Well folks, the show’s over: I came, I blogged, I conquered. What most of you don’t know is that I started this blog as an extension of a grad-school course: Social Media Theory and Practice by the indispensable, innovative, and often imitated Dr. Carrie Brown-Smith.
She’s classy to share her trade secrets with novices and burgeoning professionals. And in four months, her apprentices have Googled, WordPressed, crowdsourced, conversed, curated, chatted, Cinemagram’d, Wiki’d, tweeted, tumblr’d, photographed, video’d, viral’d, YouTubed, 365’d, optimized, LinkedIn, Facebooked, FourSquared, Yelped, Pinterest’d, recon’d, resourced, TechCrunched, Jarvis’d, Rosen’d, Shirky’d, Storifed, metricked, mapped, and engaged audiences. All for our own brands.
I emphatically understand that “life is about small events,” as Brad King penned. Every interaction (IRL and online) is an opportunity. And I’ve taken advantage of many:
- By starting a blog beat, I’ve been booked as a panelist for a young professional conference this August.
- My Storifies and hashtag participation have linked me to renowned academic journalists across the country.
- Sprucing up LinkedIn garned me an invitation IRL to a free drink, networking, and the chance to connect some legal do-gooders with a new nonprofit.
- Generous link-sharing resulted in guest posting on one of my favorite sites.
- I’ve interviewed and subsequently quoted 60 people. Many new to me and now future contacts.
- Taking one selfie scored me a top tweet with networks I never knew existed.
- Actively following a new Facebook group led to being cast as a movie extra…now proudly touting an IMDB.
- Meta-tagging “juke joint” bumped my WordPress by a 1,000+ views in a week. “One-night-stand traffic” is great for the new guy.
- Filming a parody boosted my followers by triple digits in a week.
- My Tweet-chatting led to serving as a national PBS MediaShift moderator with smart journo students.
- Mapping data netted me free drinks on a sunshine-laden patio.
- Checking Twitter during the day scored me two 3-day-passes to MusicFest.
- And just by saying yes to everything above, I gave a crowd-favorite Ignite talk and preached the journalism gospel.
If President Obama appointed this professor to a post, she’d be THE nation’s Social Media Czar. Thank you, Carrie, for imparting your wisdom, helping me find my voice, and uncovering a new passion.
My five-minute thesis, “Journalism Disrupted: Entrepreneurs & the Nouveau Niche,” with inclusions from Dr. Brown’s #SOCIALJ and Dr. Kelley’s #JPRENEUR classes. Presented on April 8, 2014 at Christian Brothers University for Ignite CBU.
