What Did I Learn?
I walked across the Lehigh University commencement stage on May 24, 2021.
At that point, though I know I had a few credits left to complete, I was mentally done with my entire college experience.
However, this class has been a huge blessing to me, not only as an entrepreneur, but as a person in general.
As I’ve discussed in other posts, I am not a huge social media guy. I am, of course, very active on it due to my business and my need to be in the know with my competition. But personally, I have never been a huge participant in it in terms of trying to create and address an audience with my own thoughts.
That’s why this course was so amazing.
This course forced me to try all the things I have been hesitant to try on social media. It gave me, not only confidence, but also a lot of really cool ideas for how to apply this to my business and to continue the things I learned on my personal platforms, too.
Though my massive family and community know who I am, I realize that I am no different from a ghost when it comes to the limited amount of information and interaction I have on the public side of these social platforms.
I think the biggest takeaway I have from this course is that I just love conversation. I love taking the time to express my thoughts and trying to decipher other people’s thoughts to create a more universal understanding of all those I interact with.
That atmosphere is something I have to cultivate intentionally in every post so that people are invited to be authentically them.
I also have to learn to be more vulnerable. That doesn’t mean telling my deepest darkest secret on the internet but by being more forthcoming about who I am, what I like and what I’m about. I feel like that will create a more personable connection between myself and my audience.
This is also something that goes for my business. As a concierge service, we want our customers to feel like they have a close one-to-one connection with us. We can begin to do things like that by being more inviting on our page in ways other than simply posting monotonous release-watch or drop-slot photos.
One of my favorite learning moments from this course will be the final project. It reminded me a lot of the music video my team and I did for a fellow Lehigh Alumnus who raps.
However, I was completely in control of the vision and distribution plan. It was my favorite learning moment because for so long, I have been saying, “I’m creative, but not in this way” simply because I was too scared to try it.
Yet I had so much fun at every stage of putting that video together. It was also my first time doing a sort of live action video that spoke to the inception of A Sneakerhead’s Paradise that wasn’t in an interview format. It gave me a slight glimpse into the future production that awaits my company, and I just had so much fun.
Ultimately, my main goal for this course was to understand how to better share myself and my story on social media. I had no clue that it would expose me to platforms I had never used and projects I had always run away from — but jeez — it felt amazing to get these things done.
At the end of the day, I feel like I better understand the niche I need to target and the atmosphere I need to create on my social media to get the most fulfilling experience out of it for me and for my audience.
I think more long form platforms like YouTube, Twitch, IGTV and other things like that will allow me to dig deeper into who I am. and my thought process and commentary on the things I like.
Then short form platforms, like IG Feed posts and Twitter, can be used to make the impactful things I say in the long form content more consumable for the majority of social media users.
I am also extremely honored to have had such an understanding and supportive professor who not only helped but continued to push me out of my comfort zone which allowed for me to discover these things about myself.
I still feel overwhelmed by the amount of work it is to keep up with social media, but I am hoping to soon build a team around my personal brand in hopes that it can fuel my business and other potential opportunities I may have further down the line.
This course was absolutely riveting, and I will definitely be coming back to the things I learned as I move forward with my journey on social media.
