A career which was spoken about in our professional guest speaker series was social media management. Social media management is a career with increasing relevance due to the growth of the internet in the past few decades, with the internet growing exponentially including a number of countries where over 60% of the population have access to some form of the internet (Rice and Haythornthwaite, 2006). As this online space evolves, business is incorporated in various ways, such as how Facebook created ‘Facebook for Business’ to make the process easier for corporate pages (Freedman, 2020), and therefore these online resources need to be maintained and managed to keep them working. Therefore, we can see a clear need for social media managers as a career.

When it comes to working in social media as a manager, I was interested to hear any advice on where to get started and how to be successful as this is a career path that I have considered following for quite some time. Our guest speaker was Jacqueline Farrer, the social media account director for Wavemaker. Wavemaker is a global media network aiming to promote growth for their clients. (Wavemaker, n.d.) Jacqueline spoke to us about her career in this field, including how she initially started in journalism but moved to a digital career leading into social media. This was a valuable anecdote for me since, as previously mentioned, the media landscape has been becoming increasingly online-based and Jacqueline’s experiences have shown me that people can adapt to this online media landscape rather than just being left behind by it. 

In terms of required skills, Jacqueline mentioned multiple areas which she believed were necessary to be successful in social media management. First was being able to create quality content. Jacqueline stated that different online platforms have different specifications and so therefore content creators need to be able to make posts relevant to each site. I personally believe I possess this skill as in previous projects I have been able to implement this, such as for an individual podcast how I created a short preview for Instagram but a full-length post for YouTube. Additionally, Jacqueline stated that strategy is an important skill to have as each client has different needs and should be approached as such. This is a skill which I feel I am lacking in as the majority of my projects have implemented a very similar strategy as I am familiar with it and can ensure my best work this way. Whilst this may be useful for consistency, I need to learn how to adapt my strategies in order to tailor work around potential clients and to help me stand out as a professional that goes the extra mile. To learn this, I need to take on a number of different projects and approach each of these as its own unique task as this will allow me to find different ways to solve problems and create successful projects.

References:

Freedman, M. (2020) Facebook for Business: Everything You Need to Know. Business News Daily. https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/7761-facebook-business-guide.html

Rice, R.E. and Haythornthwaite, C. (2006). Perspectives on Internet Use: Access,Involvement and Interaction. In L.A. Lievrouw and S. Livingstone (Eds.) The Handbook of New Media: Updated Student Edition.  (pp. 113-134.) SAGE Publications.

Wavemaker (n.d.) Our Work. https://wavemakerglobal.com/our-work