Back in high school, I decided I wanted to be a writer instead of a composer. My parents were relieved when I told them I had changed my mind, but still held a look of dread when they learned I wanted to pursue a writing career. It’s a well-known fact that writers, specifically artists, are highly competitive in the world today, and finding a job can be difficult. Just in case my writing dreams burned to the ground, I pursued a degree in Business Management. At times, earning a business degree felt kind of pointless. However, after two years in the department, I learned much about myself and surprisingly, a lot about being a successful writer.
During my first semester, I took a course where multiple business owners gave lectures explaining how they have become successful, and have ultimately made it to ‘the top’. One lecture was given by a young man, Spencer Taggart. He had this crazy idea that businesses were going to go through a social media frenzy in the next couple of years. He made one important point: businesses need more writers. He was so convincing that he was offered a teaching position at the college for the next semester to hold a “test run” class on social media marketing. I signed up for the class because it was the first time I had been told that I could still get a writing job with a business degree. That semester ended up being the most stressful, yet fulfilling time in school I’ve ever had. This is what I learned:
Passion is Key
When I attended Taggart’s test class, we worked on two main projects: a social media conference held by the college, called L2E, and a “fight for love” campaign called World Pie Month. Taggart was energetic and started every class with a huge “YAHOO!” and a heel click to get everyone excited for the day—it worked. I became obsessed with L2E and making it the greatest conference the college had ever seen. I wanted to do something different than everyone else; I wanted to show my true dedication to the project. I’ve dabbled in photography and videography, so I made a short video for the conference.
The conference ended up being the biggest conference the college ever held. Over a thousand students and their friends showed up to the conference to hear social media experts from all around the world talk about how they use social media to build their brand.
Appeal to the Social Media Users
During the conference Professor Taggart launched a new idea called “World Pie Month”. The concept was simple: do something good for someone in need, post about the experience on social media, and invite others to do the same for the month of March. World Pie Month was huge success, and after reflecting on the project, we discovered why. Campaigns that drive people to help or encourage them to do something good for the world are more likely to appeal to all social media users than any other campaign. The perfect example of this is the Kony 2012 phenomenon, where a man with a big idea posted a 30-minute video that changed the world. Whether you believe the entire thing was a scam or not, it showed that someone with enough determination can bring one country together to believe they can help. World Pie Month had all the formulas for a perfect engagement and it ended up being one of the most successful campaigns the school has launched.
Knowing the Right People
Networking is probably the most important thing you’ll do in business. Without networking, it doesn’t matter if you’re a good person or if you have a piece of paper that says you know what you’re talking about. If someone can validate you for your hard work, you can really achieve anything. One of the many reasons World Pie Month became a huge success was because of Professor Taggart’s connections. The first thing he decided to do was to get in touch with celebrity chef, Art Smith, to see if he would be willing to be the face of the campaign, and he said yes. My class spent an entire day cooking pies with Chef Art Smith to give to those in need, we recorded it and published it across our different social networks and it was a huge success! Since Chef Art Smith is a well-known chef, he also has a favorable following on social media. Using this to our advantage, we ran a Twitter campaign tagging @ChefArtSmith and other celebrities in each tweet. Our team pushed out each tweet to try to gain as many impressions as possible.
Although we didn’t get retweeted by a celebrity, we reached over three million people on Twitter, and had an incredibly successful engagement rates on Facebook. We quickly learned that cross-promoting with users with a good following and encouraging other people to share and Retweet your content, is the right way to get noticed on social media. We ended the school year with two successful projects and a belief that anyone could change the world.
By the next year, the rest of the business college had caught the social media bug. Marketing classes were replaced with social media classes, a social media degree was developed, and now all business degrees require social media courses. Class roll started to be counted by how many tweets you sent during class. Assignments became how many times you shared something business related on your page. The college became madly passionate about social media and encouraged their students to be as well.
Professor Taggart said that businesses need more writers, and he was right. Writing brings the business world and the social media world together in a way that no one could have predicted even a year ago. Having a business degree and striving for a communications degree no longer seems mundane, but important and in demand.