how i got into social media as my career
the journey into social media
lately, through all of the social media platforms, i’ve been seeing so many people posting about how they work in social media. i always think it’s fun to hear how they started and got to where they are now, so i wanted to share my journey so far!
school
while in college, i studied communication with a minor in marketing & sales. when i first started college, i had no idea what i wanted to do specifically and didn’t until my junior year. i loved how broad the major of communications was and could allow me to go into many fields. my junior year is when i added on the minor of marketing. all of my marketing classes contained content of the old styles of marketing and just briefly touched on social media. i started to like learning about public relations & actually had my first internship in pr (which we’ll touch on later). i’m definitely grateful to have completed my bachelors degree from arizona state university but i know that i learned so much more about marketing during my internships than in school.
internships
if there’s one piece i could give to anyone that’s still in school, it would be to have at least one internship! i learned so much and i believe this is a key factor in finding a job right out of school.
i landed my first internship my junior year of school at a local pr firm in arizona. i would classify this as your typical internship; answering phones, running errands, etc but i did get the opportunity to sit in on a few meetings and also took a stab at writing a press release. this was when i knew that i liked marketing/pr and it was such an amazing feeling to find something that i liked!
my second internship is the one that really moved the needle for me from a career aspect. there was a women entrepreneur group that wasn’t affiliated with my school but a lot of girls attended called ‘power hour’. i went to my first event they had and was SO nervous! i had never been to a networking event before and didn’t really know what to expect. i ended up getting a chance to speak with the founder of the group and we hit it off! a month or so later, she posted on social media that she was looking for spring interns and i applied, thinking it would be a great opportunity. she was a wedding marketing specialist in arizona & had a ton of wedding clients. i ended up getting the internship and worked with a few other girls my age to help her run social media accounts, create blogs and help with her monthly power hour events. this was seriously one of my favorite internships and opportunities and i learned so much from working with blake! i ended up getting the opportunity to extend my internship into the summer to help her with marketing & transforming her into an influencer in the wedding space. best internship ever!
my last main internship was at another local agency in arizona that specialized in hospitality clients. this internship gave me even more responsibility as i assisted the social media manager with content creation, creating posts and ideas, editing, sitting in on meetings & also helping with some pr work as well. this was my longest internship and ran for about 9 months right up until i finished school. i loved working alongside the social media manager to create content that was fun but also hit their goals with social media.
after college
the end of college can be tough when trying to decide what’s next. i had set a goal for myself as i walked into my senior year of college, that i wanted to walk across the stage at graduation know i had a job to start the following week.
during the last weeks before graduating, i saw a local company in the hospitality space was looking for a social media coordinator to join their team. it happened to be at a bar that my friends and i loved going to and i remember saying to them, “how fun would it be to run social media for one of the bars we love!”. i feel like it was the following day and i submitted an application. i received an email from their marketing director that they wanted to have an interview with me. another situation where i was SO nervous but i found out on my way to graduate, that i got it! i ended up starting as social media coordinator and was promoted to social media manager within the first month. i help run 16 accounts for the nightclubs & restaurants that they had and worked directly on the marketing team for all of their campaigns.
after 2 years working there, covid hit and i was furloughed, which was tough and i know it was for others as well. i took this as an opportunity to spread my wings and try something new. i had been working on my business, daydreamer social, at night since the beginning of 2020 and wanted to put energy into that as well as find something new that i could grow from.
i found my current company on linkedin & started pretty quickly which was really exciting. i started as social media manager and am now head of social media for the company. i also have been able to have a few freelance clients on the side as well which is helping my learn how to turn that into my full time here in a few years.