When I’m not establishing my own little business on the side, I’m working as a Marketing Coordinator for a government contractor. The contracts I work on are for the U.S. Army. I can’t tell you how much of an insane push there has been this past year from the Army to have a larger presence in the social media realm. Marketing and PR professionals are scrambling to give clients what they want because the catch phrases clients hear all the time are, “social media,” “tweet this,” “like that.”
For one program I worked on called, For Love of Liberty, I just finished a huge social media push before the contract was closed out. I reached out to tons of blogs that wrote about social studies, the U.S. Army, black history because there is not better way to reach an audience these days than utilizing social media. We also focused a lot on Google Analytics and SEO to see where our efforts were most effectively being spent.
Being a 23 year old, you would think I would know a lot more about what’s involved in social media, but the truth is I don’t know as much as I should. I graduated in the Spring of 2009 when the social media phenomenon was only starting to gain traction with the Marketing/PR professionals and Corporate America. Not a lot of my curriculum was updated with the social media trend. Everyday now, I’m reading tons of articles and posts on how to harness social media and how to make it for you and your client. One tool I’m definitely looking into is conferences. There is one in the DC Metropolitan area which I would love to attend; the PRSA International Conference. Any DC Area PR social media professional should check it out to sharpen their skills in this subject. Social Media is only going to be more prominent in the years to come.
Some other blogs I look at daily which have helped me tremendously:
- Social Media Examiner
- Mashable
- Smashing Magazine (My Favorite)
