy to choose because I’m really interested in learning about health; this comes along with eating an organic and vegetarian diet. I am also pretty knowledgeable, not only about the harmful chemicals or ingredients that people put into their bodies, but about the chemicals that men and women put onto their bodies on a daily basis. I started by talking about popular products that I used to think were safe but I was actually unaware about the harmful and cancer-causing chemicals that these products are made of. I wanted to inform people and do reviews on natural/organic products that were much better alternatives to these products. I think this is something that is important for people to be aware of.
As I look back on my college blog, compared to my professional blog started here at Indium Corporation, I noticed errors and inconsistencies. I didn’t learn during my college courses how to add links, pictures, or videos to my posts. Thankfully, one of my supervisors, Rick Short, taught me how to do this. I was also unaware about the photo permissions, which Anne Bazan, who is also part of the Marcom team, taught me. My supervisor, Anita Brown, gave me so many insights, tips, and techniques that I didn’t know about blogging before starting my internship. I am so thankful that each of these people opened my mind and understanding about all of the learning opportunities that blogging brings. Since starting my professional blog, my communication and writing skills have advanced tremendously. I am thankful for this because I know that these areas can always be improved.
In my Internet Marketing course; I gained a lot of skill in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Shopping Cart Optimization (SCO), and overall website design and development. But, my social media marketing skills didn’t officially take off until my Seminar in Marketing. The entire semester was devoted to a government-funded challenge, called ProjectNE1, that my classmates and I worked together to create. This campaign was an effort to inform people about violent extremism; it used social media marketing and traditional marketing to get the message out. The overall theme of the campaign was #PassThePeace and we used this to display acts of kindness throughout the RIT campus as well as the entire community. We wanted to inform the younger generation about ways that terrorist groups use social media to get children and young adults to practice, join, or abide by their beliefs. We also wanted to inform parents about the harmful acts that children and young adults are being exposed to on social media and other social accounts, such as YouTube.
ProjectNE1’s Social Media Accounts & Website:
- Facebook: ProjectNE1
- Twitter: ProjectNE1 #PassThePeace #ProjectNE1
- Instagram: ProjectNE1 #PassThePeace #ProjectNE1
- Website: www.projectne1.org
In this project, I was head of the advertising department, so my team and I did all of the social media marketing - which fit perfectly with my major, new media marketing. We also created geofilters that were approved by Snapchat and were available to use on the RIT campus, created video’s that were played at RIT’s hockey games, and held events such as a food truck rodeo and a 5k run. We learned and used a HootSuite account in which we scheduled most of the posts. We communicated with our team using Basecamp.
It's a good feeling knowing that RIT has prepared me for blogging and new marketing techniques and that I am able to incorporate what I've learned in school to my Indium Corporation internship.
Not your average intern,
Lucia Forte