I received my first computer when I was nine years old. I remember signing onto a website where you were able to find a “pen-pal” your same age and send each other emails back and forth. It was so much fun and I used to eagerly anticipate emails from my pen-pals on a daily basis. Less than a decade later, Myspace became extremely popular. As one of the first major social media platforms, it gave people a space to communicate with each other and to market products or themselves. I remember plenty of people using their profile as an innovate way to market their modeling and music pages.
I luckily grew up during this era and then saw Twitter, Facebook and Instagram quickly follow and rapidly establish themselves after that. Social networking websites are an area of marketing that I not only find extremely interesting, but that I feel I am well versed on and would make a great “go-to” person for. Social media marketing allows people and businesses to interact with each other and establish relationships. Social media is a medium that connects businesses with consumers and allows for personal interaction. It also allows businesses to reach narrow target audiences.
Social media marketing is fast, efficient, and can reduce marketing costs. As each generation becomes more digitized, it’s essential to keep up with social media and the latest trends because it is becoming such a large part of engaging with customers. Because I have been using social media platforms since they first became popular (I’m a “true” millennial in every sense of the word), I feel that I have a strong grasp on how it works and how to engage with people. During my fist job in Italy as an English language communications specialist, I also dabbled in social media marketing and was able to learn how to use programs like Hootsuite to manage content for clients.