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.