Whenever I tell people what I do for a living it’s usually met with a twang of judgement and confusion.
Person: “So where do you work?”
Jackie: “Genesee Community College – I work in the marketing department.”
Person: “Oh, cool! What do you do?”
Jackie: “I’m the Web and Social Media Coordinator, so I deal with what the college looks like online.”
Responses I normally get:
1. “Oh, so you just sit on Facebook all day?”
2. “Oh, so you like, tweet and stuff?”
3. “So if I start tweeting at the college, you’ll respond?”
4. “Oh! I’m going to start tweeting annoying things at GCC to bother you!”
UGH. No. Well, yes, I do have Facebook OPEN all day, and yes, I “like tweet and stuff.” but I get to do SO many other things. I work in marketing, which means I talk to a bunch of people all the time in a lot of different ways. I talk to the people in my department about creative strategy, other people across campus about their (sometimes uninformed) opinions of the internet and our social media use, but I also talk to thousands of people through GCC’s social media channels, pretty neat, huh? Yeah, it is.
Social media is the loose-tie version of news reports as well as the fun, happy, full-of-personality voice of an organization. I got to take advantage of this when SUNY unrolled their 2nd Mascot Madness, basically weeks of making social media managers insane and battling against each other and spamming students.
SUNY Brockport used all their resources to push Ellsworth, their Golden Eagle mascot into the final matchup against Binghamton. After a sarcastic request by the social media manager at Brockport to have GCC throw support, I tweeted about it. Even though all GCC was promised was a picture of a puppy (which, I will say, was totally worth it and adorable), Ellsworth didn’t end up taking the cup home. There’s always next year!
It was fun to have a little conversation with Brockport, and watch a few Brockport students get excited about the open “alliance” we had created. SUNY jumped on too, favoriting our back-and-forths.
But then, today I saw a blog post by SUNY which gave Brockport (the loser) more press than Baxter – Binghamton’s Bearcat. It began and ended with the conversation between GCC and Brockport, which made me feel like a 10 year old. LOOK MOM, LOOK WHAT I DID! THAT’S ME!
So yes, I do sit on Facebook and tweet and everything else that you think that I do. But I love it!