I hope to be attending grad school to receive a master’s degree in Public Relations from Georgetown or DePaul or a master’s degree in communications from the University of Washington. I’ve lived in Milwaukee my whole life (besides studying abroad in Spain for a semester, but does that count?), so I would like to experience what it’s like to live in a different city. Because I want to go to grad school, I think that would be the perfect time to explore another city.
10 years from now…
I see myself settling back down in Milwaukee working for a company that is making a social or sustainable impact. I’ve previously mentioned that working for Everlane (link) would be pretty cool, but that requires me to be in San Francisco. Working for a local non-profit that strives to improve education like Schools That Can Milwaukee and PAVE (link) is also something I’d love to do. Interning at a local Milwaukee school in their development office has allowed me to learn about the education system in Milwaukee and has urged me to help strive for a better one. During this time, I plan to be traveling the world. I loved seeing new places when I was abroad and there’s so much more to see and learn about.
15 years from now…
I hope to be making an impact
where ever I’m working. I also hope to be raising a family (a pretty common but
rewarding future).
Social media usage in the workplace is quite a grey area. To avoid distractions at work, companies should be encouraged to create a social media policy. Employees use social media at work for a variety of reasons. The most common reason is to take a mental break from their job. According to the PEW Research Center, other reasons workers use social media at work is to connect with friends and family, to make or support professional connections, to get information that helps them solve problems at work, to build or strengthen personal relationships with coworkers, to learn about someone they work with, and to ask work-related questions of people outside and inside their organization. Some of these reasons may seem appropriate for the workplace and others may not, which is why it’s important to implement a social media policy.
Not only should organizations and companies be worried about social media as a distraction, they should also be aware of what their employees are posting and tweeting about especially if they are about issues in the workplace. Best Buy and The Coca-Cola Company are great examples of what a social media policy looks like. However, neither address the usage of social media in the workplace. So, when is it appropriate to use social media at work?
I, personally, think communications directors and social media coordinators should have the ability to use social media freely in the workplace. As for other employees, there are multiple ways to go about this. Many companies are enabling their employees to use social media because of the benefits employees have as a communication channel for their company. If this can work for your company, provide time for your employees to scroll through their social media accounts. For example, this could be giving them 15 minutes in the morning and afternoon. If this doesn’t work for your company, put in place a policy that prohibits employees from using social media at work. There is no right or wrong policy when it comes to social media. Your organization or company needs to figure out what fits best in their environment.
As Snapchat’s popularity increased, they began to run more ads. When users tap through their friend’s stories, ads will interject between stories. In March 2018, Snapchat ran an offensive ad for a game called “Would You Rather.” This ad asked users if they would rather slap Rihanna or punch Chris Brown. In 2009, Rihanna was domestically abused by Chris Brown. The ad that Snapchat ran seemed to be mocking the domestic abuse. Snapchat users and Rihanna were furious about the ad.
Rihanna responded to the ad by shaming Snapchat
in her Instagram story.
Like Rihanna said in her Instagram
story, not only is this offensive to her, but also to all the women, men, and
families who are and have been affected by domestic violence. To me, it’s rather
obvious that this ad would come off offensive and is completely inappropriate.
But mistakes like this can easily happen. At times there may be only one person
in charge of approving ads. Although this may seem obvious, the professional at
Snapchat may have not found the ad to be offensive. If this professional did
not find the ad offensive, then it makes sense why the ad was able to go
public. An easy way to avoid future mistakes like this one is to have more than
one person, or even a whole team, look at the ads and raise any concerns they
may bring.
You don’t need to be a professional graphic designer to create fun graphics for your organization’s social media page. The app OVER is a great tool to create announcements, save the dates, Q & As for your Insta story, and so much more. This is especially useful when, for example, your organization can’t afford to hire a graphic designer, or your PR/Communications professionals don’t have design experience. When posting on social media, it is extremely important to include visuals.
Social media is a huge place for organizations to communicate. Instagram has more than 500 million users daily. That is a big audience. You can reach more people through social media than another marketing platform (billboards, print ads, magazines, etc.). If you add visuals, you receive more engagements. Facebook posts with images receive 2.3 times more engagement than posts without images. On Twitter, tweets with images see 150% more retweets than tweets without images. These statistics are fascinating and show how important it is to include visual content on your organization’s social media platforms. 80% of marketer use visual content in their social media marketing, so if you aren’t including visuals, start to today.
Because of these statistics and the increased engagement you receive on social media platforms when using visuals, I created fun, cohesive, images for a mini social media campaign using OVER. I’m a development intern at the Milwaukee Academy of Science (MAS), a public charter school. I assisted in running our March social media campaign titled #WhyILoveMAS. This campaign highlighted students, teachers, and parents who shared why they love MAS. These posts were to encourage their friends and family to learn about MAS and to recruit new teachers and students. Each post included an image, and because we had images, we saw an increase in our audience reach.
Images courtesy of Milwaukee Academy of Science.
Including images on social media is a vital strategy, is free, and is easy to accomplish. Other apps to create visuals are Canva and Adobe Spark Post. Both include cheap, in-app purchases to increase your design options and are available in the App Store and Google Play.
Learn about my journey in choosing PR as the right career path for me.
Growing up, I always wanted to be a teacher. Later, I found out that if I had to work with kids every day, I wouldn’t love them as much as I do now, or worse would get teacher burnout. Once teaching was ruled out, I thought about going into nursing. I’ve always been passionate about helping others. What better way to do that than going into healthcare? In healthcare, you directly help others every day. Unfortunately, I found out that I couldn’t handle the gruesome tasks or emergencies nurses deal with, and I especially couldn’t handle the passing of a patient. Because of this, I genuinely look up to everyone in healthcare and the strength they endure. After some deliberation, I concluded PR and Advertising was the right path for me. I’ve always loved writing, but I also love to be creative. I don’t quite remember the day I discovered PR, but it immediately drew my interest. I love talking to people, working with others, and building relationships. PR fit everything I was looking for. PR also has an endless amount of industries and opportunities.
So far, I’ve explored sports marketing, the non-profit industry, special events, and design. I’ve definitely been gravitating towards special events. When planning events, there is quite a lot of stress leading up to the big day, but once the event is happening you see immediate results. To get to that big day, you have to use PR skills. I had to pay attention to detail when tracking guests. I used my writing skills to send out formal thank yous to our donors. I think paying attention to detail and writing are two of the most important skills that I will use in my future career. Hopefully, my future career will be my dream job.
My dream job is a lot of things, and well because I’m interested in a lot of things. My dream job is just something that would make me happy and a lot of things make me happy. I love reading so it’d be really fun to work as a social media coordinator or director of communications for a publishing company. In my PR Writing class, we have a client who owns an independent, children’s book publishing startup, but I’d work somewhere that publishes books that I am interested in like quirky love stories and thrillers. I could also work for as a director of communications at a clothing company that ethically produces clothes, like Everlane. I love clothing and fashion. But I’ve recently discovered the issues behind fast fashion, so working somewhere that is so conscious about their environmental impact would be rewarding and fun. Ideally, I’d love to work for a non-profit like the Leukemia Lymphoma Society or Autism Speaks. Both are making big impacts, helping others, (a big passion of mine I mentioned earlier) and are very personal to me.
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