First, I want to express how important I think this course is. Social media plays such an important role in journalism, especially in how we receive our news, and in many jobs today. There have been many jobs that I have applied to that are solely social media positions because it plays such a crucial role in businesses today. From this class, I learned the importance of google analytics and social media campaigns. I realize how important it is to use the analytical tools to see how your social media is doing on certain social media platforms, such as how many viewers you have or whether or not people are taking time to view your content instead of leaving your social media page immediately because they have no interest in the content. Having this knowledge can only help to improve ones social media presence, which I think is very helpful. I’ve also learned different strategies and how important it is to find creative ways to run social media campaigns that are relevant and appealing to your audience. I was able to gain further knowledge on the increase of influencer marketing and artificial intelligence voice assistants through this class, as it was what I completed my projects on.
Two important lessons that I have learned are to not believe everything that you see on social media and, while this may not have been in the slides it was still a part of the class lesson, not to feel a lot of pressure upon graduation and not to limit your job search. First, I thought that the lesson about fake news was very important and any story can be skewed and presented falsely. It is always important to double check on the facts of a story before fully believing it. Another class that I enjoyed was speaking to the alumni who had Dr. Z that now works for Facebook. It was very interesting to hear about her career path and journey. She made me less stressed about not having a job immediately after college and it was nice to know that she went from being a print journalism to working at Facebook. It is important to never limit yourself and always try new things.
I think that this course will have a big impact on my future and career being that social media is used so prevalently in the professional world and in my personally life. I believe it is only going to expand in the future. I think overall this is a great course. I like that the course is not extremely course heavy. I think the projects are great as far as introducing new ideas to students about social media and reflecting on current social media trends. It taught me to try new things and to broaden my perspective on certain social media platforms and I think should be a class that everyone should take.