Senior Capstone has been focused on the connections we will make in the “real world” and lessons learned from our experience. Finding our role in marketing as well as the ethics we will carry has been our challenge these past few days. This week, we were lucky enough to have a Champlain graduate, Sam Winchell, from New Breed Marketing discuss with us her tricks for getting through our toughest branding assignment (ourselves) and advising us on how to be the best in our field.
Not only am I lucky enough to be interning with New Breed, but Sam and I actually worked together doing events during her senior and my sophomore year (pictured below). Sam explained her transitions at New Breed by starting as an intern, going into project management, then how she ended up as an SEO Analyst. What we all took from this was that things change, and that’s okay. In our twenties we’re supposed to be figuring out where our strengths are, weaknesses we can work through, new ways to extend our learning, and what we gain from networking.
What came next was the importance of our personal branding. Three pieces of advice stood out to me the most: organize content, your greatest weakness is your experience, and find new ways to follow trends.
Organizing content seemed like a given. Then we looked around the room at each other, realizing how few of us were regularly posting on our blogs. What we can gain from this is a time management skill that allows us to keep up with online branding while juggling our other responsibilities. New Breed has amplified this consistency by scheduling posts via HubSpot. Some of us pick a day to post about certain subjects, my personal preference is to make content calendars, and others post daily. The point is to keep yourself organized, and everyone finds their schtick.
Which leads to our biggest weakness being our lack of experience. The question always asked in interviews is “What is your greatest weakness?” which is very tough to answer, and usually throws people off. Sam told us to use this not as an excuse, but as an asset to develop new skills you never knew you needed.
This brings us to her final piece of advice, to develop new ways of discovering trends. Altering your methods of finding information can lead to fantastic aids. For instance, someone in class asked about how to find blogs. Sam immediately answered that looking into the profiles of Twitter users generally directs you to their blog. Having that outside interaction extends your network to a new platform while bringing new pages to your feed. All the answers are just sitting right in our social media, you just have to dig a little deeper.
What made Sam’s presentation so helpful was that she opened up her experience to the class. Asking us what we wanted to hear rather than lecturing us gave us a better idea of what we will be looking forward to in the next few years. These changes we will venture through are only the start, and we’ll figure out our place in marketing on the way.
Casey Reagan 