Final Reflection

As part of my reflection, let's review the list of goals that I posted at the beginning of this assignment:

Goals that I have for this course include:

1) Creating a complete Social Media Profile/Resume that includes links to all pertinent websites for employers to see examples of my competence in these areas. I plan on updating it consistently throughout the semester, and even after graduation, to make sure it is up to date and a positive representation of my skills related to social media.

2) Besides this one for class, I would like to establish both a personal and professional blog. I believe that by the end of this blog assignment I will have had the chance to practice blog entries, try different styles of writing, experiment with importing images and HTML coding, and learn more about analyzing the data of my blogs as far as visitor numbers, references, hits, etc.

3) While this is a smaller goal, I am interested in updating my LinkedIn account to include more accurate and current information, connect with others on there, and establish links/references to be able to use during my job hunt.

I'm pleased to say that while I may not have completely finished these goals, I've made a lot of progress and am well on my way to completing them. I've updated my Social Media Profile/Resume and feel comfortable and confident posting links to my social media pages for friends, family, and future employers to see. As far as the second goal, I'm not sure it was necessarily a realistic goal for the timeline of this course, but I did gain a lot of valuable experience with this blog and have been updating my personal blog much more frequently thanks to this class. With this experience, I now feel prepared to manage and update a daily professional blog as soon as I'm at a point in my career where this is feasible. Finally, I just recently updated my LinkedIn profile and spent a lot of time researching, rewording and finalizing my bio, and I've now started the process of connecting with others on there to establish references and a stronger network.

I will continue to use and develop my social media communication skills after this class by being more consistent in my tweeting/updating efforts, establishing and maintaining relationships online that will be beneficial to me in my future career hunt, gaining more experience by blogging and trying to incorporate new trends and ideas. I believe that building a personal brand online is a constant process because it represents me, and I'm constantly changing. So I'll continue to update, evaluate, and change my personal brand so that it accurately reflects me and what I'm looking for/who I am.

Check out my updated social media resume here!

Updated social media resume

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LinkedIn Account

Check out my LinkedIn Account Here!

Profile Bio:

Before you ask…yes, I’m named after the car. However, my name is not the only unique thing about me!

As an almost-graduate from Middle Tennessee State University, I’m focused on my future and determined to land the job of my dreams as an event-planner! I’m passionate about fashion, politics, weddings, wine, and traveling (not necessarily in the order), and I’m currently obsessed with creating a Pinterest-perfect life. My passion for planning shines through the most when I am in my element coordinating an event or wedding. While I’m a coordinator by profession, I’m a planner by nature and aptitude. How, you ask? Well, I blame it partially on my perfectionist tendencies and extreme desire for order, details, and deadlines, but creating a vision, setting goals and analyzing progress comes naturally to me. I take organization to a whole new level; some may say I’m obsessive when it comes to planning- and in their defense, I’d have to agree.   

With my degree in Organizational Communication, along with more than 8 years of combined experience, I am an aspiring professional in the planning industry. My experience has ranged from conferences, meetings, fundraisers, non-profit events, and parties, with my main focus on weddings. Although I’m blessed with the natural creativity, talent, and ability to multitask that is required of a planner, I recognize the importance of formal training, which is why my degree concentration in event planning has given me yet another competitive advantage.

Having lucked out with an internship at The Nashville Wedding Planners Group and working under an amazing visionary, to hosting inaugural events on small, local scales and larger, region-wide levels, I’ve always gravitated towards providing not only successful events, but memorable experiences for everyone involved. As Director of Operations for this elite group of planners in Nashville, I gained direct experience in all aspects of planning as I developed and executed a social media strategy, handled all membership responsibilities from creating the membership agreement to recruiting members, managed all day-to-day operations, and planned monthly events at Nashville’s most unique venues.  I led the staffing and training of other employees, and managed vendor contracts, event timelines, advanced planning as well as day-of coordination, and event design and customization.

What continues to make all of my events so successful is the combination of my excellent interpersonal skills, organizational ability, resourcefulness, and creative edge. I find it easy to generate fresh and new ideas for each event because my past events serve as both a source of inspiration and a challenge, which inspires me to new creative heights.  I constantly seek inspiration from the industry’s most up-to-date blogs, magazines, TV shows, and leading industry professionals. I am driven by the inspiration and visions of my clients because there is no better feeling than that of making someone’s dreams come to fruition.

I am currently interested in finding a job that will allow me to relocate to the Dallas area. With my vast experience in this field and my under-promise/over-deliver approach to planning, I’m confident that I am the right person to plan your meetings, social functions, conferences, fundraisers, or weddings. I enjoy networking with professionals from any industry and encourage you to contact me any time!

