Please Don't Show This To My Therapist

          I finally completed the Stukent Social Media Simternship program for my Principals of Social Media course this week. This program allows students like myself to experience real-world digital marketing. It guides you through 12 rounds, concentrating on creating organic social posts, paid social posts, collaborating with influencers, and ultimately executing all three types of posts simultaneously. Along with creating media, you also respond to customer messages, examine company data and analyze post success to help with future decisions. You undertake all of these tasks for Buhi Supply Co., a company that specializes in the sale of a wide array of bags. Personally, I would purchase from Buhi, they have some cute products!       All-around, I think my favorite part about completing the program was getting to create my own organic posts. While I enjoyed organizing the paid posts, the rounds focusing on the organic posts were defin...

        It’s interesting to think about LinkedIn as a social platform used for advertising or even a social platform. For people in my generation, LinkedIn is for professional use only, to shout out friends who got jobs or to post about professional conferences we attended. To us, LinkedIn is far from the fun, creative likes of Instagram or Snapchat and more of an online resume used for our future. It’s the ultimate personal branding tool. But if you take a step back and look at it from a business point of view, it’s not that much different from other social networking platforms.       Like other platforms such as Instagram, X (formally known as Twitter) and Facebook, LinkedIn has content strategies that businesses should be aware of when they’re creating and publishing content. A survey showed that the top two reasons people follow a business on LinkedIn were to stay up-to-date on the latest news with the company and to stay informed about t...

On Wednesday I was given the opportunity to travel to ONU’s Women in Business Conference in Columbus, Ohio. I honestly didn’t know what to expect, I had never been to a business conference before but I was pleasantly surprised with the entire day.  The event, hosted by ONU alum Stephanie Saghy and Bank of America, began with a panel of Bank of America employees. All women in higher-up positions, it was inspiring to hear their stories of how they got where they are today. None of them really began their employment journeys picturing themselves in the positions they have today which was validating in a way. I feel like at this point in my life I’m supposed to have everything figured out and I don't but hearing about their journeys made me feel better about where I’m at. Each woman offered a piece of advice with their story as well and one that really stood out to me came from Jamine Kozar, she said,  “Don’t be cool. Be yourself.” She went on to explain how after a meeting she wa...

     When thinking about children's TV, which shows immediately come to mind? “iCarly?” “The Suite Life of Zack & Cody?” Or perhaps “Victorious?” Regardless of the shows you enjoyed growing up, networks like Nickelodeon and Disney Channel held considerable sway over young viewers' lives. Yet, their influence extended beyond the screen, leaving lasting impressions on the child actors who contributed to these shows. In the compelling new documentary, “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV,” the veil is lifted, uncovering the unsettling realities behind the scenes of our cherished childhood favorites.       Streaming exclusively on Max, the ongoing five-part documentary guides viewers through the timeline of horrific events that transpired during Nickelodeon's rise to popularity. The timeline begins in the 1990s with the emergence of television creator Dan Schneider. Schneider is the visionary behind some of Nickelodeon's most famous shows and stars,...

          Last Friday, March 22, I had the opportunity to attend the Ohio Northern University Public Relations Student Society of America’s (PRSSA) sixth annual social media workshop. As a student looking to pursue a career in marketing or communications, this workshop proved valuable. Throughout the day, I shared insights and key takeaways from the sessions I attended via live-tweeting. Here is a quick recap of my day.  The day began with a compelling keynote speaker, Amy Hertsenberg, who talked about AI-powered digital mastery. It was an amazing presentation illustrating how AI can do the smallest tasks that humans either don’t have time for or dread doing. Hertsenberg had me captivated the entire time.   Following the keynote, I delved into my first session on brand engagement. Presenter Sally Stearns talked about what she calls the three C’s of brand engagement: Connecting, Converting and Cultivating. Stearns did a deep dive into each top...

          When I say the word “influencer” what comes to mind? Maybe a teenager standing in front of a camera getting paid tons of money to brag about this company sending them free merchandise? Or maybe a 20-something-year-old who has risen to fame because they took one picture with an actor and now has brand deals with all these different companies? It doesn’t matter what you think of, the overall connotation of the word “influencer” is negative, but why? And why do companies continue to use influencers in their content strategy if there is such a negative connotation around it?  The word influencer is a more recent term added to our everyday vocabulary. Influencers themselves are still a newer idea to begin with. An influencer is someone who carries influence over others and in the case of social media, this entails a person with a big platform whose followers will listen to and do every little thing they say. If the influencer said that red wasn’...

     This week I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with Ohio Northern University alum Abby Brock. With a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in marketing and public relations and a love for the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) club, Brock graduated from the university in 2020. Although the world was in the midst of chaos Brock still managed to find her way in the social media world.       “[I] graduated in 2020 so I was a pandemic grad, umm a little hard to find some jobs after that but [I] was able to stumble upon a customer success role with a company called Bright Edge,” Brock said.  “I was there for about a year and a half and then I transitioned into an agency where I’m at currently called Global Prairie but it was formally called Hileman Group,”       Currently, Brock works as an associate of client partnership for Global Prairie at their Cleveland location where she works on client-ba...

     In the last 20 years the term “social media” has changed many times. From its humble beginnings in a Harvard dorm room to its widely known and controversial development, social media has seen its fair share of changes over the years.       Growing up in the generation of the iPhone I’ve never not known technology. In elementary school, they taught us how to type on computers before teaching us cursive. I had my first phone by 5th grade and laptop by 6th grade. While social media was originally used for communication, it has quickly grown into many different networks, branching out into marketing and selling as well. A whole new career has been made out of this idea of social media; what it is, how to use it, and why people should use it.       And while this newfound success in the world of social media has been great for lots of people, it is creating a-- mainly generational-- gap within the workforce. Older generations tend t...