Growing Pains

The one thing that has attracted me to the emerging media industry so strongly in the last few months is the sense of opportunity that surrounds it. As I've gotten deeper and deeper into the "social media" world (quotations because that means so many different things to so many different people) the more I've realized that nobody really has any clue what they are doing yet--or if there is someone who knows what they're doing, you have to look really, really hard to find them. Many PR and advertising firms have just sort of ad-hoc added social media to their repertoire of skills without taking into consideration what that really means, much less putting in place metrics to figure out how they're doing and what success really means. It feels like we're coming into (or are we already there?) a new age of how companies and consumers relate to one another, and it's really exciting.

That being said, considering the importance that social media is going to have in the coming years, it is shocking that UNC isn't taking steps to address it in its academic curriculum. I have heard of two classes that address it in depth, both taught by Gary Kayye, and both through the Journalism School. Even at the conference I attended on Sunday, the attendees kept being generalized as "PR and journalism students". It made me want to raise my hand and point out that other people besides those in the J-School were concerned with social media and the direction it was taking.

The topic was mostly given lip-service in my intro to marketing class. And with good reason; why should we expect professors to teach us about topics that 90% of companies and corporations have yet to figure out?



UNC's SMART conference was extremely informative, and I applaud and am appreciative of all the hard work by UNC faculty and students that made the event happen, as well as the multitude of talented speakers that were in attendance. However, I think it kind of missed the point. Where was the in-depth discussion of how businesses were using the technology? Metrics for success? Explanations for how non-profits with little in the way of marketing budgets can use technologies to connect with audiences? The conference was caught between explaining the uses of the various platforms as a whole and describing how to best leverage these tools to find a job. As a result, it did neither exceptionally well.

I understand that any event put on by University Career Services is going to have a career-finding slant. However, I feel that either the event needs to be taken in a drastically different (and more advanced) direction or call itself what it is: a resume-writing workshop with an emphasis on social media. Perhaps groups other than UCS should put it on. I'm not sure. However, I have a couple of specific reccomendations:

1. Skip the baby stuff.
I was a bit surprised when the keynote speaker opened the conference by explaining that Facebook had been started in 2006. Perhaps such exposition is necessary when he explains emerging media to CEOs and directors of marketing, but as students who have had access to the internet for virtually all of our academic lives, we need no introduction to what was going on in 2007. I think that it should be assumed that all those in attendance of a social media conference have at the very least a working understanding of these different tools and what they mean.

2. Focus on opportunities in the future of social media and discuss forward-thinking strategies.
This space is changing so much every day that it is of little use to discuss what social media is. It is much more prudent and useful to discuss what it will be. To be fair, the last panel discussed "the future of social media", but it seemed rather general and without direction--one cost of having five panelists sit on an hour-long panel. Too many cooks, if you will. I was also surprised to find that metrics of measuring return on investment weren't mentioned unless it was asked about. As a topic that is on the mind of every marketer currently in this space, I thought it deserved a bit more space in the conversation.

3. Address the needs of students outside of the PR/Journalism field.
Social media is affecting every single industry, period. To narrowly think that the only students who benefit from such advanced knowledge are those who want to work for PR firms is not only short-sighted but somewhat offensive. Where was the panel on how nonprofits can benefit? What about the changing landscape of business-to-business enterprise?

I understand that this was the first-ever conference of this type that was held on UNC's campus, and it is completely possible (and probably even likely) that I am being overly critical. The event did get a lot of things right. It was well-run, the event staff was incredibly friendly, the audience did a great job of having its own conversation via the event hashtag (#uncsmart), and the speakers were on-time and excited to be a part of the conference. Every event has positives and room for improvement, and the narrow nature of the conference was simply symptomatic of that of the educational system as a whole with regards to this topic. Where are the emerging media majors? Where are the classes, within both the business school and the journalism school, dealing with social media? Why aren't more clubs taking the initiative to put on events such as this one? These are questions we all need to be asking ourselves as we look at the wild west of marketing and communication.

Like I said before, the thing that attracts me to this industry is the incredible sense of opportunity that seems waiting to be discovered in it. It should not surprise me that conferences such as these strike me the same way; nobody has gotten it quite right yet, and I am thrilled at the opportunity to do it better.

--Taylor
hot and heavy, pumpkin pie, chocolate candy, Jesus Christ