Week 2 Journal
On Wednesday, July 3, I had the opportunity to visit Conde Nast, which is the parent company of Vogue, and the BBC Arabic services. Conde Nast was an amazing experience where me and my peers got to ask social media professionals about their life experiences and journalistic pursuits. They also blessed us newbies with some words of wisdom and advice going forth in our careers, such as the importance of consistency for an organization on social media and the idea that quality is greater than quantity when using social media platforms. Professionals such as Sarah Marshall, Michael MacLeod and Christine Banawa. Christina also happened to be a University of Oregon graduate, which was inspiring to see how someone with a similar background as me has succeeded in the world of journalism. She talked about how she travels around the world for Vogue to keep up with the organization’s social media presence on Instagram, Snapchat, etc. VERY cool. Sarah also gave a brief lecture about the history of social media and its impact on today’s world. Michael is the Social Production Lead for Vogue, Conde Nast International. I greatly appreciated how these well-established, accomplished professionals took 2 hours out of their busy schedules to talk to us journalism students. It was an inspiring, eye-opening experience to say the least.
BBC Arabic was also a great experience, with Social Media Editor Mohammad Ziyadah. He discussed the importance of promoting content on social media as much as possible and use social flow to optomize content. He described the workflow as a social media editor in three steps: 1. Composing, 2. Publishing, and 3. User Needs. Mohammad then discussed the importance of analytics and the use of platforms such as Chartbeats and Telescope in order to track how many and what content people look at on your website. Feedback from social users is also important when in control of an organization’s social media presence. The users are the ones who receive the content, so it is important that social media professionals adapt to the interests of its viewers.
Laura Oliver, currently a freelance journalist, came to speak to our class Friday afternoon. However, in the past she was the head of audience growth at Vogue International and in charge of social/community at the Guardian. She is a respectable journalist with many skills she has developed through her experience. Laura provided many great tips for us wannabe journalists, including her own personal experiences. She included in her presentation the seven things she has learned throughout her journalism career: #1 How you define success might change, #2 Digital roles are often new(er) and that can be challenging, #3 Freelancing (in her opinion) is really fun, #4 Internet literacy is a beat, #5 Embrace the new, #6 Know what makes a good story, and finally #7 It’s all about the audience. She also discussed how a lot of social media and technological occupations have not even been invented yet, meaning that we could have jobs that do not exist at the moment. I found that interesting. Overall, she was a great speaker and I enjoyed listening to her experiences and advice about being a journalist.
I read an interesting article on Nieman Lab on the topic of content competition from different tech companies. The writer, Mat Yurow, discusses how 2019 will be a year for media platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat, and Google to go “all in.” Yurow states, “It’s not enough to simply curate content and platforms must take on the role of creating content as well.” He also uses the example of Netflix and how the company is creating its own content by producing their own original TV shows and movies. The production of content is vital for social media platforms, especially for big names like Facebook, Google, etc. The importance of producing content has become a reoccuring theme as I continue my study of journalism. Professionals like Sarah Marshall and Mohammad Ziyadah both stressed the importance of the creation and production of content, especially in today’s media driven society. Attached is the link to the article: https://www.niemanlab.org/2018/12/content-competition-from-the-tech-companies/
In class this week, me and my classmates shared stories from articles that each of us researched before class. I enjoyed this activity because it allowed people to share their thoughts on my story and how difficult it is today to get your content out there. It is hard for people to venture outside of their own little world, engulfed in whatever podcast or media platform they are using. There for, it is important for media and PR professionals to use their third-party outlets to their advantage. This can be done by incorporating content and your message within those outlets and engaging with them in order to make people listen.
