Social Media Interview: Tamara Rahoumi

Tamara Rahoumi is an active social media user and plans to increase her social media use professionally in the future. She is currently on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr and Twitter, which she is starting to use more often. She does not have a Snapchat account and does not use LinkedIn regularly. On a daily basis, the only form of social media she checks is Instagram. She will occasionally scroll through Facebook but says this is passive: she will scroll until something catches her eye. Tamara adds that she reads a lot of what she sees on social media, so for her it is a practical learning tool and news source.

While Tamara’s social media use has been primarily personal thus far, she is starting to see the immense value in using social media professionally. Tamara recently started her own blog through WordPress and has realized that social media is extremely helpful with sharing her posts. She noted that using social media accounts, such as Twitter or Facebook, to update followers about a new blog post is drawing traffic, which she can track via WordPress to see how viewers linked to a post. She has learned how important it is to tie social media into her blog posts and writing, which she will continue to do moving forward.

Tamara’s social media use reflects my own, so I believe we could both benefit from looking at social media as a professional tool rather than just a personal outlet. She has already started to engage with social media with a journalistic frame of mind, which will be very helpful during her time at NYU and beyond. It may be advantageous for Tamara to create a Snapchat account, even if only to follow certain people in the journalism world or news outlets rather than post her Snaps, and to use her LinkedIn more often. In the same way that Tamara noticed an increase in page views when linking her blog to her social media accounts, she will see more benefits from using social media in a professional way as she becomes more social media savvy.