Two "Tips" Resources for Beginners:
1.LinkedIn for Students
2. The Beginner's Guide to LinkedIn

EventBrite Slideshare

Event slideshare

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Group Project: Social Media Training

If we were going to develop a one day training seminar to teach your colleagues how to use professional social media, the topics we would include would consist of:

1. Engagement
2. Keeping Personal and Professional Lives Separate
3. Developing Your Brand
4. Building Your Network
5. Best Practices
6. Listening
7. Which platform is best for you?
8. Taking it to the next level: Social Media for Your Business Pages
9. Legal and Compliance Issues
10. Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Social media strategy
11. Ethics

Organize: Depending on how many employees were attending this seminar, we would organize it into different session opportunities for people to choose from, with a speaker for the whole group at the end. We'll bring together experts and allow for plenty of group discussion time. After the full day of information, speakers, and discussions, we would end the day with an opportunity to network by providing a cocktails and hors d'ouevers networking reception. This way, attendees have the option to attend sessions that best fit their needs.

Promote: We would use EventBrite to organize and promote this event by creating an event, promoting it, sending email invitations, creating contact lists, integrate it into our company website, and create an attendee report and more. Then we will list the event on our other social media sites and promote it for enough time to make sure that all employees are aware and excited to go. Finally, we will utilize EventBrite's new iPhone app, Easy Entry, to track employee attendance, and even list it on the EventBrite Public Directory.

Dream Internship

One Hope Weddings Brand Ambassador/Intern

This course has prepared me to obtain this dream position by teaching me best practices for major social media platforms including those listed in the job posting (Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest). The social media aspect of this job includes managing the profiles for this company, as well as managing and writing their blog. It says that written communication skills are a must, and I've both acquired and developed better writing skills in terms of social media writing. The last part of the job description says that this person would need to reach out to wine/wedding bloggers and create more of an online presence for this brand. I feel confident that with the skills I learned in this class I am more prepared to be an effective communicator in online communities, I have the ability to create and share relevant and interesting content, and I know how to determine if a social media strategy is being effectively executed.

Summer Reading List

Books about SMC/ORCO topics that I'd like to read this summer:

1. Likeable: Social Media Customers
2. The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Your Business with Pinterest
3. The Thank You Economy

Follow Up

I've actually learned a lot about social media communication and networking from the professionals that I chose to follow in one of our previous assignments.

To remind you, I chose to follow:

1. For this assignment I chose to follow Emily Lester Photography, a local photographer who is just getting started in the world of pictures. I admire her work and respect her as a person, so I will continue to follow her various social media pages and communicate with her.

2. 10 Professionals in My Field of Study:
@PerfectWedding
@TerriUtecht
@MusicCityEvents
@TCreativeDesign
@SouthernEvents1
@TheWhiteRoomTN
@FeteNashville
@ILoveSWMag
@OnceWed
@PinkChicEvents


3.The Heart Bandits are the #1 Proposal Planners IN THE WORLD and have been featured in a variety of national papers, TV Shows, etc. I already follow their blog (and their FB, Twitter), but I will keep a better eye on it and analyze it for the rest of the semester.

4. An example of another organization that I believe does a good job of connecting with their audience via social media is Billy Bob's Texas, a concert venue in Dallas. They are constantly updating their FB and Twitter, and they interact with their followers by commenting back, and even posing questions for their followers to answer. I'll follow them for the rest of the semester, as I've applied for an event planning internship with them.

Let's see how I did with my goals:

I've continued to follow all of these people and take special note of their posts on Facebook and Twitter. While I didn't actually post on Emily Lester's professional wall, this assignment encouraged me to get in touch with her and I was actually able to use Facebook to book a personal session for family photos, and then we continued our Facebook message which lead us to feature her as a vendor for my job!! While I haven't been that great about utilizing my personal Twitter account because my business one takes up much more time, I have been consistent in engaging those followers of The Nashville Wedding Planners Group by @replies, RTs, and I've been able to apply the knowledge I learned about relative content to my posts that are directed at a wide variety of people in the Nashville wedding industry.

I will continue to follow these people and their blogs/other social media profiles to continue learning from them :)

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My professional network has grown just a little bit since the first week of this assignment. I think that this can be attributed to the fact that I was already following most of the people that were recommended to us to follow, and I had already done extensive work in the way of establishing my network for my job with The Nashville Wedding Planners Group. I have, however, begun to pay much closer attention to those professional "tweeps" because I understand the significance of their posts and the value of their advice.

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In terms of social media writing, yes, I believe that my skills have continued to develop throughout this assignment. I've always been a pretty good writer when it comes to essays, school work, letters, and business communication, but I'm consistently learning and be reminded of the many differences between writing for social media or business. I feel that practice is the only way to really gain that experience and I hope to continue building on these skills.