How I got into social media
My first job offer right out of college was to my dream job.
It was as an Editorial Assistant for one of the most respected homesteading magazine companies in the U.S.
They wanted me to start a podcast (a dream of mine) and they were seriously impressed by my writing and photography portfolio.
They even offered me a moving bonus…
to Topeka, Kansas.
I turned it down.
Imagine my joy when my first actual job at a K-12 school included building the annual magazine.
The readership was complex:
hundreds of donors
thousands of alumni
every enrolled family
prospective families
Each story had to serve all of them.
So I wrote long-form pieces covering every angle. I’d shadow teachers, tag along on field trips, take photos at events, then tie it all back to the mission and value.
My 5-10 page features were labors of love.
Then I’d rip 'em to shreds.
The full version went into the printed magazine.
A timely condensed version became a “breaking news” article on the website.
A quote might be used in the weekly newsletter.
Photo dumps went into a Facebook album to tease the story.
I loved building that magazine. But social media gave me unending ways to tell stories.
One feature became dozens across different channels, all with their own unique angle, audience focus, and specific highlight.
That’s when I fell in love with social media (and repurposing content).
It was every class I took in college rolled into one.
Rhetoric & storytelling
Marketing
Community management
Visual storytelling
Public relations
Audience segmentation
I could be creative, get feedback, and interact with our audiences in real-time.
Social media can feel overwhelming because it collapses dozens of disciplines into one ever-changing channel.
It’s journalism and PR.
It’s customer service and community management.
It’s strategy and tactics.
There are dozens of communications theories all playing out in real time.
In college, I studied mass communications. I learned about the art of persuasion, communication models, and how we prevent “noise” from interrupting our messages.
Social media is my entire college curriculum intertwined and moves at hyper-speed.
Of course, it’s gonna feel overwhelming.
At its core, social media is a channel. Just like radio or newspaper (RIP AJC) or a magazine, it can be structured with mental models.
If you've been thinking the problem with your social media is a messaging problem, it might actually be a strategy or communications approach problem.
(If you're treating Instagram like a scrapbook but you really need storytelling, then it will feel hard no matter how many carousels you publish.)
Remember this: We manage our social media. The way we do so changes depending on our goals. The only thing we can't do is let social media manage (or rule) us.
