Hello Online Networking World!
So my name is Sarah and I am a PhD candidate in Drama, Theatre, & Performance Studies and I never imagined so much of my day would focus around social media. Let's take a look at that...
My personality and experiences are somewhat polarized: there's the part of me that survived an undergraduate degree in professional actor training, spending gruelling hours on my feet working as part of a team in an environment where everything and everyone makes you feel like you don't quite measure up, but somehow at the end of the day you can laugh it off (perhaps it was all the coffee); and then there's the part of me that pushed though a master's degree in performance theory, spending even more gruelling hours reading until my eyes were sore and writing until my fingers cramped, falling asleep alone in corners of libraries, somehow laughing it off once the essays were submitted (I must drink too much coffee). But none of that ever had to do with social media. Yet here I am.
Since these last two schooling ventures, I have started my own theatre company with a group of great friends who also just love to create and share interesting work, my primary role with this company being Social Media Manager and I love it! Nothing about what I have studied and trained for has prepared me for social media (except maybe being a Twenty-Something in an ever-increasingly virtual world) but I'm learning as I go. In my day-to-day I stay on top of the barrage of phone notifications I receive from the endless Tweets, Instagrams, SnapChats, Facebook posts, and website updates I share. The fabulous part of engaging in social networking for my company is that I learn so much from the community: while I am keeping my followers up-to-date about my company, I learn from them what's going on in the theatre community at large, what's trending, what's topical, and what my company should be involved in. Through connecting online, I am able to broaden my network and meet really great people. It took me two degrees and a year building my own company to actually learn: it's not what you know, its who you know. That's what online communities do.
With eConverse Social Media, I am expanding on my social media knowledge by exploring the larger role of associations and online communities, how they strengthen relationships and make resources easily accessible. So while it may not be where I saw myself headed, I'm really thrilled to be so involved with social media networking!
That's the end of my hype speech, thanks for reading!
Best,
Sarah